To some extent, technology can help meet these new challenges. The costs of data collection and analysis are falling rapidly thanks to Internet of Things and AI. Satellites and sensors, for example, can generate highly accurate real-time data. A broader corporate data strategy aimed at collecting social and environmental cost data, in addition to the well-being of employees and local communities, might help fill significant gaps in measurement. Useful new corporate reporting that details progress toward a broader business purpose means building the prerequisite data capabilities first.

Governments also have an opportunity to leverage data generating technologies to enhance feedback. More than 20 countries from Singapore to Sweden have “smart city” initiatives, demonstrating how better measurement through data can improve public safety and citizen services, albeit not without risks. The UK’s National Health Service has dozens of partnerships with leading technology companies analyzing the vast troves of patient data to support the provision of its services.109 And big data techniques have also proved a significant part of the policymaking process when fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. Countries that successfully implemented track and-trace techniques using smartphones fared better in managing the deadly outbreak.

An inflection point is approaching, driven by necessity. Our industrial-era metrics are misaligned with the needs of a knowledge-based economy characterized by widespread technological disruption. We are on the cusp of a significant change in the way societies make policy and conduct business. Companies will either evolve to realign with new values, or risk dissolving as their social contract is withdrawn. There is no looking back.

Eoin Treacy's view

Here is a link to the full report.

The way in which we collect data about the economy is deeply flawed. That’s a well understood fact but we have not yet come up with a more effective way of measuring economic activity and potential. The problem with changing the status quo is it would completely upend the way in which economies are managed. That might well be inevitable because the populist uprising that continue to  spread are challenging the establishment already.

Modern Monetary which is only the latest iteration of debt monetisation, is the rallying call of populists right now. Over the coming years there is a clear rationale for thinking about personal productivity in a completely new way. That will be particularly relevant if geopolitical tensions continue to pressure on globalisation.