The world is changing at such a rate that sometimes it is difficult to keep up with all the many and fantastic things that are being invented, created, manufactured and made available to us all. All of these offer investment opportunities but what's the best way to access them? 

There are four key drivers of change - termed megatrends - that are seen as major influencers on how the world will be shaped in the years ahead; demographics, the environment, technology and social behaviour. We have only to look at how in just a few short years, on the grand scale of things, the Internet has changed the world as an example. The way we work, the way we gather, receive and send information, how much information we can access quickly and easily, as well as the way we communicate have been transformed by this technology.

In March the Apple Watch received the massive amount of hype and column inches in the media that we have come to expect of any Apple product launch. But look at the technology: not just a watch that will keep the time to within 50 milliseconds, but it connects also to the user's digital calendar and contact book, so people can send and receive messages, calls and emails and through contactless payment technology it will even pay for things like coffee and groceries. In five years time will most of us be wearing these types of watches - either Apples or another manufacturers?

Solar panels used to be expensive and need banks of batteries to work. Now they are slimline, highly efficient, feed a battery bank no bigger or obtrusive than the average household boiler and are reducing in price at such a rapid rate that within a few years they could be within the range of most UK households - feeding surplus energy back into the national grid to boot. There are many, many other examples of the leaps and bounds being made in technology but these are three that we are likely to see around us and that potentially will affect the way we live, travel, work and communicate in the near future.

At the same time, areas such as natural resources, energy, food and water, also are seeing new initiatives, innovations and long-term planning that will require external investment to be brought to fruition. Energy efficiency, for example, is one theme that is not only seeing demand from corporates seeking cost efficiencies and competitive advantage but demand for energy efficient consumer products is being driven by tightening standards.

Other themes include the fact that the global population is growing older, which means that healthcare and biotechnology are areas of growth and are likely to be for decades to come. Here, equipment manufacturers, supplies distributors and facilities providers and others, are all likely beneficiaries of the greater focus on and growth in the healthcare market. The growing movement within corporate entities to be demonstrating positive commitment to the long-term protection of the environment is another theme that will see companies actively providing solutions to environmental and social problems.

Looking at these themes now, and others that will come into their own further down the line, we can seek to be invested in them as they grow for sound investment reasons as well as helping companies build and deliver new ideas, technologies and services and help drive positive environmental and social change as well.

The next big thing...
Of course, everyone likes to think they have found the next great investment theme. We only have to think back to the late 1990s when people were piling into technology companies to learn a salutary lesson about chasing investment fads no matter how a sure thing they look and not putting all our eggs in one basket.

Spreading your investments across a number of investment themes is extremely sensible “the principle of diversification about which we often write in this magazine“ so that should one theme be affected by natural, political or regulatory issues, for example, or simply not take off in the way that was expected, the other themes in the portfolio to some extent will compensate for that, and keep the portfolio on track. Likewise, using experts who spend their days looking for themes, researching the trends and analysing the companies active within those areas to find the best ones in which to invest, in our view makes for a far more robust investment strategy than trying to predict those themes, trends and companies on a global scale ourselves.

At Lowes we've constructed the Changing World Portfolio, which in line with the above, is designed to invest in funds, which themselves invest in the themes that it is envisaged will play an important part in the future development of the global economy and society.What is key here is that many technologies that feature in our day-to-day lives wouldn't have even been imagined just a few decades ago. While we can point at the examples above as areas where we can see opportunities, it is clear that over the next decade or two there will be new products, technologies and possibly industries springing up that will offer significant potential and most likely it will be companies unknown to us now that will successfully bring them to market.

If we look back over the past 10-20 years and see what has been achieved in that time, we believe we will see some phenomenal changes in the next 20 years and if its suits our investment strategy, it makes sense as investors to be aligned with those themes as early as possible.

10 themes included in the Changing World Portfolio:
The megatrends of the future are expected to be focused around four key themes: demographics, the environment, technology and social behaviour.  As an example of subsets within those megatrends, here are 10 areas included within the Changing World Portfolio (in no particular order).

• Agriculture
• Biotechnology
• Clean Energy
• Digital Communication
• Healthcare
• Natural resources
• Premium Brands
• Security
• Timber
• Water