Trends Identified

Technological Innovation

Diminishing availability of low cost, easily accessible hydrocarbon resources, and the need to reduce carbon emissions, will stimulate intensive research to find alternative forms of energy, although a rapid decline in hydrocarbon use is unlikely.

2010

Global strategic trends - out to 2040

UK, Ministry of Defence

Combinatorial-technology explosion

Digitization, machine learning, and the life sciences are advancing and combining with one another to redefine what companies do and where industry boundaries lie. We’re not just being invaded by a few technologies, in other words, but rather are experiencing a combinatorial technology explosion.

2017

The global forces inspiring a new narrative of progress

McKinsey

Virtual cash, virtual weapons

Digitization of currency will create a clash among nation-states, corporations, civilians, and bad actors.

2018

Top Policy Trends of 2018

PWC

Digital Twin – Virtualized Insights

Digital twins are virtual models of physical things, products, buildings and systems and their data and information flows. Digital twins create a holistic view of products, buildings and processes and allow virtual simulations and modifications. The real power of a digital twin is the close to real-time linkage between physical and digital worlds. The building elements are: sensors, data, integration layer, analytics and the digital twin, the virtual model, itself. Digital twins promise to improve situational awareness, enable better responses to changes, particularly for asset optimization and preventive maintenance. They can help extending the lifetime of assets and optimizing the performance. Digital twins are increasingly and successfully used for product prototyping, reducing the development times and costs. The market is immature and we are still observing rather simple digital twins like virtual models of buildings, oil platforms and prototypes. The demand is increasing fast and digital twin templates, platforms and services will proliferate. Digital twins won’t stop at assets or things but will be expanded to operations, systems, people, business processes and metadata structures over time. These digital representations will be connected more tightly to their real-world counterparts and infused with more sophisticated artificial intelligence. Obstacles are the heterogeneous and disconnected sources of data and the complexity of the projects. Digital twins will start around asset monitoring, optimization and rapid prototyping. Midterm, operation of factories and companies will follow, long term, we will see generating insights around product and services use and business modelling.

2018

Trend Report 2018 - Emerging Technology Trends

SAP

Economy, jobs and productivity

Digital technologies will continue to have major impacts on economies and societies. Over the next 15 years, firms will become predominantly digitalised, enabling product design, manufacturing and delivery processes to be highly integrated and efficient. The costs of equipment and computing will continue to fall, while the rise of open source development practices will create further communities of developers. There will be greater opportunity for entrants – including individuals, outsider firms and entrepreneurs – to succeed in new markets. At the same time, the decreasing cost of computing power and advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence will further disrupt labour markets, with one in ten jobs in OECD countries at high risk of being automated over the next two decades.

2016

OECD Science, Technology and Innovation Outlook 2016

OECD

The pace of technological progress is accelerating, bringing significant opportunities to create value even as it redefines the future of work

Digital technologies have been reinventing the way we live, work, and organize. Smartphones, the mobile internet, e-commerce, and cloud-based services have opened the door to more mobility and convenience as well as to greater competition. Businesses have been harnessing advanced analytics and the Internet of Things to transform their operations, and those in the forefront reap the benefits: companies that are digital leaders in their sectors have faster revenue growth and higher productivity than their less-digitized peers. They improve profit margins three times more rapidly than average and are often the fastest innovators and the disruptors of their sectors. The forces of digital have yet to become fully mainstream, however. On average, industries are less than 40 percent digitized, despite the relatively deep penetration of these technologies in media, retail, and high tech. Now comes the next wave of innovation, in the form of advanced automation and artificial intelligence (AI). An explosion in algorithmic capabilities, computing capacity, and data is enabling beyond-human machine competencies and a new generation of systemlevel innovation. Machines already surpass human performance in areas like image recognition and object detection, and these capabilities can be used to diagnose skin cancer or lip-read more accurately than human experts. Combining these capabilities is leading to system-level innovation, for example the driverless car, which takes advantage of innovations in sensors, LIDAR, machine vision, mapping, satellites, navigation algorithms, and robotics. Our research finds that companies in the forefront of adopting AI are likely to increase employment rather than reduce it, as innovationfocused adopters position themselves for growth, which tends to stimulate employment. These technologies still have limitations, and deployment can be complex. Nonetheless, productivity gains across sectors are already visible, with AI use cases in functions such as sales and marketing (e.g., “next product to buy” personalization), supply chain and logistics, and preventive maintenance. Our analysis of more than 400 use cases across 19 industries and nine business functions found that AI could improve on traditional analytics techniques in 69 percent of potential use cases. Deep learning could account for as much as $3.5 trillion to $5.8 trillion in annual value, or 40 percent of the value created by all analytics techniques (Exhibit 3). For the global economy, too, AI adoption could be a boon. A simulation we conducted showed that AI adoption could raise global GDP by as much as $13 trillion by 2030, or about 1.2 percent additional GDP growth per year. AI could also contribute to tackling pressing societal challenges, from healthcare to climate change to humanitarian crises; a library of social good use cases we collected maps to all 17 of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Yet AI is not a silver bullet. Significant bottlenecks, especially relating to data accessibility and talent, will need to be overcome, and AI presents risks that will need to be mitigated. It could introduce or exacerbate social challenges, for example through malicious use or abuse, bias, privacy invasion, or lack of transparency.

2019

Navigating a world of disruption

McKinsey

Marketing platforms

Digital media, advertising platforms

2016

Disruptive technologies barometer

KPMG

Seriously Serious

Digital marketing has grown up. So has the Web as a whole. Both the grown up practice and the grown up medium are facing serious challenges which will and must be addressed in 2018. GDPR represents a positive step. There is also an array of initiatives to address problems with fraud in digital display and confront client concerns about programmatic buying. Platforms are working to make measurement more transparent and deliver a clearer link between marketing activity and business outcomes. A lot of progress will be made in 2018, but not enough. Governments will have to make progress on state-sponsored hacking. The security industry will have to make big progress to protect us from the ever-increasing volume of madness. These are needs well beyond the purview of marketers and probably unrealistic for much progress in 2018.

2018

Key digital trends for 2018

Ogilvy

Digital Technology

Digital information and communications technologies (ICTs) have continued to rapidly advance. All parts of the world are now major users. Mobile phone ownership in Africa is now comparable to that in the USA, with about one connection per capita. Yet, while some digital gaps have closed, others continually open with the introduction of new technologies. In the context of implementing SDGs in Africa, information and communications technologies may play a role comparable to that of machines in the replacement of labour in the industrial age. 11 However, whereas the machines of the industrial era functioned as isolated and individual artefacts in one local environment, ICTs and knowledge creation exist as a hierarchy of networks that bring about innovations. 12, 13 Great technology potential has been accompanied by equally great concerns about social, political, economic and environmental impacts . The new fifth generation (5G) mobile phones enable vastly faster data connections than traditional phones. The “Internet of Things” is emerging and it interconnects physical objects to internet infrastructure. 3D printing enables the making of three-dimensional objects from a digital file, and together with robotics it has the potential to significantly alter the geographical distribution of manufacturing with important impacts on global labour markets and imbalances. “Big data” technologies transform the way governments, citizens, and companies do business, but they have led to concerns about erosion of privacy and freedom of expression. Similarly, wireless sensor networks have great efficiency potentials in many areas, but there are concerns about their impact on privacy, freedom and development. Big Data and the Internet of Things through the use of huge datasets and Internet-connected sensors potentially adds to the existing toolkit for sustainable development (e.g., in health, agriculture, food security, sustainable urbanization, etc.), but can also introduce risks related to data privacy and security. Because of cloud computing platforms that provide low-cost access to compute and storage capabilities as well as Free and Open Source Big Data and Internet of Things technologies, such technologies can serve as platforms for locally-relevant, pro-poor innovation without significant capital investments. However, this requires the requisite local talent to tailor solutions to local needs. National governments must also consider the limits of big data analysis (especially for causal inference and policy analysis), how such technologies can serve existing national development planning, regulatory frameworks for securing the rights of citizens with respect to privacy and security, and strengthening human capital and the larger ecosystem to effectively use such tools. 14 “Big data” has transformed the volume, velocity, and character of the information that we are able to procure regarding virtually every aspect of human life. 15 Online participatory tools increasing transparency and accountability in global sustainable development governance allow greater access to sharing of substantive information on the issues addressed by the civil society, international organisations and member states for realization of agenda 2030. 16 At the same time, the scientific community highlighted the idea that the most sustainable way to bring the deepest results of the digital revolution to developing communities is to enable them to participate in creating their own technological tools for finding solutions to their own problems. 17 120 | Global Sustainable Development Report 2016 3D Printing (3DP) can cost-effectively lower manufacturing inputs and outputs in markets with low volume, customized and high-value production chains. It could potentially help countries and regions that did not participate in the industrial revolution develop new manufacturing capabilities, especially for low volume, highly complex parts. Applications range from automobile and aerospace manufacturing to rapid-prototyping, healthcare, and education. Low cost consumer 3DP printers can help local people in developing and developed countries to produce a range of useful products, from basic assistive technologies to educational aids. For example, the projects of the Rapid Foundation in India and Uganda have shown that low cost printers are easy to build, use, fix or modify and are robust in remote locations. With expert training, anybody can become comfortable with using these printers in a few hours. 18 Further low-cost applications in science, education and sustainable development are detailed in a recent ICTP open book. 19 3D printing presents a number of challenges, including possibly disrupting existing manufacturing global value chains, decreasing labour demand for housing and construction, and potentially enabling the physical production of illegal 3D models that could pose both economic and security threats. There are potential environmental benefits (lower energy use, resource demands and CO 2 ), if 3D printing displaces existing transportation and logistics routes for shipping of goods and products. A recent study concluded: “ If 3DP was applicable to larger production volumes in consumer products or automotive manufacturing, it contains the (theoretical) potential to absolutely decouple energy and CO 2 .” 20 However, as 3DP is expected to remain a niche technology by 2025 reductions in energy and CO 2 emission intensities of industrial manufacturing could only be reduced by a small factor through 3DP by that date. Massive Open Online Courses potentially provide resource- poor regions and individuals more equitable access to world-class education content. Widespread global Internet access is impacting how we learn, as seen in the availability of various online learning platforms such as massive open online courses (MOOCs). 21 With low-cost replication of recognized content and education, personalized, self- paced learning, and interactive data-driven user interfaces, students potentially have access to material that previously would have been out of reach. However, MOOCs may not provide locally-relevant content tailored to a specific national context. Furthermore, MOOCs could replace the jobs of existing teachers and widen existing educational divides (i.e., providing a disproportionate advantage to individuals with access to the Internet and education). One nonprofit university based in Rwanda combines online learning content with in-person seminars to deliver degree programs that are locally-relevant, appropriately priced, and stimulate local employment. At this point, the potential impact of MOOCs requires more study, both globally in terms of existing platforms as well as of users in specific national contexts, along with implications for educational systems and employment. Optimal system use of radio, mobile phone, GIS and remote sensing technologies is considered vital for transforming rural populations. 22 The use of GIS to monitor an ever wider array of parameters at ever higher spatio-temporal resolutions allows us to consistently and constantly measure and monitor a huge array of environmental factors, allowing the enforcement of regulations, which would otherwise be impossible. 23, 24 Yet, data management remains a challenge for many countries, as they lack both skilled staff and technologies for effectively collecting or reporting reliable data. Many of the commonly used spatial database platforms are proprietary and are too expensive for many organizations in developing countries. 25

2016

Global sustainable development report 2016

United Nations

Physical fights back

Digital has had the limelight long enough — there are two brand experience headliners now. The time has come to blend the digital with the physical.

2018

Fjord trends 2018

Fjord