Trends Identified

Safe car travel?

Despite all the rapid urbanisation and talk of bullet trains and fantastical technology like the Hyperloop coming to the fore, the car isn’t going anywhere – and in fact, in the next couple decades, there will be even more of them on the road. Driverless car technology is swiftly rolling out, with major tech companies and automakers aggressively seeking to debut human-free vehicles in coming years. But in addition, the sheer number of cars – self-driving or not – is going to skyrocket, studies show. In countries like China that are seeing a growing middle class, the environmental and infrastructural needs that an increasingly road-faring population demands is going to be a grand challenge. How do we ensure safety, fight pollution, and make sure driverless cars aren’t a menace on the road?

2017

10 grand challenges we’ll face by 2050

The BBC

Technology enabled urban planning and design

Designing IoT enabled cities with intelligent infrastructure and grids, and shared operations, can increase energy efficiency, and reduce GHG emissions and waste at the building, transport system, and municipal level.

2017

Innovation for the Earth - Harnessing technological breakthroughs for people and the planet

PWC

Design outside the lines

Designers need to evolve — how they work, learn, and differentiate themselves — if they are to continue having an impact across organizations.

2018

Fjord trends 2018

Fjord

Design as a Discipline

Design should be much more than a project phase. Design is already part of the IT vocabulary. Functional design. Technical design. Detail design. Testing design. User interface (UI) design. Technical architecture design. And, more recently, user experience (UX) design – a hot area of focus as consumer technology experiences are resetting expectations for corporate IT. Throughout its history, however, design has generally remained a discrete set of deliverables or project phases, completed by specialized teams at distinct points during a project’s lifecycle. Individual facets of design have reflected little understanding of other related project activities, much less the broader context of the business vision and expected outcomes. Meanwhile, usability, intuitiveness, and simplicity have moved from aspiration to mandate, with the business having access to new ways to get what it wants: directly procuring cloud services, digital solutions, and mobile apps that are “good enough” to meet their needs. In this open marketplace for IT, business relevance and user engagement are competitive currency. Many CIOs find their organizations lack the skills and craft to mint the new coin. What’s missing may be a commitment to design as a business discipline, a commitment that takes shape by asking: What benefits would we gain if design were a pervasive and persistent aspect of each part of the enterprise? This kind of thinking moves design from just another software development lifecycle (SDLC) phase to an integral part of the IT environment. It shifts the focus from “How do I meet the requirements?” to “Why is this important in the first place?” and “How could we innovate to improve it?” Enterprises can reach this vision, but it often takes a deliberate approach, intentionally applied, by a new mix of talent. The CIO is positioned to make it happen.

2013

Tech Trends 2013 Elements of postdigital

Deloitte

Drones

Depending on their design, drones vary greatly in their capacity. Some drones need wide spaces to take off, while quadcopters can squeeze into a column of space. Some drones are water based; others can operate and navigate autonomously (via remote control) or fully autonomously (via onboard computers). Companies are using drones for wide-ranging reasons, including surveillance, survey, sport, cinematography, and delivery.

2017

The Essential Eight - Your guide to the emerging technologies revolutionizing business now

PWC

Demographics and low cost labor, long a driver of economic growth in emerging markets, may play a smaller role in an automated world.

Demographics and low cost labor, long a driver of economic growth in emerging markets, may play a smaller role in an automated world. Countries that have high population growth in an industrial landscape dominated by technologies like AI and robotics could be at a disadvantage. Consider emphasizing countries making investments in the future competiveness of their workforces.

2018

Eight long-term trends for growth investors

Morgan Stanley

Developing tomorrow’s workforce

Demographic trends are having profound implications for the workplace. The global population is expanding; it will hit 8 billion in 2025. But this growth won’t be uniform, since declining fertility rates will hit some countries much harder than others. By 2020, the median age will be 43 in Europe, 38 in China and just 20 in Africa. The working-age population is, as a result, undergoing major geographic shifts. It’s still growing rapidly in countries like India, where nearly a million workers will swell the labour force every month for the next 20 years. But it’s already peaked in China and South Korea, and has been falling for more than a decade in Germany (see Figure 7). Urbanisation is causing further upheavals, with the number of city dwellers projected to rise by 72% over the next four decades. The concentration of people and resources in a compact area is a powerful combination. Cities currently generate about 80% of global economic output. 16 But uncontrolled urbanisation can also result in overcrowding, poverty and poor schooling – conditions that neither attract nor nurture talent. And it’s talent that’s the main engine of business growth. So one of the biggest issues CEOs face, as these huge demographic changes occur, is finding and securing the workforce of tomorrow – particularly the skilled labour they need to take their organisations forward.

2014

17th Annual global CEO Survey

PWC

Natural resource scarcity

Demographic pressures create food and water insecurity, and supplies of non-renewable natural resources including fossil fuels are depleting. Scarcity could push prices up, creating further hardship for those most in need. Notwithstanding the current low oil price, from 2000 to 2013 metal prices rose by 176%, energy prices by an average of 260% and food prices by 120%. Depending on political responses, this may drive humanitarian crises, population movements and a rise in protectionist or nationalist policies.

2015

Tomorrow’s world: seven development megatrends challenging NGOs

The Guardian

Demographic changes and displacement of power

Demographic changes and displacement of power, new markets, rising middle classes, and migration.

2016

Why and how latin america should think about the future

theDialogue

Democratic governability

Democratic governability, impact of new technologies
in connecting citizens, forging social relations, improving transparency, strengthening security, and providing opportunities for organized crime and cyber-attacks.

2016

Why and how latin america should think about the future

theDialogue