Transformative Themes
There are a number of impactful global trends and transformative themes that companies need to adapt to be successful. Some of the themes that will drive change over the next five years are shown below
Dominance of micro nationals (think big, be small)
The most successful disruptive business organizations will consist of a small nucleus of people focused on the same goals, ideas, innovation, and strategy. They'll instantly decide to enter a new market, engineer a new product, or transform a concept into a radical new business model. They'll do so by being able to go out and assemble the right skills at the right time for the right purpose at the optimal cost. This will be the era of sub-1000 person, $1 billion-plus revenue companies
Analysts estimate that more than half of an enterprise's data will be created and processed at the edge, which is external to an organization's core IT environment. Edge computing will augment and expand the possibilities of today's primarily centralized, hyperscale cloud model, supporting the systemic evolution and deployment of the Internet of Things (loT), supporting entirely new application types, and enabling next- generation digital business applications
Data, the 21st century's currency
Data is the new oil and analytics is the engine. As with oil, there will be huge rewards for those who see data's fundamental value and learn to extract and use it. Data-driven businesses will be the archetype for success in the next decade
«Uber-ization" of industries
This model addresses a market that is geographically local-or hyperlocal-and fragmented, with many small providers, characterized by delivering a consumer- dictated customer experience. In short, "Uber-ization" is the sharing of assets across individuals or groups, where the cost is also shared
Balancing globalism and regionalism
The acceleration in gobal integration is causing unprecedented fragility and vulnerability to global economic stocks. This leads to questions related to internet infrastructure, control over internal/external communications, and governance policies that could bring about the creation of a national/regional internet working under different sets of principles. This will impact how companies transact globally and their supporting infrastructure (e.g, data residency) and workforce
Everything-as-a-Service (Xaas) on steroids
The XaaS business model is being eyed by consumer companies hungry for income to sustain the sale beyond the initial product purchase. By combining products with services, businesses can innovate faster and deepen their relationships with customers by providing more value. XaaS models will become the norm across industries and will be highly individualized, responsive, data-driven, and fully controlled by customers
Over the next decade, rapid economic growth will shift from North America and Europe to Asia and Africa. Countries like Vietnam and China that have diversified their production to capitalize on more complex sectors are those that will experience the fastest growth in the coming decade
Integrated mobility with hyper-localization
The user-transit experience will shift toward a more connected, personalized, and on-demand multi-modal service. This will be further enabled with advancements in 5G, edge computing, Al, and a proliferation of communications satellites that result in zero buffering and allow enterprises to cater to customers on the go and contextualize user experiences
Technologies such as Al, data analytics, robotics, augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR), and intelligent process automation (IPA) are rapidly changing who-or what-is performing ever-larger shares of work. The future of work is about rethinking the way work gets done. It is a fundamental shift in the work model to one that fosters human/machine collaboration, enables new skills and worker experiences, and supports an environment unbound by time or physical space
Advances in artificial intelligence (Al) are impacting experiential engagement, business processes, strategies, and more-autonomously creating significant new innovations. These innovations and applications are being driven by massive investments in all industries, as well as the public sector. Many future applications will be developed by Al without human supervision, enabling humans to take on new roles that require human ingenuity and creativity and include supervising Al systems
Ever-higher cybersecurity stakes
Cyber-attacks are expected to grow 300 percent year-on-year, with future cyber-attacks concentrating on loT and operational technology (OT) in production environments. A recent study' outlined four cyber-security scenarios in 2025, three of which are most applicable to enterprises. While they may seem somewhat implausible today, even a minor shift toward one or more of them will have far-reaching implications:
Trust us: An Al mesh network like Android SafetyNet detects anomalies and intrusions, and patches systems without humans in the loop. However, a new class of vulnerabilities will be introduced, and while SafetyNet will, for many purposes, be a much less risky place, the security of the Al itself will likely be consistently questioned.
The new wiggle room: Security will likely improve to the point where many important digital systems can operate with extremely high confidence. This may create a new set of dilemmas as precision knowledge removes the valuable lubricants that have traditionally made social and economic life manageable. The relative anonymity of digital interactions that we have become accustomed to will no longer exist, leading people to seek out new sources of ambiguity and ways to manipulate or conceal their identity.
Barlow's revenge: Two very different pathways are likely to emerge. In some parts of the world, governments will essentially remove themselves from the game and cede the playing field to the largest firms to manage. In others, governments will take the opposite path and embrace a full-bore internet nationalism in which digital security will be treated unabashedly as a source and objective of state power.
Generational shift in customer experience
The generational shift from Baby Boomers to Millennials and Gen Z is in full swing and it will fundamentally change customer experience expectations. Unlike Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, the younger generations prefer to handle challenges on their own and online-from using smartphones as the primary interaction channel, to embracing Al-enabled tools, to solving simple problems, to do-it-yourself (DIY) repairs
As important as these transformative themes are in driving future trends, the other important determinant is the global business cycle, which is the pattern of cyclical fluctuations in an economy over a time period, one that can affect the return on performance of investment assets. Looking to the next to five to ten years, we'll be impacted by a number of factors across the global economy. The coronavirus pandemic put an overnight freeze on many industries and has resulted in government assistance models that will create greater debt in the coming years. The total global impact of the pandemic, economically, culturally, and socially, is still unfolding and likely won't be known for years to come