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We can't be certain about what the future will bring, but we can be certain about some of the challenges we will face when we get there. This is the mantra of Professor Richard Scase, one of Europe's leading futurists, whose predictions have helped steer UK government policy and the business strategies of many leading organisations worldwide. His latest book, Global Remix, demonstrates how, in the global Knowledge Economy, even the broadest trends can have an impact on individual companies and workers. And the first people to hear about the book's contents were 200 members of the London Business Forum (LBF).

Professor Scase began his presentation to the LBF at the British Library Conference Centre with an explanation of what globalisation means for businesses in practical terms, now that communications technologies such as the Internet have caused the "death of distance". "Outside Canterbury there's a warehouse," he said. "Well, it's not a warehouse, it's a shed. And it sells, on the face of it, 1920s British artifacts. You know: telephone boxes, lamp posts, kitchen equipment. Things that were made in, and characteristic of, Britain in the 1920s. It looks as though it relies upon passing trade. The reality is 80% of these 1920s British artifacts are, you've guessed it, made in China. And 70%... are exported to the US."

The West still has the deepest pockets, but the future is Asia, Scase declared. Market reforms in India and China, coupled with technological advancement and trade harmonisation, have brought 2.5 billion people into the world economy. "India has jumped straight into becoming a knowledge economy," he pointed out. "In India today, there are more graduates in information and communication technology than the whole of the UK population: 60 million. And, every year, India produces another one million more." Similarly, he said, the Chinese economy, which has already overtaken that of the UK in absolute terms, will overtake that of Germany in two years and that of the US in 30 years.

The first stage in the rise of Asia was the offshoring of production, Scase argued. The second, which we're experiencing now, is the offshoring of services. The third, just beginning, is a "brain drain" from West to East, as scientists, technologists and entrepreneurs realise the US and Europe are no longer home to the world's fastest growth opportunities. "The business environment is more favourable to entrepreneurship in China on the basis of my experience than it is in the US," he said, adding that 56 small companies moved from Sweden to China during 2006, "not because they were serving Chinese customers predominantly, but because their multinational corporate clients had also relocated to China." In this context, the traditional UK government strategy of regenerating areas outside London by encouraging foreign direct inward investment is likely to lose much of its effectiveness in the medium-term.

In the long-term, Europe has a lot more to worry about, Scase said. It has inflexible labour markets because its governments are made up of minority parties with vested interests in the local economies - "wine-growers in Italy, farmers in France, and so on". It will become "the old people's home of the world by 2010," he added. "Eighty-five million people over the age of 65. Ten million people over the age of 85. Who's going to look after these people? There's going to be a huge demand on the state."

Furthermore, Scase argued, the euro will dissolve by 2015. It may be retained by France and Germany, along with Spain and the Republic of Ireland at a push, but otherwise it will cease to exist. "To have a strong, stable currency, you've got to have a common fiscal policy, a common tax regime," he said. "That was, of course, the original dream five or ten years ago, and it's gone."

In spite of these things, Scase urged the audience to be positive about the reorganisation of the world economy. As Asia becomes more competitive, so it will generate more money to spend on Western goods, he pointed out: "By 2010, India will have a consumer market of something like 150 million people... in terms of people with at least $30,000 a year to spend." The figures are similar in China, and both countries are developing a Western appetite for consumer goods in industries such as health and beauty, fashion and entertainment. They also want our financial services, Scase said. And the new breed of Asian entrepreneurs want access to our business education services, management consultancy and insurance products too.

Asia already represents a huge potential market for most Western businesses, and yet it is not being tapped - especially not in the UK where, for example, only 1% of exports go to China and only another 1% to India. Even Sweden and Switzerland send a higher proportion of exports to Asia, Scase revealed. "Why is it that, in spite of our historical connections... we haven't developed far greater trading relationships, [especially] in India." UK exports to India and China increased by 50% in 2005, he conceded, "but from an incredibly low base."

If Western businesses are to remain competitive, let alone exploit the huge emerging markets of Asia, then they must change radically, Scase argued. "We have quite simply to be much more entrepreneurial and that means a redesign of our businesses in terms of culture, practices and the ways in which we do things. It means rethinking the ways in which our education systems are structured."

The most successful organisations in the future will be those that behave like small companies, Scase said, because young talent attaches an increasingly high premium to sociability, and because networks of business units tend to be more creative than homogenous giants. They will also be especially friendly to female workers, because women represent our most underutilised labour group, and should therefore offset workforce shrinkage as Western populations continue to age.

Scase called up a table of the world's most competitive nations onto the large screen behind him, and the LBF audience was amazed to see it included most of the Scandinavian countries, as well as obvious heavyweights such as the US. "Who'd have thought Sweden would be there? Who'd have thought Finland would be there?" Scase asked. "What could be a worse environment to do business in than Finland? Four-point-five million people. Dark for half the year. The population's drunk for the whole of the year." The social policies in these countries seem on the face of it to be anti-business, with their strict family-orientation and emphasis on collaboration between trade unions and employers. Yet they are evidently producing results.

Further research cited by Scase showed the two most enterprising regions in the whole of Europe were Helsinki and Stockholm. It's perhaps no coincidence, he suggested, that one of the most forward-thinking companies of the modern era, Nokia, the mobile phone manufacturer, is Finnish. In 1990, McKinsey, the global business consultancy, reported to Nokia that the "finite" demand for mobile phones over the next decade would be just 100,000 units. "Nokia paid the bill and ignored the advice," Scase revealed.

Nokia reasoned, rightly, that mobile phones would quickly reduce in size, become small enough to fit into pockets and handbags, and then become fashion accessories. This is the kind of visionary boldness that will be required by leading organisations in the future if they wish to maintain a global competitive advantage. Yet many still try to predict the future by looking at the past. For example, Scase said, Sony in the early 1990s gathered fantastic information about what customers bought from its stores and almost no information about which products those customers left behind. This is how innovation leadership is lost, he argued.

"Cast your mind back to the late 1990s," he said. "Do you [remember] people screaming and saying we want the Internet? We want to book on-line to travel abroad? We want to buy our products online? Did they? No. Consumers do not know what they want. Consumers are not the drivers of innovation. You can be too close to the customer."

Similarly, many companies categorise their markets in ways that are completely out of date. The traditional age ranges of, say, 16-24 and 25-34, used to represent discrete life stages for the average young person - most women in the UK, for example, used to have their first child at the age of 24. Today, the average British woman gives birth to her first child at the age of 29. Meanwhile, as life expectancy has increased, so more women have chosen to divorce before retirement, unable to face the prospect of another 30 years with the same spouse. And it's not just ages that have lost their significance as lifestyle markers: postcodes no longer signify very much about the type of people living in a certain area either, except perhaps the level of assets tied up in property.

Accordingly, Scase concluded, the global knowledge economy is entering an indefinite period of flux - a remix, if you will - in which only the most flexible, nimble and bold companies will survive.