Trends Identified
Climate change: Pragmatism & Heightened awareness
During the past 12 months, climate change has soared up the public agenda. So what are CEOs now doing to combat the threat of global warming? At first glance, our survey suggests that they are largely reactive. But closer inspection shows greater levels of commitment, especially among CEOs running big companies.
2008
11th Annual global CEO Survey
PWC
Climate winners and losers
Climate change is about more than melting icecaps and flooded coastal cities. Climate change action, or inaction, will affect which nations and economies become tomorrow’s economic and geopolitical winners and losers. Food production could shift. Canada, Siberia and potentially even parts of Antarctica could become more habitable and productive, while current bread-baskets in the US and China face increasing desertification and extreme weather.
2017
Foresigth
Singapore, The Centre for Strategic Futures
Closed nuclear fuel cycle with fast neutron reactors
One of the limitations for modern nuclear energy with an open nuclear fuel cycle and thermal neutron reactors is the significant and ever growing amount of stored irradiated nuclear fuel. Moreover, these technologies do not make it fully possible to use the energy stored in nuclear energy resources, as more than 90% of extracted uranium remains in enrichment plant heaps, and the effectiveness of the fuel’s use in hot water reactors is low. An integrated solution to existing problems is possible by concentrating efforts and resources to develop next- generation nuclear energy based on fast neutron reactors with a closed nuclear fuel cycle. This is a set of connected technological solutions, capable of guaranteeing extended reproduction of fissile nuclear material together with generating electricity while minimizing radioactive load on the environment across all technological conversion stages and, thus, having a revolutionary impact on the global nuclear energy market. A further benefit of the closed nuclear fuel cycle is the ability to use fast neutron reactors to solve the historically inherited problem of accumulating nuclear waste. This innovative technology is fundamentally different from existing ones due to the lack of the two key expensive technological conversion processes – uranium extraction and enrichment – and the existence of a technologically new conversion process – the multifold refabrication of the nuclear fuel which is combined with the immobilisation and final isolation of the high-level radioactive waste.
2016
Russia 2030: science and technology foresight
Russia, Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation
Closing the ads gap
By now, everyone knows we’re in the pay-to-play era on social. Accordingly, marketers are increasing social ad budgets (up 32 percent in 2018 alone) and producing more ads than ever before.29One of every four Facebook Pages now use paid media,30 and Facebook already accounts for 23 percent of total U.S. digital ad spending.
2019
Social media trends 2019
Hootsuit
Cloud
Software as a Service (SaaS) delivered over the Internet
2016
Disruptive technologies barometer
KPMG
Cloud computing
2017
2017 technology trends - Increasing stratification and changing competitive dynamics
PWC
Cloud computing
Cloud computing is a major technology leap that can give to public organisations, companies and SMEs virtually unlimited access to computing power without substantial capital investments in local IT infrastructure or advanced in-house ICT skills. Cloud computing can bring substantial advantages in particular as regards productivity growth as well as bring the tools needed for the digital revolution.
2015
Preparing the Commission for future opportunities - Foresight network fiches 2030
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Cloud Computing Will Create More Value Higher up the Stack
There’s no denying the momentum of cloud computing. Accenture’s research shows that enterprises are already moving applications into the cloud. 1,2 The demand is anything but an IT fad; it is coming from a host of business functions. And it is truly a global phenomenon; companies everywhere from Brazil to China are moving ahead rapidly with adoption. It’s clear that IT and business executives should expect cloud computing to become ever more pervasive– to the point that the term “cloud computing” itself becomes superfluous. But what’s needed now is a shift in thinking from obvious but nondifferentiating benefits such as cost reduction through cloud infrastructure to where the cloud will have its real impact. When we look at the different facets of cloud computing – Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platformas- a-Service (PaaS), and so on – it is easier to see that most of the current emphasis on cloud is focused on the lower levels of the technology stack. For many large enterprises, the logical next step after virtualizing their data centers has been to leverage IaaS to augment those centers.
2011
Accenture Technology Vision 2011
Accenture
Cloud orchestration
Cloud adoption across the enterprise is a growing reality, but much of the usage is in addition to on-premises systems—not in replacement. As cloud services continue to expand, companies are increasingly connecting cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-core systems—in strings, clusters, storms, and more—cobbling together discrete services for an end-to-end business process. Tactical adoption of cloud is giving way to the need for a coordinated, orchestrated strategy— and for a new class of cloud offerings built around business outcomes.
2014
Tech trends 2014 - Inspiring Disruption
Deloitte