SINGAPORE (June 16): It might not feel like it but the future is bright. And, rather than seek the safety of bonds or dividend-yielding blue chips, investors ought to reach for stocks on the vanguard of change and progress.

It seems clear that we’re on the cusp of a massive wave of innovation and invention that is reshaping many industries in unexpected ways. Some people are calling it a new industrial revolution, and saying that it will change the world the way the steam engine did back in the 1700s. In reality, the global economy been steadily changing with new technological trends. After the steam engine came the smokestacks and factories that drove mass production of goods during the late 1800s and early 1900s, which is sometimes called the Second Industrial Revolution. Then, came the rise of computers in the late 1960s, which some people refer to as the beginnings of the Third Industrial Revolution.

Now, with the Internet, 3D printing and even artificial intelligence, it seems that a Fourth Industrial Revolution is upon us. Song Seng Wun, an economist at CIMB, sees this new wave of technological advancements bringing more efficient manufacturing and workflow processes that will allow companies to do more with fewer resources. A digital revolution also “creates extra business opportunities enabled by technology that was not there before”, he adds.

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