IFRS: A New Accounting Standard for the U.S.

The International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is a set of accounting standards that defines how to prepare financial reports for publicly traded companies (AICPA, 2008).  The United States is currently using Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and the SEC has approved a roadmap that would move the U.S. from GAAP to IFRS by 2014 (Epstein, 2008). IFRS is in use by about 113 countries, with Canada, India, Mexico, Japan, and the U.S. planning to go to it in the next several years.

2014

I’m a trends guy interested in predicting the future, so I’ve put together this post to help illustrate where some trends might end up 5 years from now. I was drawn to the year based on some research I’ve had to conduct for the U.S. GAAP to IFRS conversion for financial reporting for publicly traded companies.

So, here are my guesses for 2014.

Amateurs are the New Professionals

There is a major disruptive force going on in our world today, and it involves a do-it-yourself behavior on a large scale. Individuals are sharing home videos with the world, performing citizen journalism, and selling goods all via the Internet. Companies are getting into non-core lines of business in order to expand their reach; such as selling music online, offering data centers accessible over the web, and distributing other people’s software through their infrastructure. This subtle and large scale trend is amateurization: the empowerment of firms and individuals to provide goods and services that used to be the realm of a professional organization.

Keep Moving Forward

In the 2007 Disney movie Meet the Robinsons, young inventor Lewis Robinson is whisked away to the future where he meets his future family. Lewis learns that in the future, mistakes are welcomed and the risk takers are celebrated.  The celebration of mistakes is due to the persistent motto “Keep Moving Forward,” authored by the famed future inventor (and Lewis’s grown self) Cornelius Robinson.  The point of the motto is that discoveries can’t be made unless people take risks to develop new innovations.