#Trending - What does the future hold?

The world is changing faster than we can keep up and there’s more than what meets the eye, with pieces of the puzzle that haven’t yet been put together to get a complete view of how it’ll all unfold.

What, then does the future hold? Sharing a few themes which will continue to be in focus:

1. AI & Upskilling: We’ll be training machines a lot more rigorously, transferring knowledge, building algorithms, making them smarter and more abled. With such greatness comes the need for keeping up as humans. The diminishing need of unskilled labour and the constant demand for talent to make machines learn requires a new form of learning for upskilling and learning outcomes thereof. Greater applications of AI which possibly haven’t been envisioned yet will jump from ideation to execution faster than one can envisage. Collaboration and testing tools for developers will be of utmost important to build for use cases and ensure speedy execution.

2. Healthcare: With indulgent lifestyles, general deterioration of the planet and the effects thereof, healthcare would see a shift starting with a greater need for access to quality healthcare. Greater investment of time and capital into tracking, treatment and forming habit changing behaviour for lifestyle induced diseases (such as anxiety, obesity, thyroid, blood pressure, cancer) would be essential. Corporations would go deeper into human genomics to not only discover cures but to substantially improve quality of life as diseases set in at earlier ages than have been anticipated so far. The need to form Humans 2.0 who are more resilient and resistant to physical outages would be a constant endeavour.

3. Mental Health: The overdose of connectedness (not connection) and the dopamine hit from the validation of wider circles via social media, being inundated with information across channels without seeking it and constant changes around would often bring up existential crisis for one and all. Mental health support would be crucial and building wide reaching tools would be the need of the hour. Marrying the science of human psychology and finding the art to express it in a language known best to the user would define the winner.

4. Sustainability: 2020 is a precursor to the world being unified by global problems. With heightened conversations about climate change, more time to think about the environmental impact of our actions (seeing clear skies in the lockdown being a testament to it) has brought forth the urgent need for saving the planet and thereby, humans. Essential commodities such as water are already being listed, electrical vehicles would be the norm rather than the exception and the focus on alternate and truly clean forms of fuel like hydrogen will take up significant time, effort and capital. The conscious customer and her focus on sustainability whether it comes to home, fashion, personal care would be a priority rather than an incidental choice. What we grow and what we eat will be clean, re-engineered and rethought as we make conscious choices when it comes to agriculture.

5. Cyber Security: The accelerated move to the web also means a greater migration of mischief on the web. Cyber security in the digital age will need better trained teams, upgraded systems, necessary software to save all the critical data which is as per every cliché, the new oil.

6. Cloud & Data Monetization: Data data everywhere, and not knowing what to do! Cloud storage, tools for easier access, better data sorting and large spaces for data centres, and perhaps, more R&D on reducing physical storage space would be a focus for data plays. We are already witnessing multitudes of business intelligence, data analytic plays in various industries but a greater emphasis on refining the same and collaboration for interconnected data points across organizations may be key. This may finally be a true harbinger of monetization of data for firms that still struggle to do so. Perhaps, it could be a source of income for each individual as they’d see a palette of options of data sharing which they may allow from one app to another.

7. IoT: The day of living with our devices predicting our feelings, our physiological needs, health parameters and predictive precautions isn’t far. As Yuval Harari quotes in his interview with Tim Ferris, “the moment that your smart refrigerator knows you better than your husband is not very far in the future.” Will the refrigerator tell us when we’re hungry and that our favourite items are running out, will our smart watch monitor stress level and start meditation or calming music for us, or will our phone schedule an appointment with our therapist when anxiety or depressive signals are monitored through a plethora of monitoring algorithms?

8. Connection: In the midst of increasing work, fundamental changes to how we function with people, there will be missed connection. A greater need to connect with smaller, private group focused social media forums, more collaboration tools for instant feedback, more globalization and the need for flexibility with workspaces as well as more interactive gaming are trends we ought to expect to fulfill the void of human connect in a disengaged yet connected world.

9. Consumption: Commerce never goes out of style. Experiential centres will be coupled with instant gratification with a faster clickthrough purchase experience via ecommerce. Better, swifter tools for capturing impulse purchase, continuous building of tools to analyse consumer behaviour and bring personalized customization for each shopper vs. segments of shoppers would be a significant shift. This would also lead to a greater push on video and audio content to encourage greater shopping experiences to convert customers on the go.

10. Backbones: With ever growing needs of devices, the electronic hardware and the semiconductor industry will witness constant generation changes to keep up. More simplified accounting and compliance software to capture new business streams across the world as businesses take a shorter timeframe to cross boundaries and switch business models would be essential.

Living over the next decade will require agility. It’s not a time of just creators, but that of learners – those who know how to leverage the data best, show it in the most user friendly manner and then hopefully, find a way to monetize it all!