What's going to happen in 2007? Which countries will dominate the global economy? What is the future of scientific discovery? Will the value of real estate soften or strengthen?
For insight we turned to billionaires. After all, the world's very wealthiest are forward-looking thinkers who have turned their forecasts into fortunes. So we pumped five of the self-made sort for prognostications about what will happen next year from Italian Mario Moretti Polegato, who built a billion-dollar company out of his idea to punch holes in shoe soles to let feet breathe, to Sir Donald Gordon, who started out as an accountant but cashed in on booming UK real estate with Liberty International.
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Our billionaires chose to soothsay about everything from the economy to the environment. They took the opportunity to publicise social causes they are involved in, politics relevant to their home countries and what keeps them up at night. But they remain best at prophesying about their own lines of business.
Take the ever-self-promotional real estate baron Donald Trump, "My buildings are all doing tremendously well, and I expect that to continue." How convenient.
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Similarly, in 2007, Taiwanese computer-hardware maker WenChi Chen predicts an emerging focus on environmentally friendly technology. "In China, but also globally, people are going to start paying more attention to so-called green technology," says Chen, whose Via Technologies also happens to make carbon-free and solar computing equipment. "We're going to see more and more people becoming energy and environmentally conscious."
Billionaires also gave tips on how to grow a global business next year. Italian footwear-maker Polegato--whose Geox manufactures shoes in China and India--foresees the success of these two emerging powerhouses will continue to grow and create tougher business dynamics.
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"China and India are booming, bringing to the market products of higher and higher quality but with lower prices," says Polegato. "2007 will register even higher competition and turbulence." His advice for other retailers: Outsource production but "keep the intelligence in-house."
Homebuilder Eli Broad has his eye on a different sort of global competition in 2007: scientific discovery. "We're falling behind what's happening in places like the UK, Israel, Singapore, Australia, so to maintain our scientific and medical research edge, we've got to move forward," says Broad, who in 2005 personally donated $200 million to genome research at Harvard and MIT.
He speculates 2007 will see a dramatic acceleration in embryonic stem cell research because his home state of California is providing $3 billion to the controversial field.
Unlike his counterparts, British real-estate mogul Donald Gordon expressed concern for the year ahead, in the big-money private-equity and hedge-fund space (even though his spokeswoman says he doesn't work or invest in either). "I just think the whole system is getting out of hand--there's going to be some awful disasters," he says.
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