Trends Identified

Enterprise Content Management
In 2019, more documentation will originate digitally, eliminating the need for organizations to “go paperless” in the first place. Enterprise Content Management (ECM) software integrates disparate data from across your organization through the use of electronic forms and automated workflows. By empowering this exchange of data, businesses maximize their return on investment (ROI) and customer acquisition costs (CAC) throughout customer lifecycles.
2018
2019 Tech Forecast: 11 Experts Predict The Next Wave Of Breakout Technologies
Forbes
AI For The Back Office
There’s a lot of hype around the potential of AI, but one area that is often overlooked is the power of AI to revolutionize workflows. In 2019, we’ll see the start of AI making a noticeable impact on the back office, from increasing electronic operations to streamlining identification and credentialing. These developments have the ability to transform labor-intense processes across industries.
2018
2019 Tech Forecast: 11 Experts Predict The Next Wave Of Breakout Technologies
Forbes
Quantum Computing AI Applications
2019 will be the year of quantum computing AI applications. Quantum technology recently became available for the public on the cloud and is now set to have a large transformative impact on many industries, providing solutions and answers to problems that supercomputers couldn’t solve before. Major applications are expected in health care (material science), trading and in cybersecurity.
2018
2019 Tech Forecast: 11 Experts Predict The Next Wave Of Breakout Technologies
Forbes
Mainstreamed IoT
While IoT is not a new concept, it will move from pre-adoption to a mainstream solution that retail, manufacturing, health care and other industries will integrate as an everyday business operation. It will change the way consumers and businesses get real-time data, engage with their users and interact with AI and machine learning.
2018
2019 Tech Forecast: 11 Experts Predict The Next Wave Of Breakout Technologies
Forbes
5G
With the recent explosion of connected devices and IoT, mobile connectivity via 5G will become a major player and competitor to all things WiFi. But the real question will be who can bring 5G to market quickly, painlessly and affordably for both consumers and industry alike.
2018
2019 Tech Forecast: 11 Experts Predict The Next Wave Of Breakout Technologies
Forbes
Realistic Robots
If you’ve seen any of the Boston Dynamics robot videos, like the dog that opens doors, you know there’s a whole frontier of robotics that is starting to get into exciting (or scary) territory. As these robots integrate the type of intelligence that machine learning and modern AI techniques offer, we’re going to start seeing more and more robots that look and feel like living beings.
2018
2019 Tech Forecast: 11 Experts Predict The Next Wave Of Breakout Technologies
Forbes
Split Testing Via ML
Split testing, or A/B testing, has helped companies increase conversions for their businesses across the board. I think we’re going to see an advancement with split testing thanks to machine learning. For example, instead of manually designing different layouts of a website and seeing which one performs better, different layouts would be shown to different customers automatically.
2018
2019 Tech Forecast: 11 Experts Predict The Next Wave Of Breakout Technologies
Forbes
Big data, the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence
Big data and IoT are new digital developments that make it possible to optimize business operations and facilitate the creation of new products, services and industries. The possibility of collecting unlimited amounts of data through Internet-connected sensors and monitoring of the web and social media allows prediction of demand, estimation of rural incomes (based on mobile phone activity) and anticipation of civil unrest. While such technologies add to the existing toolkit for development, the availability of fine-grained and increasingly personal data also introduces new risks (see section D.2). Such technologies therefore merit attention from policymakers. In the last few years, artificial intelligence has become a major focus of attention for technologists, investors, governments and futurists. Since it was first proposed more than 60 years ago, artificial intelligence has experienced periods of progress but also of stagnation, when it has been virtually sidetracked while other technologies advanced exponentially. However, recent breakthroughs have led to major advances, driven by machine learning and deep learning, facilitated by access to huge amounts of big data, cheap and massive cloud computing, and advanced microprocessors (Kelly, 2016:38–40).Artificial intelligence now includes image recognition that exceeds human capabilities and greatly improves language translation, including voice translation through natural language processing, and has proved more accurate than doctors at diagnosing some cancers.
2018
Technology and Innovation Report 2018
UNCTAD
3D printing
Another recent digital development, 3D printing, also offers potential economic, social and environmental benefits for developing countries. Invented three decades ago, 3D printing has become a viable technology for global manufacturers to produce critical parts for airplanes, wind turbines, automobiles and other machines as a result of huge reductions in its costs and complementary developments in computer-aided design, the Internet, new materials for manufacturing and cloud computing (Campbell et al., 2011).
2018
Technology and Innovation Report 2018
UNCTAD
Biotechnology and health tech
Advances in ICT have allowed an increasing integration of synthetic biology, systems biology and functional genomics into biotechnology. Through convergence of an ever-expanding range of “omics” technologies – genomics, proteomics (proteins), metabolomics (biochemical activity), etc. – computational biology explores the roles, relationships and actions of the various types of molecules that make up the cells of an organism (Emerging Technologies, 2014), allowing the functions of organisms to be better understood, from the molecular level to the system level, and advancing biotechnology applications. The cost of sequencing a complete human genome has fallen faster even than implied by Moore’s Law (section C.2) to around $1,000, and is expected to cost no more than a regular blood test by the early 2020s (Wadhwa with Salkever, 2017:123–124).
2018
Technology and Innovation Report 2018
UNCTAD