New technologies and different ways of working will change the business landscape more radically than at any time since the industrial revolution, according to research commissioned by HSBC, the banking group.

Its report, published on Friday, creates a map of the business hubs it expects to develop over the next 20 years. Instead of pictograms of factories and coal mines familiar to past generations of schoolchildren, the new map is dominated by symbols for wind farms, robotics, nanotechnology and stem-cell research.