Trends Identified

The autonomous home
The trend toward decentralization of energy and other infrastructure will make homes more autonomous, but will make the need for coordination among systems even more crucial. Distributed energy systems will result in homes that can both contribute to and draw from the grid, but such innovations will be dependent on advances in energy production and storage. Unconstrained by traditional urban services, new homes could proliferate in areas well beyond urban planning control.
2013
Metascan 3 emerging technologies
Canada, Policy Horizons Canada
The battle against extreme poverty will heat up.
Over the last 25 years, more than a billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty, and the global poverty rate is at its lowest level in recorded history. However, that trend may not continue into 2019 due to increasing poverty concentrations in areas like Sub-Saharan Africa, says Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "We can’t always change the circumstances a child is born into, but we can invest in that child’s potential to thrive in spite of them by investing in their health and education,” says Gates. “Economists call health and education ‘human capital,’ because they’re proven to be the twin engines of economic growth.” Especially important, she argues, is investing in the health and education of women and girls. “Healthy, economically-empowered women are some of development’s best allies,” says Gates. “If the number of people trapped in poverty continues to decline, these women will be a big reason why.”
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn
The beginning of the end for cancer
The emergence of real-time diagnostics for complex diseases will mark the beginning of the end of their debilitating reign by 2020. The ability to monitor cancer, the dynamic immune system, intestinal flora and pre-diabetes in real-time will change the nature of medicine and usher in a new era of human health where wellness is protected versus illness treated. As a result, fundamental shifts in healthcare will occur, causing it to become largely preventative rather than fire-fighting. It’s far more productive and economical to stop a fire from happening in the first place than to rebuild something after the fire has taken its course. The amount of data available in the world is growing exponentially, and analyzing large data sets (so-called big data) is becoming key for market analysis and competition. Analytics will dramatically shift away from reporting and towards predictive and prescriptive practices, dramatically improving the ability of healthcare providers to help the ill and injured. Even more importantly, it will create the possibility for truly personalized healthcare by allowing providers to impact the biggest determinants of health, including behaviours, genetics and environmental factors.
2014
14 tech predictions for our world in 2020
World Economic Forum (WEF)
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)
The Burden of AIDS
AIDS will remain an exceptional challenge With only about 12 per cent of the world’s population, sub-Saharan Africa accounts for over two-thirds of the global burden of infectious and parasitic diseases. Worldwide, Africa accounts for 9 out of every 10 child deaths due to malaria; 9 out of every 10 child deaths due to HIV/AIDS; and half of the child deaths due to diarrheal disease and pneumonia. While major progress can be expected in combating the majority of infectious and parasitic diseases, HIV/AIDS poses a particular challenge for the continent, especially for sub-Saharan Africa.
2011
Africa in 50 Years’ Time
African Development Bank
The business of applications: Software as a core competency in a digital world
The way we build software is changing. Mimicking the shift in the consumer world, organizations are rapidly moving from enterprise applications to apps. Yes, there will always be big, complex enterprise software systems to support large organizations, and it will still be necessary for IT developers to keep customizing those systems, providing updates, patches, and more. But now, as large enterprises push for greater IT agility, there is a sharp shift toward simpler, more modular, and more custom apps. The implications are significant for IT leaders and business leaders alike: they must soon decide not just who plays what application development role in their new digital organizations but also how to transform the nature of application development itself.
2014
Accenture Technology Vision 2014
Accenture
The Business of IT
After reengineering the rest of the business, IT’s children deserve some shoes. With shrinking budgets and increased scrutiny over ROI, many IT organizations are under pressure for bottom-line company earnings. This manifests in two ways: enabling the business to be more effective in the market (IT for the business), and driving efficiency of IT operations (The Business of IT). To do both, IT organizations should automate and integrate their core processes and services, just as they’ve done previously for manufacturing, finance, and sales. When it comes to supporting business performance, IT has a thirty-plus year record of delivering what’s needed. First it was the transition from manual processes to technology-driven solutions. Then, from standalone systems to integrated offerings. And now, IT is striving for similar returns from information, digital, and innovation. In the years ahead, however, IT’s value proposition will likely increasingly be shaped by how well it addresses its second mandate: to improve operational efficiency in the business of IT itself.
2013
Tech Trends 2013 Elements of postdigital
Deloitte
The center of economic gravity is shifting east and south, propelled by high-growth emerging economies and globally competitive companies
Emerging economies led by China and India have accounted for almost two-thirds of global GDP growth and more than half of new consumption in the past 15 years. Among emerging economies, our research has identified 18 high-growth “outperformers” that have achieved powerful and sustained long-term growth—and lifted more than one billion people out of extreme poverty since 1990. Seven of these outperformers—China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, and Thailand—have averaged GDP growth of at least 3.5 percent for the past 50 years. Eleven other countries (Azerbaijan, Belarus, Cambodia, Ethiopia, India, Kazakhstan, Laos, Myanmar, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam) have achieved faster average growth of at least 5 percent annually over the past 20 years. Underlying their performance are pro-growth policy agendas based on productivity, income, and demand, and often fueled by strong competitive dynamics. The next wave of outperformers now looms as countries from Bangladesh and Bolivia to the Philippines, Rwanda, and Sri Lanka adopt a similar agenda and achieve rapid growth. The dynamism of these economies has gone hand in hand with the rise of highly competitive emerging-market firms, which are increasingly taking on incumbents in advanced economies. On average, outperformer economies have twice as many companies with revenue over $500 million as other emerging economies. In addition to driving economic growth at home, they now play a disproportionately large role on the global stage: while they accounted for only about 25 percent of the total revenue and net income of all large public companies in 2016, they contributed about 40 percent of the revenue growth and net income growth from 2005 to 2016. More than 120 of these companies have joined the Fortune Global 500 list since 2000, and by several measures, they are already more innovative, nimble, and competitive than Western rivals. For example, our surveys show that they derive 56 percent of their revenue from new products and services, eight percentage points more than their peers in high-income economies, and make important investment decisions six to eight weeks faster. They can also earn better returns for investors. Between 2014 and 2016, the top quartile of outperformer companies generated total return to shareholders of 23 percent on average, compared with 15 percent for top-quartile firms in highincome countries (Exhibit 1).
2019
Navigating a world of disruption
McKinsey
The CEO Statesman is on the rise
For a host of reasons, CEOs are increasingly taking on social issues. Driving the trend: socially-conscious millennial workers, ineffective governments, and the need to build public trust in business. Expect to see more CEOs stepping up in 2018. With the labor market tight, they need to show that their companies are doing good in the world to attract the best talent.
2018
Five Big Business Trends to Watch in 2018
Fortune
The Changing Context of Development Cooperation and Financing Sustainable Development
In order to achieve the universal 2030 Agenda, drawing on all sources of finance— public and private, domestic and international—in all countries will be essential. The challenge is to enhance the impact of available resources, while also catalysing additional sources of financing into investments in sustainable development.
2017
Global trends
UNDP