Trends Identified

The Blockchain

Blockchain–the technology behind the bitcoin digital currency–is a decentralized public ledger of transactions that no one person or company owns or controls. Instead, every user can access the entire blockchain, and every transfer of funds from one account to another is recorded in a secure and verifiable form by using mathematical techniques borrowed from cryptography. With copies of the blockchain scattered all over the planet, it is considered to be effectively tamper-proof. The challenges that bitcoin poses to law enforcement and international currency controls have been widely discussed. But the blockchain ledger has uses far beyond simple monetary transactions. Like the Internet, the blockchain is an open, global infrastructure upon which other technologies and applications can be built. And like the Internet, it allows people to bypass traditional intermediaries in their dealings with each other, thereby lowering or even eliminating transaction costs. By using the blockchain,individuals can exchange money or purchase insurance securely without a bank account, even across national borders—a feature that could be transformative for the two billion people in the world currently underserved by financial institutions. Blockchain technology lets strangers record simple, enforceable contracts without a lawyer. It makes it possible to sell real estate, event tickets, stocks, and almost any other kind of property or right without a broker. The long-term consequences for professional intermediaries, such as banks, attorneys and brokers, could be profound— and not necessarily in negative ways, because these industries themselves pay huge amounts of transaction fees as a cost of doing business. Analysts at Santander InnoVentures, for example, have estimated that by 2022, blockchain technology could save banks more $20 billion annually in costs. Some 50 big-name banks have announced blockchain initiatives. Investors have poured more than $1 billion in the past year into start-ups formed to exploit the blockchain for a wide range of businesses. Tech giants such as Microsoft, IBM and Google all have blockchain projects underway. Many of these companies are attracted by the potential to use the blockchain to address the privacy and security problems that continue to plague Internet commerce. Because blockchain transactions are recorded using public and private keys—long strings of characters that are unreadable by humans—people can choose to remain anonymous while enabling third parties to verify that they shook, digitally, on an agreement. And not just people: an institution can use the blockchain to store public records and binding promises. Researchers at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., for example, have shown how drug companies could be required to add detailed descriptions of their upcoming clinical drug trials to the blockchain. This would prevent the companies from later moving the goalposts if the trial did not pan out as anticipated, an all-too-common tactic. In London, mayoral candidate George Galloway has proposed putting the city’s annual budget on the blockchain ledger to foster collective auditing by citizens. Perhaps the most encouraging benefit of blockchain technology is the incentive it creates for participants to work honestly where rules apply equally to all. Bitcoin did lead to some famous abuses in trading of contraband, and some nefarious applications of blockchain technology are probably inevitable. The technology doesn’t make theft impossible, just harder. But as an infrastructure that improves society’s public records repository and reinforces representative and participatory legal and governance systems, blockchain technology has the potential to enhance privacy, security and freedom of conveyance of data—which surely ranks up there with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

2016

Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2016

World Economic Forum (WEF)

Blurring Boundaries

Blurring Boundaries the emergence of business ecosystems across traditional silos. Melting pots: As ICT technologies have permeated the fabric of our lives, we have entered an age of inundation with data and stories which have made decision-making a more challenging feat. While perhaps traditionally, individuals would fall in line with traditional societal expectations with regard to careers, interpersonal relationships, and political beliefs, today there is much more fluidity between one choice and another, leading to a culture of increased autonomy and thoughtful ambivalence. Co-development: As business ecosystems have formed, convening players across traditional silos, a swath of new opportunity in co-development and collaboration has emerged. In part this has emerged because of a blurring of the producerconsumer boundary, as consumer usage data and metrics feed into the design of new products and services versus in the past, when consumers were merely the recipient. Mass epidemics: An unintended consequence of open borders, free movement, and climate change, mass public health epidemics have begun to increase in outbreak frequency and impact. Blurring boundaries between species create new forms of antibody-resistant bacteria which affect animals and humans in significant ways. Mosquito-borne infections such as Dengue fever, West Nile virus, and malaria are transmitted across borders, often from affected countries in Africa and Asia. Shadow markets: As boundaries have blurred, the line between the traditional sectors and shadow markets has emerged, creating market complexity. A major contributor to the 2008 financial crisis was the emergence of a shadow market in financial services, in which risky loans were repackaged and sold as triple-A bonds. The opacity of these transactions was a critical contributor to the downfall of the big banks. Nation state 2.0:In recent years, there have been several political conflicts in which regions are demanding sovereignty as they protest against the political structures and physical borders within which they exist. Some conflicts have been in existence for many years, such as the political disputes between Hong Kong and the People’s Republic of China. Some states have succeeded in their political disputes to form new nation states, such as the 2011 creation of the Republic of South Sudan.

2017

Beyond the Noise- The Megatrends of Tomorrow’s World

Deloitte

On AI in health care

Bob Kocher, partner, Venrock.On AI in health care: AI will gain traction in health care but not where the hype is focused. While there is tremendous interest in applying AI to clinical decision making, we think that clinical use cases will prove to be harder than expected. The data needed to train AI models is messy, and the business models are challenging. Instead, we think AI will gain traction first helping payers and providers reduce administrative costs. This is likely because the datasets are larger and far better quality. For example we have years of high-quality claims, coding, and quality data. Lowering admin costs immediately boosts margins in a sector where nobody outside of pharma makes much money.

2019

The biggest tech trends of 2019, according to top experts

Fast Company

Gig economy jobs will get less miserable.

Both because the hardships of gig work are increasingly making headlines and because the U.S. labor market is so competitive, companies are paying more attention to their treatment of on-demand workers. Retail legend Ron Johnson, formerly of Apple and JCPenney, refused to use 1099 contractors when he started his new company, Enjoy, a technology delivery and setup service. Instead, he made everyone an employee with benefits and stock options. “The number one issue in this full employment economy we're in, is to create better jobs,” Johnson says. “You gotta make your employee your primary stakeholder. And if you treat them well, they'll take care of your customer.” Similarly, Rent The Runway CEO Jennifer Hyman decided to align hourly workers’ benefits with those of salaried professionals. “We are starting to see that it's changing retention, Hyman says. It's certainly changing the day-to-day culture within the warehouse.”

2018

50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead

LinkedIn

The cow-free burger

Both lab-grown and plant-based alternatives approximate the taste and nutritional value of real meat without the environmental devastation. The UN expects the world to have 9.8 billion people by 2050. And those people are getting richer. Neither trend bodes well for climate change—especially because as people escape poverty, they tend to eat more meat. By that date, according to the predictions, humans will consume 70% more meat than they did in 2005. And it turns out that raising animals for human consumption is among the worst things we do to the environment. Depending on the animal, producing a pound of meat protein with Western industrialized methods requires 4 to 25 times more water, 6 to 17 times more land, and 6 to 20 times more fossil fuels than producing a pound of plant protein.The problem is that people aren’t likely to stop eating meat anytime soon. Which means lab-grown and plant-based alternatives might be the best way to limit the destruction. Making lab-grown meat involves extracting muscle tissue from animals and growing it in bioreactors. The end product looks much like what you’d get from an animal, although researchers are still working on the taste. Researchers at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, who are working to produce lab-grown meat at scale, believe they'll have a lab-grown burger available by next year. One drawback of lab-grown meat is that the environmental benefits are still sketchy at best—a recent World Economic Forum report says the emissions from lab-grown meat would be only around 7% less than emissions from beef production. The better environmental case can be made for plant-based meats from companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods (Bill Gates is an investor in both companies), which use pea proteins, soy, wheat, potatoes, and plant oils to mimic the texture and taste of animal meat. Beyond Meat has a new 26,000-square-foot (2,400-square-meter) plant in California and has already sold upwards of 25 million burgers from 30,000 stores and restaurants. According to an analysis by the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan, a Beyond Meat patty would probably generate 90% less in greenhouse-gas emissions than a conventional burger made from a cow. —Markkus Rovito

2019

10 Breakthrough Technologies 2019 - How we’ll invent the future, by Bill Gates

MIT Technology Review

Technological dependencies

Both society, and defence and security, have increasingly depended on certain technologies which have become essential in everyday lives

2017

Strategic foresight analysis

NATO

Energy

Both total demand for energy and energy prices will rise up to 2030. Oil will remain the most important resource, but will lose some significance to renewables. At current rates of production, the remaining lifetime of the various energy sources will be longest for coal (119 years), followed by gas (63 years) and oil (46 years). Conflicts over energy supplies are likely to rise, since these resources are highly concentrated in a small number of countries

2011

Trend compendium 2030

Roland Berger Strategy Consultants

New customer strategies

Boundaries between companies and consumers are fading as people, informed and enabled by the internet, become more aware and demanding. They want personalized offerings and will collaborate with companies to help develop the products and services they desire.

2017

Twelve Forces That Will Radically Change How Organizations Work

Boston Consulting Group (BCG)

Brain-machine Interface

Brain-machine interface enables control over machines with brainwaves. The technology is primarily used on neuroprosthetics applications that aim to improve the quality of life for those with disabilities by analyzing and processing information on neural activities.

2009

KISTEP 10 Emerging Technologies 2009

South Korea, Korea Institute of S&T Evaluation and Planning (KISTEP)

Optogenetics

Brains—even relatively simple ones like those in mice— are daunting in their complexity. Neuroscientists and psychologists can observe how brains respond to various kinds of stimuli, and they have even mapped how genes are expressed throughout the brain. But with no way to control when individual neurons and other kinds of brain cells turn on and off, researchers found it very difficult to explain how brains do what they do, at least not in the detail needed to thoroughly understand—and eventually cure—conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and major depression. Scientists tried using electrodes to record neuronal activity, and that works to some extent. But it is a crude and imprecise method because electrodes stimulate every neuron nearby and cannot distinguish among different kinds of brain cells. A breakthrough came in 2005, when neurogeneticists demonstrated a way to use genetic engineering to make neurons respond to particular colors of light. The technique, known as optogenetics, built on research done in the 1970s on pigment proteins, known collectively as rhodopsins and encoded by the opsin gene family. These proteins work like light-activated ion pumps. Microbes, lacking eyes, use rhodopsins to help extract energy and information from incoming light. By inserting one or more opsin genes into particular neurons in mice, biologists are now able to use visible light to turn specific neurons on or off at will. Over the years, scientists have tailored versions of these proteins that respond to distinct colors, ranging from deep red to green to yellow to blue. By putting different genes into different cells, they use pulses of light of various colors to activate one neuron and then several of its neighbours in a precisely timed sequence. That is a crucial advance because in living brains, timing is everything. A signal issued at one moment may have the complete opposite effect from the same signal sent out a few milliseconds later. The invention of optogenetics greatly accelerated the pace of progress in brain science. But experimenters were limited by the difficulty of delivering light deep into brain tissue. Now ultrathin, flexible microchips, each one hardly bigger than a neuron, are being tested as injectable devices to put nerves under wireless control. They can be inserted deep into a brain with minimal damage to overlying tissue. Optogenetics has already opened new doors to brain disorders, including tremors in Parkinson’s disease, chronic pain, vision damage and depression. The neurochemistry of the brain is clearly important for some brain conditions, which is why drugs can help improve symptoms—up to a point. But where the high-speed electrical circuitry of the brain is also disturbed, optogenetic research, especially when enhanced by emerging wireless microchip technology, could offer new routes to treatment. Recent research suggests, for example, that in some cases non-invasive light therapy that shuts down specific neurons can treat chronic pain, providing a welcome alternative to opoids. With mental disorders affecting one in four people globally and psychiatric diseases a leading source of disability, the better understanding of the brain that advanced optogenetics will provide cannot come soon enough.

2016

Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2016

World Economic Forum (WEF)