As a futurist I am forever working to get my clients to get ready for the Fast Future. This is the almost immediate future of high velocity innovative disruptions that are reshaping our world as you read this. That's my job. That's what I do for a living. I call this embrace of trends, Future Smart. Keeping pace with the sheer speed, complexity and new mental models can be a daunting challenge. So I am working on ways to better communicate how to wrap your head around new and emerging technologies.
As this is my first blog post at the Huffington Post I wanted to blog about what I think my audience maybe interested in. As there is a keen interest about the future I thought I would share this conversation in this post. This is how to think about the future and what will be the key shapers of that future one minute or ten years from today. Sorry. Spoiler alert. There are no flying cars in my forecast. Maybe next year.
The key theme here is Disrupt Yourself First before someone else does. You want to be aware of what's coming next so your not blindsided by a future that is fast emerging. You want to be ahead of the wave of change and not playing catch up. This will make a difference in how you start that new company, how you manage your career and even how you think about the future of your life. You don't want to be Future Challenged. Most folks don't think far ahead about their future. Well I think they should.
If you want to stay ahead of what's coming fast and maybe start a new business or get a new more exciting job, you want to have a look at what's coming next. These tech trends will change the game of business, markets, organizations and society. If you haven't noticed we are in the middle of a massive shift, actually the fusion of economics, business and technology that is redefining our future. This is big stuff and hard to grasp. So here is my overview and a cool infographic to make my case.
Here are the Top 10 Game Changing Tech Trends that I think deserve special mention. Every business must embrace mobility as a new business model. Mobile transactions, content, offerings, business processes, customer engagement and security will create a more agile mobile enterprise.
Cognitive Computing, the use of smart machines or AI, artificial intelligence will be everywhere in our society and marketplace. AI is behind self-driving cars, stock trading and commerce. AI will redefine jobs. You maybe competing with AI for your next job.
The Internet of Everything, is when things, people, products, cities, communities all become connected to the web and "wake up", become aware of themselves and their new digital network family; for better or worse you might ask.
Cloud Computing will be transformational as every tablet, phone, wearable and computer become thin clients, actual portals that can access from the web the applications, power and information you need.
Knowledge Engineering is the complete rethinking of software that enables knowledge, skills and information to create new jobs, commerce, education, health care and creativity.
Big Data Analytics will help us improve the accuracy of business and deepen our understanding about what our information actually means. How might drug discovery be faster? Will climate change endanger our cities?
Innovation Ecosystems are connected communities of collaboration where digital technology is enabling commerce. Think about companies such as Kaggle and Uber
Social Media is just beginning. Video streaming is the huge trend that will transform social media. But the idea of social buying and selling, social media as a new marketing platform is disrupting business in fundamental ways. Social Streaming will enable crowdsourcing as a transaction platform.
Every business must become a predictive enterprise and learn to leverage, monetize and create predictive intelligence. Here are the questions that will matter. Who are our customers? What do they want? Who are our employees? How might we harness prediction as a competency to create a sustainable business?
Digital Customer Engagement, how you touch your customers, online and off, how you respect, transact, empower them with digital technology is in its infancy. We are just getting started. Real-time connectivity between brands and their audiences will be essential. Customer engagement needs to be hyper-aware, always on and real-time.
So that's it. Disrupt Yourself First before someone else does. Have a look at my Top 10 Tech Trends and how you can better embrace the future, maybe even shape it, so you can get ready for what's next in the Fast Future.
