Global megatrends are transforming the way we live, work, interact, finance, produce and consume. At the same time, the increasing environmental impacts of human activities have sharpened the focus on sustainability of further development. New technologies potentially provide an opportunity to address, perhaps for the first time in the history of mankind, a substantial majority of the fundamental societal challenges, from nutrition, energy availability and sustainability, to access to products, services and information. However, these same global megatrends can also be highly divisive and therefore represent one of the biggest challenges for a global social, political and economic cohesion and even peaceful coexistence in more than a generation. In addition we have newly remembered our global vulnerability to shocks such as the coronavirus and there can be no doubt that this will change the world in which we live prompting new questions and priorities.