Trends Identified
Intelligent Things
Intelligent things are physical things that go beyond the execution of rigid programming models and exploit AI to deliver advanced behaviors that interact more naturally with their surroundings and with people. AI is driving advances for new intelligent things, such as autonomous vehicles, robots and drones, and delivering enhanced capability to many existing things, such as IoT-connected consumer and industrial systems (see Figure 4).
2017
Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2018
Gartner
Synthethic biology
Inter-disciplinary branch of biology applying engineering principles to biological systems. The market for biotechnology already exceeds $80Bn/year.
2017
Innovation for the Earth - Harnessing technological breakthroughs for people and the planet
PWC
AI Foundation
Interest in AI is growing, as shown by an increase of more than 500% in the number of inquiry calls from Gartner clients about topics related to AI in the past year. 1 A 2017 Gartner survey found that 59% of organizations are still gathering information to build their AI strategies, while the rest have already made progress in piloting or adopting AI solutions. 2 Furthermore, the market indicates strong investment in startups selling AI technologies. Creating systems that learn, adapt and potentially act autonomously will be a major battleground for technology vendors through at least 2020. The ability to use AI to enhance decision making, reinvent business models and ecosystems, and remake the customer experience will drive the payoff for digital initiatives through 2025.
2017
Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2018
Gartner
Looking ahead, the projected structural shifts to the service sector could create complex pressures on job quality
Internal and external forces, such as technological progress, capital accumulation, globalization, demo- graphics and government policies, are expected to continue to spur the reallocation of employment across sectors of production. Across all income groups, an ever-increasing number of workers are projected to be employed in the service sector, while the employment share in agriculture is set to con- tinue its long-term downward trend. Furthermore, the share of manufacturing employment is expected to continue its decline in upper middle-income and developed countries, and to grow only marginally in lower middle-income ones. This confirms the ongoing trend of “premature deindustrialization”, whereby lower-income countries are seeing declining shares of industrial employment at earlier stages of development compared to developed countries.
2018
World Employment and Social Outlook
International Labour Organization (ILO)
CO2 Absorption and Storage Material
International interest in CO2 reduction seems to continue, due to issues such as sustainable growth and environmental protection. Therefore, successful development of porous new nano materials, which can ively extract and save CO2, will have a great ripple effect. In addition to storage, there will be more interest on the extraction technology that is highly efficient and ive when needed.
2011
KISTEP 10 Emerging Technologies 2011
South Korea, Korea Institute of S&T Evaluation and Planning (KISTEP)
Sustainable shipping
International trade relies on shipping, and despite technological improvements, emissions continue to increase as trade increases. Decarbonising short-haul shipping is an expanding market opportunity driven by developments in battery technology and alternative fuels, with the potential to help the sector’s low-carbon transition.
2018
Global opportunity report
DNV GL
U.S. Image Suffers as Publics Around World Question Trump’s Leadership
International views of the U.S. have fluctuated over time, often accompanying changes in political leadership in Washington. In Western Europe, opinions about the U.S. grew much more positive after Barack Obama became president in 2009 but fell sharply following Trump’s inauguration in January.
2017
6 trends in international public opinion from our Global Indicators Database
Pew Research Center
Master the new logic of competition
Internet and mobile technology ushered in the information age and profoundly affected technology-intensive and consumer-facing industries such as electronics, communications, entertainment, and retail. But the emerging wave of technology—including sensors, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence—will turn every business into an information business. The combination of an exponential increase in data, better tools to mine insights from that data, and a fast-changing business environment means that companies will increasingly need to, and be able to, compete on the rate of learning. Scale will take on a new significance in the learning economy. Instead of the “economies of scale” that today’s leaders grew up with—based on a predictable reduction of marginal production costs across a relatively uniform offering—tomorrow’s leaders will pursue “economies of learning,” based on identifying and fulfilling each customer’s changing needs by leveraging data and technology. The arenas of competition will also look different in the 2020s, requiring new perspectives and capabilities. The familiar picture of a small number of companies producing a common end product and competing within well-defined industry boundaries will be replaced by one where competition and collaboration occur within and between ecosystems. Because ecosystems are fluid and dynamic, and not perfectly controllable even by the orchestrator, companies will need to be much more externally oriented, to deploy influence indirectly through platforms and marketplaces, and to coevolve with ecosystem partners. Orchestrators of ecosystems can leverage the assets of other participants, and ecosystem-based competition tends to have a winner-take-all nature. These factors are already causing rapidly rising valuations relative to tangible assets for the top companies, as well as an increasing gap between the profitability of high and low performers. But there is not yet any playbook for how to harness this premium: practice is racing ahead of theory, and pioneers who can crack the code on ecosystems will be greatly advantaged. Finally, companies will increasingly compete on resilience. Accelerating technological change, political gridlock, a shifting geopolitical power map, the increased scrutiny of business, and the polarization of society all point to an era of protracted uncertainty, in which corporate life cycles are likely to continue shrinking. Companies will therefore need to worry not only about the competitiveness of their immediate game but also about the durability of that game and their ability to weather unanticipated shocks. Most of today’s incumbents—designed for relatively stable, classical business environments—are not well adapted for this more dynamic environment. Therefore, today’s leaders need to fundamentally reinvent the organizational model in order to become future winners.
2018
Winning the ’20s: A Leadership Agenda for the Next Decade
Boston Consulting Group (BCG)
Deepening digital divide in Australia
Internet penetration and the increasing speed of technological progress add other perspectives to the inequality problem; namely, digital divide and digital inclusiveness.
2017
Surfing the digital tsunami
Australia, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
Explosion of connected devices and increasing demand for bandwidth tests internet infrastructure
Internet-connected devices are beginning to deliver bene t in areas such as transportation, smart grids, supply chains, urban planning, agriculture, national security, retail and healthcare169 and recent estimates suggest between 30 and 50 billion devices will be deployed by 2020170.
2017
Surfing the digital tsunami
Australia, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)