Trends Identified

Robots on the farm

Farming has the potential to become far more resource-efficient and environmentally friendly on existing farmland, given the prospects for greater automation using_x000B_AI, robotics and sensors. Flying drones could monitor large fields more quickly and precisely. With information from these drones, as well as that provided by satellites and sensors, automated tractors and sprayers could apply water, seeds, pesticides and nutrients in more targeted and timely ways. This precision could further be enhanced through nanomaterial-based, slow-release pesticides and insecticides. Robotic pickers will continue to emerge and, in time, be able to harvest more types of crops. Automated agriculture could make indoor agriculture more viable in regions where the impact of climate change is degrading arable land, food supply and reliability.

2013

Metascan 3 emerging technologies

Canada, Policy Horizons Canada

Fashion: 'Technology creates smarter clothes'

Fashion is such an important part of the way in which we communicate our identity to others, and for a very long time it's meant dress: the textile garments on our body. But in the coming decades, I think there'll be much more emphasis on other manifestations of fashion and different ways of communicating with each other, different ways of creating a sense of belonging and of making us feel great about ourselves. We're already designing our identities online – manipulating imagery to tell a story about ourselves. Instead of meeting in the street or in a bar and having a conversation and looking at what each other is wearing, we're communicating in some depth through these new channels. With clothing, I think it's possible that we'll see a polarisation between items that are very practical and those that are very much about display – and maybe these are not things that you own but that you borrow or share.Technology is already being used to create clothing that fits better and is smarter; it is able to transmit a degree of information back to you. This is partly driven by customer demand and the desire to know where clothing comes from – so we'll see tags on garments that tell you where every part of it was made, and some of this, I suspect, will be legislation-driven, too, for similar reasons, particularly as resources become scarcer and it becomes increasingly important to recognise water and carbon footprints. However, it's not simply an issue of functionality. Fashion's gone through a big cycle in the last 25 years – from being something that was treasured and cherished to being something that felt disposable, because of a drop in prices. In fact, we've completely changed our relationship towards clothes and there's a real feeling among designers who I work with that they're trying to work back into their designs an element of emotional content. I think there's definitely a place for technology in creating a dialogue with you through your clothes.

2011

20 predictions for the next 25 years

The Guardian

Next-generation genomics

Fast, low-cost gene sequencing, advanced big data analytics, and synthetic biology (“writing” DNA)

2013

Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy

McKinsey

Global marketplace

Faster growth rates and favorable demographics in key rapid-growth markets will continue to be a feature of the next decade or so. The gulf between “mature” and “rapid-growth” countries continues to shrink. A new tier of emerging nations, driven by their own nascent middle classes, will draw global attention. Innovation will increasingly take place in rapid-growth markets, with Asia surfacing as a major hub. In the global marketplace, the war for talent will become increasingly fierce, necessitating greater workforce diversity to secure competitive advantage. The economies of the world will remain highly interdependent through trade, investment and financial system linkages, driving the need for stronger global policy coordination among nations and resilient supply chains for companies operating in this environment. At the same time, domestic interests will continue to clash and compete with the forces of global integration. Pushback and opposition to global integration manifests itself in various economic, political and cultural forms, including trade and currency protectionism, the imposition of sanctions to achieve political aims, anti-globalization protests, as well as the strengthening of nationalistic, religious and ethnic movements around the world.

2015

Megatrends 2015 -Making sense of a world in motion

EY

Fragile globalisation in a multipolar world

Fears about weakening enthusiasm for globalisation have, seemingly, been realised in the past few years. However, there are numerous variables that will shape whether the purported anti- trade environment of 2016 lasts to 2035. In the most likely scenario, globalisation patterns will be shaped less by politics and more by structural factors. Global trade is steady as a percentage of global growth, likely due to China’s reorientation towards domestic consumption and the maturing of trade in goods. A more services-oriented economy will have different requirements for global trade governance, but Beijing, Brussels, and Washington will remain the key decision points for global economic affairs.

2017

Global trends to 2035

European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)

Companies Listen In for Lucre

Fears over tech companies eavesdropping on consumer conversations have been inflamed with the rising adoption of Smart Home devices and AI Personal Assistants. This will be a hot button topic as capabilities and past incidents signal the high likelihood of conversations being illegally tapped. Gear up for intensified media scrutiny along with consumer and regulatory pushback in 2018.

2018

Top 10 Tech Trends For 2018

Forbes

Few companies can maintain pricing power these days.

Few companies can maintain pricing power these days. Technology has allowed for easy comparison shopping, increasingly efficient production and shifts in certain business models that can erode pricing power. However, companies that can maintain pricing power through technological barriers, unique products and brand recognition should be able to maintain an advantage.

2018

Eight long-term trends for growth investors

Morgan Stanley

UI/UX and VR/AR are improving productivity and the customer experience

Financial firms, as well as companies in other industries, are allocating significant resources to improve the online presentation of, and interaction with, their products. To this end, they are investing in User Interface (UI) Design technology to improve the look of their site and User Experience (UX) Design technology to improve how the site works. There have been major advancements in UI and UX over the last 10 to 15 years. Several frontend frameworks compete with each other nowadays, although JavaScript is among the most popular ones. Many products that were initially developed for commercial use are now open source, and this has accelerated adoption. React, Vue.Js and AngularJs are examples of this trend. They make applications faster, more attractive and userfriendly, and designers have to write less code. The UI/UX design process has been taken to the middle tier instead of full-stack development where the front end would be connected to the back end, and debugging was a challenge. Designers are using Single Page Applications (SPAs), which load a single HTML page and dynamically update that page as the user interacts with the web app. There is no need for constant page reloads, it is mobile responsive, and multiple teams can work on it simultaneously. With componentization in the JavaScript framework, multiple teams can work on different components of an application at the same time, and a common component can be reused by different applications. The JavaScript frameworks were initially created for the web development, but now they are extended to support building native mobile applications. Many companies have built their entire mobile applications using a JavaScript framework to further reduce the cost and accelerate the development. Further, these component-based frameworks support serverless application development running in the edge. These advancements in UI/UX have improved performance and enabled more consistency, resulting in higher employee productivity and a better customer experience. Yet this comes with some challenges. Transforming legacy products into the new way of doing development involves a multi-disciplinary team and a different mindset. Moreover, the toolsets change constantly, so firms need to be very adaptable and create a flexible, evolutionary architecture – thus the shift toward microservices. The emergence of Web Component standards is making it possible to simplify composing applications from microservices and enabling User Interface as a Service architectural models, which can help further facilitate reuse. Companies are also experimenting with virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) solutions to develop marketing applications that bring experiences to life. Inexpensive solutions such as Google Cardboard can be used to create 360-degree videos, which bring a whole company into the emotional IPO Listing experience, for example. Microsoft HoloLens and Unity could enable users to more deeply and efficiently explore datasets. In 3D, users can experience another dimension of complex datasets and explore them in new ways to drive new insight. UI/UX and VR/AR offer huge opportunities for innovation, and it will be an exciting space to watch over the next few years.

2019

NASDAQ DECODES: TECH TRENDS 2019 -The technology trends that are driving the world of markets forward

Nasdaq

Outside-in Architecture

Finding the sweet spot between ‘need to share’ and ‘need to own’ For decades, businesses have typically been rewarded for consolidation around standard processes and stockpiling assets through people, technology and goods. Operations were assumed to be confined within organisational boundaries, with transactions viewed as short-lived events following well-defined steps. Systems were built primarily to enhance execution within their own self-contained scope of control. Conventional wisdom about these principles is changing, and it’s changing fast. Flexibility in operating and business models today is emerging to be a key differentiator. Markets and business conditions are shifting rapidly, necessitating new capabilities that can adapt to changing players, rules and desired outcomes. Sustaining innovation, both inside the organisation and within broader ecosystems, is emerging as a top priority. Many companies are discovering they need a new kind of leverage – capability leverage – to mobilise third parties that can add value. As a result, the traditional need to own is colliding with the emerging need to share, shifting solution architectures away from a siloed, enterprise-out design pattern. These new architectures are designed to anticipate service and people dependencies from the outside – and to require that data and systems be encapsulated for external consumption. Outside-in, not inside-out, is becoming the standard.

2012

Tech Trends 2012-Elevate IT for digital business

Deloitte

Space odyssey

First, digital drove us to our screens. Then, physical fought back. Both dramatically changed our expectations of the physical world – first in retail, then in the workplace and soon in public spaces. Now, as digital and physical intertwine, organizations must find ways to seamlessly interconnect digital and physical experiences. This will require a fundamental rethink of the approaches and tools for designing spaces in order to meet users’ expectations of greater flexibility and personalization.

2019

Fjord trends 2019

Fjord