Assessing the impact of megatrends on regional industrial transformations

Megatrends are long-term, ubiquitous, global and robust transformations influencing the developments of business, environment, economy, society, cultures and citizens' lives on a local and global scale. There is an important grey literature focusing on these megatrends and their impacts. However, this analysis is often not territorialized, despite the gradient of consequences that megatrends might have at the regional level. This working paper proposes a methodological approach combining qualitative insights (including foresight scenarios) and quantitative data to regionalize the impacts of a series of megatrends and types of impacts. This approach is then applied to a sample of megatrends and types of impacts at the EU level. Findings suggest that the megatrends' impacts are not place-neutral in the EU context and that patterns of the most/least affected regions depend on the individual megatrend. Indeed, different patterns can be observed (e.g., North/South, East/West, urban/non-urban, quasi-homogeneous impacts), often in opposite directions for different megatrends. Moreover, the regional level of development cannot be used as a reliable predictor of the impacts, as the correlation may be positive, negative or even inexistent depending on the megatrend.