Trends Identified
Technical debt reversal - Lowering the IT debt ceiling
Technical debt is a way to understand the cost of code quality and the impacts of architectural issues. For IT to help drive business innovation, managing technical debt is a necessity. Legacy systems can constrain growth because they may not scale; because they may not be extensible into new scenarios like mobile or analytics; or because underlying performance and reliability issues may put the business at risk. But it’s not just legacy systems: New systems can incur technical debt even before they launch. Organizations should purposely reverse their debt to better support innovation and growth— and revamp their IT delivery models to minimize new debt creation.
2014
Tech trends 2014 - Inspiring Disruption
Deloitte
Network Growth
Technological advances, and a greater understanding of social, physical and virtual network behaviour, will converge to drive new types of network architecture and applications. These will be increasingly accessed by remote and distributed means. Technology applications such as those supporting social networking will continue to reconfigure and enable new social models and means of interacting. This will raise fundamental issues about privacy, security, legal frameworks and the mechanisms for influence. The rate of growth of hardware development is unlikely to reduce before 2020, and software technology may fail to keep pace with these advances, contributing to an increasing proportion of major project failures. The growth of many networks is unlikely to be governed by top-down planning; such growth is likely to occur in a decentralised manner, often analogous to nature. In order to improve effectiveness and reduce vulnerability increased understanding of network topology and nodal behaviour, including people, will be required. There will be changes in network technology driven by: the need to improve end-to-end security; the requirement to support large numbers of Internet-enabled devices; and the ability to directly convert from optical to wireless connectivity. The evolution of ICT devices will be driven by their increasingly wide range of applications and rising demand by society. Increased Internet penetration across the globe, particularly in heavily populated areas, will influence Internet content and ownership.
2010
Global strategic trends - out to 2040
UK, Ministry of Defence
Uneven growth, increasing inequality
Technological development seems to portend a fundamental change in the relationship between productivity and employment, as shown in Figure 2. This means that the economy can grow without producing many jobs, a trend with particular import in those countries that still have a growing youth population – countries that tend to be at the bottom of the global power scale. In spite of the democratization of at least some forms of technology, there is little reason to expect decreasing inequality. Rather, trends of increasing economic inequality – particularly the growth of the very rich – are likely to continue. Economic growth will be driven by technology that has the potential to increase the power of large corporations. There will be more consolidation of large businesses: a trend well underway, as a quick glance at the airline or any other major industry will show. In wealthy countries, labour-intensive work will increasingly be outsourced to Asia and there will be more automation/robots in sectors where unskilled workers have traditionally found jobs, giving rise to a permanent underclass of unemployment.
2011
Megatrends and the future of humanitarian action
International Review of the Red Cross
Processes of technological transformation and innovation
Technological innovation could have a very significant impact on the ability of people to meet their needs and to adapt to climate change. The world is becoming hyper-connected. Technological changes and the rapid diffusion of information and communications technologies, particularly among young people, have also broken down many of the old barriers between northern and southern publics. By 2030, it is estimated that 50% of the global population will have internet access. There is also growing appreciation of how technology links to human and environmental systems, escalating conflict or cooperation.
2015
Tomorrow’s world: seven development megatrends challenging NGOs
The Guardian
Navigating complexity to exceed expectations
Technological progress, shifting demographics, urban expansion, the rise of emerging markets and a changing planet are moving the world beyond globalisation to a multi-polar reality. As this happens CEOs are learning that much of their success depends on sensing and addressing the rapidly changing values and expectations of their many stakeholders.
2016
19th Annual global CEO survey
PWC
Human augmentation
Technology has always augmented human capabilities. So far, this has been relatively passive: assisting humans in performing tasks. We are now on the cusp of human augmentation that is qualitatively different. For the rst time, technology will take an active role, working alongside us and directly on our behalf. The next wave of disruptive technologies, which are rapidly coming of age, are driving this change. They include AI, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), sensors and blockchain. These breakthroughs are in turn generating new products and services, such as AVs, drones, robots and wearables.
2018
What’s after what’s next? The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2018 and beyond
EY
Technology
Technology has powered much of the convergence in the world’s economies and provided the know-how. It has provided access to global markets for those moving from feudal and agricultural economies to the more valuable industrial, service and intellectual property economies. The internet has expanded to reach 2.1 billion people today and is expected to reach five billion people across the planet by 2020. The raw materials of today’s technology are not inexhaustible and indium, used in liquid-crystal displays, and hafnium, a critical element for next-generation semiconductors, could be exhausted by 2017. Technology is driving the conception of new business models and is set to continue its disruptive and enabling role in the coming decades. When once employees had access to the best technology at work, today it’s more likely that their technology at home or in their hand is superior to their employers. Increasingly, companies are looking to ‘outsource’ personal technologies to their employees enabling them to use their own mobile technologies at work.
2012
The future
Steria
Entrepreneurship rising
Technology is also changing the ways that people work, and is increasingly enabling machines and software to substitute for humans. Enterprises and individuals who can seize the opportunities offered by digital advances stand to gain significantly, while those who cannot may lose everything. The growth and prosperity of all economies, rapid-growth and mature, remains highly dependent on entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurs are the lifeblood of economic growth — they provide a source of income and employment for themselves, create employment for others, produce new and innovative products or services, and drive greater upstream and downstream value-chain activities. While some entrepreneurial activity around the world is still driven by necessity, “high-impact” entrepreneurship, once largely confined to mature markets, is now an essential driver of economic expansion in rapid-growth markets. In some cases, these high-impact entrepreneurs are building innovative and scalable enterprises that capitalize on local needs and serve as role models for new entrepreneurs. The face of entrepreneurship is also changing — across the world, entrepreneurs are increasingly young and/or female. Many of these new enterprises are digital from birth. Access to funding remains the primary obstacle for entrepreneurs from all markets. The public and private sector each have an important role to play in creating entrepreneurial ecosystems that, in addition to funding, are essential to promoting entrepreneurial success.
2015
Megatrends 2015 -Making sense of a world in motion
EY
Farewell hospital, hello home-spital
Technology will have further disrupted disease, writes Melanie Walker, a medical doctor and World Bank advisor. The hospital as we know it will be on its way out, with fewer accidents thanks to self-driving cars and great strides in preventive and personalised medicine. Scalpels and organ donors are out, tiny robotic tubes and bio-printed organs are in.
2016
Eight predictions for 2030
World Economic Forum (WEF)
CIO as the Postdigital Catalyst
Technology-centric forces are driving business innovation. Who will lead the charge? Five macro forces – analytics, mobile, social, cloud, and cyber – are hard at work enabling and disrupting organizations of many shapes and sizes. The Postdigital EnterpriseTM provokes and harvests these disruptions by changing operating models, capabilities, and perhaps even business models. Industrialization wasn’t complete when we entered the post-industrial era; it had simply become the new basis for competition. The same holds true for these digital forces in the Postdigital era.
2013
Tech Trends 2013 Elements of postdigital
Deloitte