Event: London Knowledge Café: Demography Is Destiny Wednesday 19th June 2024

London Knowledge Café
Population Decline – What Does it Mean for the World?

Time: 18:30 to 20:30 BST

This is a free event. Please arrive at 6:00 pm or shortly after, allowing you time to settle in and meet other people. Light refreshments will be available. The Café will start promptly at 6:30 pm.

Facilitator: David Gurteen

Hosts: Simon Atkinson and Aynsley Taylor

Venue: Ipsos, 3 Thomas More Square, London, E1W 1YW (Directions)

Theme: Population Decline – what does it mean for the world?

All around the world, people are having fewer children than they used to and fewer children than they say they’d like to have. There are many different explanations as to why this is happening, but one thing is abundantly clear – it is happening. And fertility rates are falling even faster than the most pessimistic demographers imagined they would just a few years ago, with most parts of the world now producing fewer children than is required to replace their existing population. Consequently, the global population is expected to start falling around the middle of this century, and given we’re already a quarter of the way through it, this isn’t as far away as it might sound.

The implications of this are enormous and threaten to upend many assumptions that we have long held about humanity and its progress. Population changes around the world are already having far-reaching effects on politics, business, society, finance, healthcare, geopolitics, international relations, the environment, and innovation, and these effects are likely to intensify over the coming decades.

The Ipsos Generations Report 2024 uses Ipsos’ own data, analysis, and insights to consider some of the near-term implications and what they mean for societies, markets, and people in different parts of the world. During this Café, we will explore some of the themes of this report and ask how we should prepare ourselves for the changes that we know are coming.

Speakers: Simon Atkinson & Aynsley Taylor

Simon is the Chief Knowledge Officer at Ipsos and has been working in market research for more than 30 years. He previously was the Deputy CEO of Ipsos in the UK and currently manages a team based in five different countries around the world. His mission is to define, organize, and share what Ipsos has learned over half a century of social and market research in nearly 90 different countries.

Aynsley is the Director of the Ipsos Knowledge Centre and was the first Knowledge Management professional recruited by Ipsos when the Centre was founded in 2015. He is currently leading Ipsos’ global equalities research and advising on how to use new Generative AI technologies to improve the management of Ipsos’ knowledge.

THE CAFÉ PROCESS

If you are unfamiliar with the Café process, it is quite simple.

After Bella introduces the theme, she will present a question for us to ponder. We will then have three rounds of small group conversations, during which we will divide into groups of three or four to discuss the question.

Following our small group discussions, we will reconvene as a whole group to share our individual reflections and insights.

Other Upcoming Events

Event: Gurteen Knowledge Café Workshop Wednesday, 11 March 2026, 14:00 to 18:00 GMT - Organizations rely on meetings and workshops to think together, explore issues, and make sense of complex situations. Many sessions drift…  

Event: Conversational Leadership — Beyond Knowledge Management Tuesday 17th March 2026 14:00 to 15:30 GMT - Knowledge Management gives us access to information, but it does not decide or act. In this Knowledge Café, we will…  

Event: Conversational Leadership in the Age of AI Wednesday 15th April 2026 14:00 to 15:30 GMT - As artificial intelligence reshapes how organizations handle information, the deeper challenge is how we think and decide together in its…  

Event: Conversational Leadership Workshop 2026 7 - 11 September 2026, Warbrook House, Hampshire, England - We are living and working in conditions of uncertainty, complexity, and rapid change. Many leadership approaches still rely on control,…