Six Megatrends Shaping Our Future
Naruto Running Goes Viral
ICYMI, a Facebook event called ‘Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us’, slated for September 20, recently went viral. The event involves prospective attendees ‘Naruto Running’ towards the top secret U.S. Air Force base (Area 51) in Nevada.
Their goal? “Lets [sic] see them aliens.”
At last count, 2 million people indicated they’re going to the event and another 1.5 million were ‘interested’. Not to be left out, Lil Nas X and friends, including an animated Keanu ‘Renaissance’ Reeves, were quick to get in on the action Old Town Road-style:
Speaking of interesting trends, CSIRO’s Data61 recently published a report outlining six overlapping digital ‘megatrends’ we can expect to see in the next ten years, which they’ve defined as ‘significant shifts in environmental, economic and social conditions’.
From smarter machines and burning platforms, to invisible tech and new digital dilemmas, let’s take a quick look at these emerging digital megatrends:
Smarter Machines
There’s been a surge of interest in artificial intelligence (A.I.) in recent times and especially the past year, with more companies and governments integrating A.I. into their products and services, including using A.I. to make everyday devices ‘smarter’.
This ‘intelligent augmentation’ megatrend will rapidly transform almost every sector of the economy, and change the way we interact with the machines and devices we use every day.
Data-Driven
From retail and logistics, to healthcare, banking, insurance and pretty much everything in between, data science and informatics are increasingly driving business operations across most industries, and helping create new business opportunities.
This data-driven megatrend is accompanied by heightened data privacy concerns and risks, which will continue to rise as more organisations become heavily dependent on data.
Reinventing Work
Digital technology’s rapidly changing our workplaces, including how we work, by shaping the skills and capabilities required to do our jobs today and into the future.
In the coming decade, the employment landscape will increasingly emphasize traits like adaptability and flexibility, great people skills and the ability to learn new things (BTW, if you’re reading this, you’re doing a great job on the latter!).
If you’re keen to explore the skills shaping our future but don’t know where to start, here are a few ideas (there are many others) that might spark your interest:
1. If you have a creative streak: consider learning about design thinking and human-centred design, behaviour-centred design, user experience (UX) research and design, field research, digital and social marketing, and digital product management.
2. If you enjoy bringing order to chaos: consider learning about Agile frameworks and tools.
3. If you have great attention to detail and like building things: consider learning to code — I usually suggest Python as a good starting point (but hey, I’m biased) for its flexibility and the abundance of (free) online code libraries you can use to develop your own apps, from social media and games to data analytics and machine learning.
4. If you think maths = fun: as above for #3 — you’ll probably find machine learning very interesting.
Burning Platforms
Today’s most successful businesses (think Amazon, Apple, Facebook) owe much of their success to online platforms, which enable the efficient and scalable exchange of value between suppliers/buyers and sellers/consumers of products, services and information.
The phrase ‘burning platforms’ comes from a 2011 memo by former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, who used the example of a burning oil platform as a metaphor for Nokia’s torched business model — here are a couple of relevant excerpts:
“While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind…
Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem.”
Elop’s reflections are even more relevant today than they were back then.
So in this context, the burning platforms megatrend means digital platforms will not only continue to grow, but will also rapidly evolve, enabled by new technologies like blockchain, A.I. and the Internet of Things (IoT), and the corresponding socioeconomic responses of consumers, industries and governments.
If you’d like to learn more about the importance of platforms and ecosystems, here’s a great explainer on how the ‘ecosystem orchestration’ platform model continues to deliver significant value and competitive advantage to businesses, and how it’s changing the rules of ‘traditional’ strategy.
Invisible Technology
As people are increasingly immersed in digital technology, they’ll start to crave ‘analogue’, IRL experiences, including physical products they can touch and feel, and personal social interaction.
For example, movie theater visitor numbers have remained stable over the past decade despite the rapid growth of streaming services like Netflix. So as technology makes visiting physical locations (such as movie theaters and shopping malls) more of a choice than a necessity, town planners, architects and designers will need to design buildings and urban spaces that attract visitors by virtue of their convenience, aesthetics and the experiences they offer.
People will be especially drawn to places frequented by other people, so to be successful, innovations will need to be human-centered. The best new technologies will also be ‘invisible’, that is, they’ll be so intuitive people won’t need to think about how to use them. This design principle means many advances will barely be noticed by most of us, even as they transform the technological landscape.
Digital Dilemmas
As people, industries and economies are increasingly immersed in digital technologies, new ethical and moral dilemmas will emerge and take center-stage.
In Europe, data privacy concerns recently led to the development and implementation of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, and the rapid wide-scale adoption of A.I. is now prompting policymakers and governments (including here in Australia) to closely examine the full spectrum of issues that could arise from A.I., and develop innovative ways to protect people from emerging risks while capturing all the benefits.
For example, another interesting read from Data61 (they’re on a roll) highlights their new confidential computing solution, which involves generating data-driven insights without actually disclosing a participant’s data to anyone.
The Trend’s (Usually) Our Friend
While some viral memes (like an animated Keanu Reeves Naruto Running towards Area 51) can be hard to predict, other trends, like smarter machines and invisible tech, are already here and well on their way to shaping our future…
Which might look something like this:
About the author:
Aamer Fattah is a medical scientist and a Research and Innovation expert with Munich Re.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any agency, organization, employer or company.
