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Trends for 2011

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Trends for 2011

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” – Peter Drucker

One of the best ways to deal with change is to anticipate it.  At the beginning of each year, I take a step back to see the forest for the trees.

This is my summary of key trends to watch for 2011.

Anticipate What to Expect

Putting it together is a time-consuming exercise, but it’s one of the most important things I do for the coming year. It helps me see the bigger map. With the bigger map, I have a simpler way to understand what’s going on, anticipate what to expect, respond more effectively, and most importantly – make better bets on where to spend my time.

Don’t read this as a definitive list. Draw from it to help you create your own lens to make sense of the landscape and find your path forward. It’s long, I tried to keep it as scannable as possible. I didn’t want to cut it short for the sake of simplicity. Instead, I wanted to provide a solid map with sources you can draw from as you plan your road ahead.

What’s a Trend

Faith Popcorn’s BrainReserve describes trends in this way:

“Our Trends are not fads. Our Trends endure. Our Trends evolve. They represent underlying forces, first causes, basic human needs, attitudes, aspirations. They help us navigate the world, understand what’s happening and why, and prepare for what is yet to come.”

Key Questions I Ask to Find and Rationalize Trends

These are some of the basic questions I ask to find and rationalize key trends:

  • Where are the investments? (e.g. Where are the CxOs betting?)
  • Where’s the growth?
  • Where’s the pain?
  • Who are the pillars in the relevant niches and what are they saying?  … more importantly, what are they doing?
  • What are the results?
  • What’s the data say?
  • What are consumers doing?
  • Is it a real trend or just a fad? … and does it matter?

The Short List – 5 Keys to the Future

Before the longer list, I want to shine the light on 5 key things:

  1. Clouds and Clients.  This is a key growth spot.  How else do you keep up in a rapidly changing world, deliver services. disrupt the game, and bring new game changers to market faster than ever before?  It’s the cloud.  It marks the commodization of IT and computing.   Companies can now innovate and disrupt at speeds and cycles we’ve never seen before.   One simple metric is how quickly you can reach a million users now with a new service or product, compared to five years ago.  If you want to stay relevant, you have to be thinking about your cloud and virtualization story.  The opportunities here are amazing from the one-man band code slinger who spins up a Web farm for their app that changes the world to businesses that expose new capabilities to the World and help build the programmable Web.  It’s also a way to simplify computing and move up the stack.
  2. It’s a gamer’s world.   I don’t just mean Farmville.  It’s like Second Life meets the real world.  With virtual goods on the rise, and more people connecting and having fun through games online, it’s a sweet spot for innovation.  To fully appreciate why it’s a gamer’s world, check out Jane McGonigal’s TED Talk on how gaming can make a better world.   (Here’s the gist  — Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds and the incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems?)  BTW – way to go Activision Blizzard.  World of Warcraft: Cataclysm shattered previous sales records, by selling more than 3.3 million copies in its first 24 hours, making it the fastest-selling PC game of all time.  I expect more lines to blur with work and fun and edutainment, as companies find ways to use gaming approaches to motivate today’s Web worker world.  It’s gamer + education + business + life.
  3. NUI experiences.  NUI (Natural User Interface) is in.  Great user experiences are the differentiator that drive adoption and make things stick.  This is a great area for innovation, patterns, and practices.  Speaking of innovation, how cool is the Kinect for XBox 360?  It’s a hands-free controller.  Talk about a game changer (and talk about getting closer to interacting with computers Minority Report style.)   When you think about the possibilities of rich media, touch, speech, location-aware services, and “you-as-the-remote control” (think Wii and Kinect), the possibilities for amazing and immersive experiences are endless.  More importantly, we can finally start showing how software improves productivity, effectiveness, efficiency, and fun.   Have you also noticed the explosion of 3D into the cinema and living room?  What’s next … 3D gaming?
  4. The Mobile Internet.  Take the Web wherever you go.  It’s a powerful platform and ecosystems that bring the power of software to everyday scenarios, anywhere and everywhere.  With Apple iPhone and iPad, Google Android, Windows Phone 7, the Web is truly in the palm of your hand, and the app story is just going to keep getting better,
  5. The Year of the eBook.  This is THE year.  Earlier this year, Seth Godin said, “I’ve decided not to publish any more books in the traditional way.”  With the Apple iPad, Sony Reader, Barnes & Noble Nook, and of course the Amazon Kindle, the game is on.  Oh, yeah, and Google has a shiny new Google eBookstore.   (You can read about the new Google eBookstore in Discover more than 3 million Google eBooks from your choice of booksellers and devices.)

One way to be thinking about changes is to put them into context.  You can think in terms of home, on the road, and at work.

Key Trends for 2011

Here is my summary of key trends for 2011:

  1. Analytics / BI (Business intelligence).  Data-driven decisions win over guesswork.  It’s tough, especially when statistics lie and we want to trust our instincts over our indicators.  Start by asking, how do the great businesses drive their great decisions?  Between information markets and crowd sourced intelligence and social networking, the real issue is how you leverage the data and turn it into intelligent decisions and smart feedback loops, and how you learn and respond.
  2. “Consumerization” of IT.  A while back, Gartner said Consumerization Will Be Most Significant Trend Affecting IT During Next 10 Years … I think we see that accelerating.
  3. Cycles of change speed up even more.    Life cycles shift to warp speed and lines blur between versions, creating living, breathing products.  This creates pressure to master change management, adopt more Agile methods, figure out compliance and governance for the new landscape.
  4. Digital Health.   This is where cloud, BI/analytics and diagnostics can seriously change the game.  There is also a shift to more user empowerment.  If you take a stroll through Best Buy, you might notice the expanding Digital Health shelf.  This is an area where more people may start to outsource their health to smart applications that can see patterns, provide monitoring, and alerts.
  5. Education 2.0.   Have you met Bill Gate’s favorite teacher, Sal Khan?   Khan created Khan Academy.  The Khan Academy is the free classroom for the world with hundreds of free videos and exercises and it’s mission is to provide a world-class education to anyone, anywhere.
  6. Global distributed development.  Competing in a global market means finding and using the best resources at the best price, anywhere in the world.
  7. Location based services.   Talk about relevancy in action and just-in-time ads.  It’s all about specialization + location.  Location, location, location takes on new meaning and relevancy.  Jim Carroll says, “Consider the concept of a ‘location-intelligence professional.’ Today, this involves someone working within the insurance industry, learning how to link the extensive data-sets of geographic oriented information – think Google Maps – with existing insurance underwriting information, and with other statistical databases.”
  8. Micropayments and virtual currencies.  Second Life really set the trend here a while back, but it’s becoming more important in today’s world.  This paves the way for real money for micro-transactions.  It also creates a model for reputation based systems, which is important in a reputation-based economy.
  9. Private cloud.   The time is ripe for Enterprises to move to the cloud, and private clouds and integration will be key stepping stones.
  10. Reputation based.   It’s reputations that cut through the clutter and rise to the top, helped by word-of-mouth marketing and raving fans.
  11. Standards / open systems.  One of the way so win in today’s world is to build great experiences on top of open standards.  Optimize for open over closed.
  12. Talent Economy / Skills-for-Hire Economy.   Specialization, market maturity and rapid cycles of change drive a demand for key skills.  The key is to balance “generalist” skills in business and technology, along with specialized skills that the market values.
  13. The rise of Social media / social networking.   Between world-of-mouth marketing, raving fans, and real time information markets for customer feedback that can make you or break you, embrace and leverage the power of the people.
  14. Tribes.  Tribes are who you’re making your products for.  Tribes are your network.  You’ll find your next job through your tribe, or you’ll help members in your tribe find their next job.
  15. User empowerment.  It’s the rise of the spider and the fall of the starfish in a federated world.
  16. User experiences.   This is where reputations are built and raving fans are won.  Think speed, simplicity, immersive experience, visualization, how you feel … etc.  Design working backward from the end experience in mind.  If the resulting experience suck will suck, don’t even start to build it.
  17. Virtual goods.  Whether it’s eBooks or information products or rewards in game worlds, virtual goods have real-world potential.
  18. Web TV.   Web TV is truly here.  Improvements in broadband have certainly helped.  Whether your box is  Roku, Playstation, X-Box, Wii, Apple TV, an internet-ready blue-ray, or an Internet-ready TV, and whether you stream from Amazon video-on-demand, NetFlix, or Hulu, video-on-demand has become a reality.  With Google TV on the scene, things really get interesting.

The Meta-Pattern for Trends

These are some of the patterns I’m noticing about the patterns of the trends:

  • “Built to Change” Over “Built to Last.”  Again, this goes back to shifting from a static world, to a dynamic world and embracing change over fighting it.  Run with it.
  • Consumer patterns drive Enterprise patterns.  At the end of the day, people are consumers and the patterns show up in the Enterprise.
  • Decentralize and federate.   Think starfish and spider.
  • Differentiate.  Differentiate by giving your best where you have your best to give.  Compete by dividing the niche and small is the new big (so you win with a portfolio that’s flexible and responsive to market demand.)
  • Execution is king.  Operational efficiency and innovating in your product cycle is how you survive and thrive.
  • Prosumer.  Think Consumer + Producer.  Get your customers into your production cycle earlier so they help you create and innovate in your product line.
  • Pull vs. Push.  Know the mental model from push to pull.  In Push Me, Pull You–Dueling Business Models, Steve Bosserman says, “Through the three hundred-year reign of the Industrial Age, businesses “pushed” their products and services onto consumers. Limited choice accompanied by considerable marketing hype was enough to make the consumer buy. It was a sellers’ market. Now, thanks largely to the Information Age, consumers are evolving into customers who can select what they want from a variety of providers. It is becoming a buyers’ market.”
  • Relevancy is king.  Google taught us this.
  • Reputation and brand are king.   In a social networked world, it’s the network that says who the authority is and what works and what doesn’t.
  • Simplicity.  Simplicity always win in the long run when it comes to adoption.  Find ways to reduce friction and make things simple out of the box.  Design for simplicity and keep things simple where you can.
  • Social Value / Community Good.  Green is not optional.  In a green world, if you’re business doesn’t play well with green values, it’s not a sustainable path.
  • Results are king.  Talk is cheap.  Results speak for themselves.

There are a lot of kings here.  In checkers, it’s easier to win when you have a lot of kings.

The Way Forword

What’s past is past and the future

  • Absorb what is useful.  Do it Bruce Lee style — take what you need, adapt it, and throw out the rest.
  • Agility. Stay adaptable.  Flexibility is your friend.  See The better adapted you are, the less adaptable you tend to be.
  • Anticipate change.   Look ahead.  Build your anticipation skills.  Know the system.  Things don’t just happen.  The more you know the system and the ecosystem, the more you can anticipate what’s coming down the line.  Pay attention to market leaders, trend setters, patterns, and cycles.  Everything happens in cycles whether it’s growth or decline. best.
  • Be the Best on the Web.  there’s no room for #2.  Be the best at what you’re the best at.  This is Good to Great in action.
  • Build a firm foundation.  Know Maslow’s hierarchy and prioritize taking care of your basic needs.  Know your “monthly burn” and be mindful of your decisions to support your firm foundation.  The stronger your foundation is, the more you can help yourself and others when they need it most.
  • Compete where it makes the most sense.  Compete on price, or quality or customer and don’t mix them up.  This depends on which stage of the maturity cycle you are in, what the state of the market is, and what you can be the best at.  For example, in a commodity market, don’t be the most expensive.  Turn competition into collaboration and find the win wins to really change your game and rock the world.
  • If it doesn’t help you be your best, cut it out.   This means living your values, and playing to your strengths.  It also means giving your best where you have your best to give, as a person, and as a company.  It’s how your survive, and it’s how you go from surviving to thriving.   Any other way drains you in the long run and you get priced or pushed or competed out of the market.  It’s the sustainable path.
  • Follow the Cycles.  Knowing the path from cradle to grave, gives you an edge.  It helps you anticipate what to expect and it helps you apply levers where they count.  At a meta-level, there is a pattern for market maturity cycles.  According to Alonso Martinez and Ronald Haddock, the 4 stages of market maturity are: 1) survival, 2) quality, 3) convenience, 4) customization.
  • Follow the Data.   With all the usage data and analytics power of a Web world, you don’t need to guess at success.  It’s very easy to use surveys to figure out what your customers want.  It’s easy to provide options for customers to provide actionable feedback.  Drive your decisions with data and make informed decisions.  Do A/B testing and experiment your way forward.
  • Follow the growth.  Follow your own growth, and follow the growth in the market.  For example, in the tech industry some growth areas are mobile and cloud.  Along these lines, create the growth.
  • Follow the money.  Where there’s money, there’s growth.  You can look to where CxOs are investing, or even where you company is investing and making its bets.
  • Follow the people.  Great people have track records for a reason.  Find the people who are connected and always seem to be ahead of the curve.   Great ideas flow from great people and this is an idea economy.
  • Get back to the basics.  Practice the fundamentals.  They work.  Among the chaos, there are always core principles, patterns, and practices that you can bank on.
  • Hone your personal brand.  Make the most of what you’ve got and make sure your differentiation is obvious.  For example, one of my differentiators is “getting results.”
  • Invest in yourself.  Inner-engineering always pays off.
  • It’s your network and what you know.  People sort and sift through people they know.  In a skills-for-hire economy, your network is how you find the opportunities.
  • Know the cycles of things.  For example, know the Four Stages of Market Maturity, the Technology Adoption Life Cycle, and the Diffusion of Innovations.
  • Lead yourself from the inside out.   Follow your values, play to your strengths, and follow your purpose.  It’s the sustainable path.
  • Learn and respond.  Your ability to learn and respond will drive your best results.  Innovate in your process and your product.
  • Model the best.   You can speed up your learning curves and avoid costly mistakes by modeling from best practices and working examples.  Whenever you think you’re faced with a new problem, first ask, who else might share this problem, and see if you can find three good examples of how this problem was solved.

Key Sources

I primarily draw from my own experience working with customers, and paying attention to what they’re paying attention to, as well as paying attention to my mentors and smarties across Microsoft, and whoever they tell me to pay attention to. One of the easiest ways to see where the action is and where the growth will be is to watch where companies put their best people and where they invest (I call it a “charter and bets check”). I also draw from the following:

  • Jim Carroll – Jim helps me see the trends across industries and look to patterns. He’s also great at identifying where the growth and opportunities are, and more importantly how to frame the landscape in a way that makes it actionable instead of analysis paralysis.
  • Trend Hunter – It’s effectively “crowd-sources insight” and it’s a great source for consumer trends. I’m a big believer that consumer trends pave the path for Enterprise trends. By watching consumer trends, I learn what to expect. I then watch how it shows up as I work with my customers. This pattern serves me well.
  • Internet Trends by Morgan Stanley —  This is a data-driven view of the emerging trends.  What I like about this report is how the data is used to help identify and illustrate the patterns.
  • C:Insights Trends – They focus on consumer trends and they specialize in research and advisory services.  I look to them for patterns and key words in consumer trends.
  • Craig Mundie, Chief Research and Strategy Officer, Microsoft – Mundie has been in the business for more than 35 years, and he’s a forward thinker.   I pay attention to Mundie because he is in the center of a lot of action.  He’s also good at being able to see the forest from the trees.
  • Faith Popcorn – I first heard about Faith from Tony Robbins and I can see why he looks to her for patterns and trends.  Her super skill is finding the more pervasive trends that shape the culture, consumers, and the community.  She specializes in turning the insight from trends into actions for business and weaving them into strategies and tactics for business.
  • IBM Executive Exchange – The beauty of the IBM Executive Exchange is that it’s real insight from actual CIO, CFO, and CEOs.  If you want to know what kinds of things will be getting attention in the coming year, simply look to the CxOs.  The CxOs have an important vantage point in their company.  They know their company’s strategy, top pain points, and key investments.  You can expect ripple effects from their decision.
  • IDC (International Data Corporation) — IDC is an analyst that specializes in analyzing the future.  I look to them to see what insights and trends they see across various sectors include energy, financial, government, health, manufacturaing, and retail.
  • JWT Intelligence – JWT is all about finding trends and turning cultural shifts into opportunities.  I find their synthesis and the way they name their trends, insightful and compelling.   I cross-check them against the other consumer trends I see.

With that in mind, here is a quick roundup of key trends to watch for from these sources  …

C:Insights on Trends

20 Mobile Trends for 2011 — http://www.slideshare.net/CinsightsTrends/20-key-mobile-trends-201011

  1. Trend 1 – Augmented Reality (AR)
  2. Trend 2 – Social Search
  3. Trend 3 – Social Gaining
  4. Trend 4 – Mobile social Networks
  5. Trend 5 – Mobile Discount Coupons
  6. Trend 6 – QR Codes
  7. Trend 7 – Micro Blogging
  8. Trend 8 – Video Sharing
  9. Trend 9 – Instant Networking
  10. Trend 10 – Niche Networks
  11. Trend 11 – Multitasking
  12. Trend 12 – Virtual Personas
  13. Trend 13 – Mobile IM
  14. Trend 14 – Social Music
  15. Trend 15 – Organic Technology
  16. Trend 16 – Conversational Content
  17. Trend 17 – Open Source Applications
  18. Trend 18 – Peer Advertising
  19. Trend 19 – Social Media Aggregators
  20. Trend 20 – Mobile Apps

CIO Insight on Trends

Lundquist’s Top Tech Trends for 2011 – http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/IT-Management/Lundquists-Top-Tech-Trends-for-2011-656290/

  1. The CIO as Services Maestro
  2. IT Services
  3. Reverse Consumerization
  4. The Mobile Enterprise
  5. Virtualization, Cloud Computing
  6. Big Blue vs. Big Red
  7. Remember PCs?
  8. Tablets
  9. Video
  10. Apple Stores

Computer Economics on Trends

Technology Trends – 2010/2011 –- http://www.computereconomics.com/images/default/ISS2010/TechTrends2010sample.pdf

Computer Economics identifies 19 hot spots for focus and where the action is:

  1. Application Consolidation
  2. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems
  3. Data Center Consolidation
  4. Desktop Virtualization
  5. Enterprise Social Networking
  6. Enterprise Resource Planning Software
  7. Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance (GRC) Systems
  8. Help Desk Self-Support Systems
  9. Infrastructure Cloud Computing
  10. Legacy System Renewal
  11. Microsoft Windows 7 Migration
  12. Mobile Applications
  13. Open Source Business Applications
  14. Predictive Analytics
  15. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Systems
  16. Software as a Service
  17. 10G Ethernet
  18. Unified Communications
  19. Video Conferencing Systems

Craig Mundie on Trends

Reimagining Microsoft’s Future, Financial Analyst Meeting, July 29, 2010 –

http://www.microsoft.com/investor/Downloads/Events/Mundie_FAM_2010.docx

Mundie identifies three trends that are coming out of the labs and showing up in products:

  1. Clients and Clouds – “The combination of the client and the cloud to create the new computing platform that will redefine both how people develop applications and ultimately how people consume them and what kind of things are possible to solve.”
  2. Natural User Interface – “As the computer has become more and more powerful, and yet it’s more and more pervasive in our lives, we need ultimately to change the way in which we deal with the computer. There have been many technological trends that we’ve been studying in research for 10 or even 20 years, and they’re all starting to come together, enabled by this revolution in the microprocessor capability and networking, to some extent.”
  3. Working on your behalf – “For time immemorial, computers have been a great tool, but increasingly, the world has so much stuff available to us that if we have to navigate it all by hand, it just becomes tedious. So, we’re now starting to turn a lot of the power of the computer to helping us get things done.”

IBM Executive Exchange on Trends

2010 IBM Global IT Risk Study – The Evolving Role of IT Managers and CIOs

The Evolving Role of IT Managers and CIOs

http://www-931.ibm.com/docs/vrmhost/GBE03365-USEN-00.pdf

Top 5 Emerging Technologies in terms of risk:

  1. Social networking tools
  2. Mobile platforms
  3. Cloud computing
  4. Virtualization
  5. Service-oriented architecture

Additional insights …

  • “IT risk management and compliance has remained largely immune from budget cuts or cost reductions.”
  • Risk management helps defensively with business continuity, protecting reputation and proactively with a company’s agility, creating growth, and reducing costs.
  • Business continuity is about building a “risk-aware culture” and baking into the tools, processes and methodologies.
  • “IT security (vulnerability to hackers and unauthorized access/use of company systems) is the number-one concern among 78 percent of the IT professionals surveyed.”

Analytics: The new path to value

http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/thoughtleadership/ibv-embedding-analytics.html

  • How the smartest organizations are embedding analytics to transform insights into action. The success pattern is to use analytics over best guesses – “The tendency for top-performing organizations to apply analytics to particular activities across the organization, as compared to lower performers.”

Smarter Cities – Cities are getting smarter. Watch the trailer on Smarter Cities

http://www-03.ibm.com/innovation/us/thesmartercity/index_flash.html#/home/trailer/

  • According to the video, cities around the world are tackling: “How to keep traffic flowing, cure a health care system, protect citizens while protecting their privacy, and how to demonstrate how one decision affects millions of people and involve them in making their city a better place to live.”

IDC on Trends

Worldwide System Infrastructure Software 2011 Top 10 Predictions – http://www.idc.com/research/viewtoc.jsp?containerId=225895

  1. Private Cloud Plans Will Mature, Dominate the Enterprise Infrastructure Software Agenda in 2011
  2. Battle for Next-Generation Cloud Platforms Will Shift Focus from IaaS to PaaS
  3. Microsoft Windows Azure Will Get the Respect It Deserves
  4. New Enterprise Mainframe Will Create Integrated/Hybrid Solution Opportunities for Management Software Vendors, But MIPS Wars Will Continue
  5. Server Virtualization Will Continue to Subsume High-Availability and Replication Functionality
  6. Client Virtualization Will Become a Strategic, Mainstream Desktop Choice in 2011
  7. Big 4 Will Become the Big 5 — Microsoft Will Displace HP as the Number 1 Global Distributed Systems Management Software Provider
  8. Social Collaboration Will Force Shift in IT Service Management Support Best Practices
  9. Enterprises Will Push for Broad ELA Subscription Pricing as ISVs Struggle to Accommodate Elastic Infrastructure and Cloud-Scale Operations
  10. Novell Acquisition Will Be Catalyst for Linux Market Upheaval During 2011

IDC Predictions 2011: Welcome to the New Mainstream – http://www.idc.com/research/viewtoc.jsp?containerId=225878

  1. Worldwide IT Spending Growth Will Be Solid, with Hardware Moderating and Rebounds in Software and Services
  2. Emerging Markets Will Continue to Lead Global Growth in IT
  3. Public and Private Cloud Adoption Will Surge, Two Cloud “Power Position” Battles Will Enter High Gear, and a Buzzword Will Get Ready to Fade
  4. Cloud-Driven Datacenter Transformations Will Pick Up Speed
  5. The Mobility Explosion Will Continue — with Huge Device Volumes, New Form Factors, and Billions of Mobile Apps
  6. Broadband Networks Will Struggle — and Innovate — to Keep Up
  7. Social Business Momentum Will Drive Consolidation, SMB Adoption
  8. The Expanding Digital Universe Will Drive Cloud-Friendly Information Infrastructure and Real-Time Analytics for “Big Data”
  9. “Intelligent Industries” Will Put Mobility, Social Networking to Work
  10. Industry Positions for Customers Demanding “I Want My Web TV!”

2010 UtiliQ Rankings: Top 25 Intelligent Utilities

http://www.idc-ei.com/research/UtiliQ.jsp

In their “Looking Ahead” section, IDC provides a set of guidelines for strategies and investments for companies that want to improve their position:

  1. Partner with the customer. “Recent customer backlash in some areas is in large part due to insufficient communication with the customer. Develop a b communications plan to make the customer aware of the long-run advantages of intelligent investments and use pilot programs as a testing ground for customer partnership.”
  2. Drive company cultural change.” Becoming a more intelligent utility has a lot to do with people. Your employees need to understand your company’s vision, your strategy for getting there, why it’s important to all major stakeholders – including customers and regulators – and what this all means to your employees on a day-to-day basis.”
  3. Improve processes for both “lean” and “green.” “Efficient processes drive down the cost of maintaining the current environment and free up resources for innovation and growth.”
  4. Make intelligent technology investments.” Find ways to get the best return from your technology investments by ensuring that your spending on information, communications, and energy technologies is in line with the business.”

Jim Carroll on Trends

Trending in 2011: 10 Major Trends to Start Thinking About Now!

http://www.jimcarroll.com/2010/10/trending-in-2011-10-major-trends-to-start-thinking-about-now/

  1. The expectations gap. “Western society is defined by an increasing divergence between what people expect, and what they will get.”
  2. Industries blur. “The world of fashion and healthcare are going to merge. We are going to see an increasing number of bio-connectivity health care devices that will be used for the remote monitoring of health care conditions.”
  3. Energy gets smart. “.. Continued high-speed innovation with renewable energy sources, and velocity with grid-parity: the point in time at which the cost of producing renewable energy equals that of carbon based sources.”
  4. The collapse of attention spans. “If you don’t know how to think, market and promote at nano-speeds, you’re not ready for the future!”
  5. Faster market evolution. “New products flood the market at ever increasing speeds, and fast-consumers snap them up in a moment and evolve their lifestyles quicker.”
  6. Innovation partnerships. Companies can’t keep up and just innnovate on their own … “enjoy greater success through open innovation and other external innovation partnerships.”
  7. The fight against workplace boredom. “Organizations are fighting back against boredom by trying to keep staff engaged.”
  8. American-Idolotry. People love heroes. “The future of workplace and partner renumeration is all about the red-carpet, the spotlight, and the celebration of success!”
  9. The big impact of small incrementalism. “Everyone is learning that one way to win the future is by having a lot of small wins that add up to big gains.”
  10. Communities redefined. Community ergonomics will be a high growth industry. We have a growing senior population, which means communities need to be “rethought, re-designed, and reconstructed.”

JWT Intelligence on Trends

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtTk2J935Bg&feature=player_embedded

  1. All the world’s a game
  2. The urgency economy
  3. Non-commitment culture
  4. Eat, pray, tech
  5. De-teching
  6. Retail as the third space
  7. Creative urban renewal
  8. Worlds colliding
  9. Hyper-personalization
  10. Outsourcing self-control

Morgan Stanley on Trends

CM Summit, June 7, 2010

  1. Mobile Internet – Unprecedented Early Stage Growth
  2. Innovation — Unprecedented Intensity?
  3. Online Advertising — May Be Entering Golden Age, Finally
  4. Online Commerce – Mobile Should Be Share Gain Accelerator
  5. Communications — Share Shift to Sharing
  6. Cloud Computing — Consumer First, Enterprise Next
  7. Technology — What’s Next …
  8. Beyond Technology — It’s Complicated …

Internet Trends, April 12, 2010

http://www.morganstanley.com/institutional/techresearch/pdfs/Internet_Trends_041210.pdf

Morgan Stanley on the “Mobile Internet” …

  1. Wealth Creation / Destruction is Material in New computing Cycles — Now in Early Innings of Mobile Internet Cycle, the 5th Cycle of Last Half Century.
  2. Mobile Ramping Faster than Desktop Internet Dic and Will Be Bigger Than Most Think — 5 Trends Converging (3G + Social Networking + Video + VoIP + Impressive Mobile Devices).
  3. Apple Leading in Mobile Innovation + Impact, for Now — Depth of App Ecosystems + User Experience + Pricing Will Determing Long-Term Winners.
  4. Game-Changing Communications / Commerce Platforms (Social Networking + Mobile) Emerging Very Rapidly.
  5. Massive Data Growth Driving Carrier / Equipment Transitions.
  6. Growth / Monetization Roadmaps Provided by Japan Mobile + Desktop Internet.

Rudolf Melik on Trends

Ten Major Trends for 2011 and How They Impact Professional Services and Project Delivery

http://www.psvillage.com/pulse/ten-major-trends-2011-and-how-they-impact-professional

Rudolf, CEO of Tenrox, does a great job overlaying his experience and perspective against Jim Carroll’s map of 10 majory Trends for 2011. Check out his article, but here is a quick blurb from his take on how the workforce will shift to more project-based execution.

  • Rudolf on Hollywood movie style execution — “More companies are also adopting a Hollywood movie style execution strategy by bringing people together to shoot the film (execute the project) and then disband the crew (the team) just as quickly as it came together once the film is completed (project is closed).”
  • Rudolf on project history over employment history — “Project workers are increasingly giving more importance to the next project they will work on instead of the company they will work at. More and more personal profiles take the form of an individual’s project history rather than their employment history.”

Trend Hunter on Trends

2011 Trend Repor Samples

http://www.trendreports.com/2011-Trend-Report

  1.  Interactive Retail – “Stores focus on customer engagement as primary business strategy.”
  2. Social Shopping – “Shopaholics are using social media for networking and retail therapy.”
  3. Perpetual Adaptation – “Obsessed with aesthetics, society embarks on the eternal makeover.”
  4. Democratic Selling – “Online retailers rely on customer votes to push production.”
  5. Radical Rebranding – “Pushing boundaries of reinvention to gain consumer attention.”
  6. Hyperrealism – “Real life is simulated in photorealistic artworks that defy deception.”
  7. Geriatric Couture – “Seniors become the anti-fashion inspiration for young people.”
  8. Augmented Reality – “Augmented reality combines reality and virtuality, offering a new way to imagine.”
  9. Half Formal – “Classed up business casual is a reflection of the new corporate attitude.”

What else is important that I should know about or have on my radar and heat map?

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