Trends Identified
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
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
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
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)
Blockchains: An invention that could change our world
Blockchain technology is a very practical solution to the problem of storing, authenticating and protecting data. Think of a blockchain as a decentralized, extremely secure database. Or, to get slightly more technical, it’s a distributed, peer-to-peer ledger of records. While nothing is ever totally ‘hack-proof’, blockchain represents a huge leap forward compared to our current data security technology as, unlike a centralized database, there’s no one single point of failure. The records in a blockchain are called ‘blocks’ and every block is connected to the previous block (hence, ‘block’ and ‘chain’). The whole chain is self-managed, which means there’s no one person or organization in charge of the entire chain. If that sounds familiar, it might be because the virtual currency Bitcoin functions on blockchain technology. Financial services, insurance and healthcare are just some of the sectors where blockchains are likely to be heavily adopted. In fact, 90 percent of major European and North American banks are exploring blockchain solutions.
2017
9 Technology Mega Trends That Will Change The World In 2018
Forbes
Blockchain to blockchains- broad adoption and integration enter the realm of the possible
Blockchain technologies are on a clear path toward broad adoption, with proofs of concept shifting toward production and leading organizations exploring multiple concurrent use cases of increasing scope, scale, and complexity. Moreover, initial coin offerings and smart contracts are finding more applications and creating more diversity throughout the blockchain ecosystem. Now is the time for organizations to begin standardizing on the technology, talent, and platforms that will drive future blockchain initiatives. Likewise, they can begin identifying business consortia to join. Beyond these immediate steps, they should also look to the horizon for the next big blockchain opportunity: coordinating, integrating, and orchestrating multiple blockchains working together across a value chain.
2017
Tech trends 2018
Deloitte
Blockchain Systems
Blockchain systems use a distributed ledger technology to promote transparency, trust, and decentralized validation among members of the digital network.
2017
Beyond the Noise- The Megatrends of Tomorrow’s World
Deloitte
Blockchain Moves into the Food Chain
Blockchain provides a tamper-proof way of tracking the source of foods. The indelible nature of the blockchain record, linked to technologies like RFID for automated tracking of food pallets and items, means that foods can be tracked and linked easily from place to place. The Blockchain record is intended to provide a single electronic point of reference for the whole food supply, from farm to processing to stores. The irrevocable process, tied to automation, can provide huge cost savings for the food tracking process, as well as making the food audit trail both digital and robust. We believe that 2019 will be the year this technology begins its worldwide roll-out; tracking around $150 million worth of food by the end of the year. We have also seen several pilot projects carried out and brought to satisfactory completion by a wide range of platform providers throughout 2018. 2019 will see the first deployment of these technologies at full commercial scale and used for producers. We expect solutions from IBM and Alibaba to be used next year, as well as a ramping up of deployments from IP Australia and the UK’s Food Standards Agency. Related Research: The Future of Blockchain: Key Vertical Opportunities & Deployment Strategies 2018-2030
2019
Top Tech trends 2019
Juniper Research
Blockchain: Trust economy - Taking control of digital identity
Blockchain is outgrowing its adolescent cryptocurrency identity, with distributed consensus ledgers becoming smart contracts facilitators. Beyond creating efficiencies by removing the legal and financial intermediary in a contractual agreement, blockchain is assuming the role of trusted gatekeeper and purveyor of transparency. In the emerging “trust economy” in which a company’s assets or an individual’s online identity and reputation are becoming both increasingly valuable and vulnerable, this latest use case may be blockchain’s most potentially valuable to date.
2017
Tech trends 2017 - the kinetic enterprise
Deloitte
Blockchain
Blockchain is evolving from a digital currency infrastructure into a platform for digital transformation. Blockchain and other distributed-ledger technologies provide trust in untrusted environments, eliminating the need for a trusted central authority.
2017
Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2018
Gartner