- Abstraction: This one is as old as time. First humans had to grow & mill wheat and now we can just get a pizza delivered anytime. Now, abstraction is behind the no-code & low-code movements as well as ubiquitous templates.
- Abundance: In the recent past, this was more narrowly applied to the concept of infinite storage, computing power, and bandwidth. Now, this concept has broadened to the abundance of everything including capital, resources, etc. I’ve also seen this referred to as “post-liquidity.”
- AgTech: Sustainably feeding billions & billions.
- Artificial Intelligence: This is more of an enabling technology than a trend. Nonetheless, AI/ML is impacting more and more segments of how we work and play. I also like the use the term ‘augmented intelligence’ as a precursor to artificial intelligence. Internet of Things (IoT) is part of this trend too.
- Autonomous Vehicles: Almost there and can’t wait… Applies to transportation of people and goods. Drones are a sub-trend here.
- Climate/Sustainability: While reversing climate change must be a top priority, we should also think about adapting in the (possibly more likely) event that change is irreversible. For now, I’m tucking sustainability into this trend as well.
- Collaboration: The big opportunity here feels like collaboration between technical experts and (less-technical) subject matter experts.
- Community: Like abstraction, this one is as old as time because humans are social creatures. We’ve seen decades of digital community now. One possible evolution here is the trend toward micro-communities of true peers (and bridging from virtual to physical).
- Customer Experience/Design: UI/UX, minimalism, and form-follows-function.
- Data Economy: In many cases, the primary value of companies is the ownership of and ability to process & take action on data streams.
- Digitization/Internet-of-Things: The journey toward hyper-connectedness continue unabated.
- Education: Feels like we have not yet cracked the code on either access to education or the best ways to learn/teach.
- Globalization: Long running macro-trend.
- Healthcare & Life Sciences: Making progress…
- Immersive Experience: Just a more expansive way of describing AR/VR.
- Income Inequality: This macro-trend is a counterfactual to abundance. Nonetheless it is all to real and income inequality leads to social unrest.
- Iteration: While there will always high-risk, complex projects (ex: building a massive bridge across a major body of water; sending people to Mars; etc.), the threshold for ‘reversible’ decisions has grown ever higher and has been aided by low-friction data collection and low-cost analytics.
- Payments: Bitcoin; Venmo; etc.
- On-Demand Production: While at-home 3D printing feels like it has fallen into Geoffrey Moore’s proverbial chasm, one should expect this will re-emerge in the near-to-medium term for at least basic good (think bottle openers).
- Platforms: Platform ecosystems have long (always?) existed for both physical and digital goods; after all, this used to be called interoperability or open-source. At least in the digital realm, this is driving an API-explosion. (Note: Being multi-product is not the same as being a platform. To be a platform, you need a way for others to add substantive functionality.)
- Pricing: In digital & physical goods, we are seeing a migration from massive up-front payment or annual/monthly pre-payment to consumption-based payment. This is happening in the digital domain (software, etc.) and in the physical domain (transportation, etc.) This has important implications on sourcing working capital to fund development and operations; however, abundant capital is making this less of a barrier.
- Product-Led Growth (PLG): Sure this is a just a new term for freemium. What is getting interesting though is that freemium used to only apply to markets with massive possible user bases where it was fine to skim a bit of profit from a small subset of power users. With stronger (UI/UX) design and self- and P2P- onboarding, support, and success, PLG is working for more niche markets.
- Robotics: After a few false starts, robotics is advancing rapidly via improved AI/ML
- Security: Digital and physical (personal & asset) security. Some innovative ideas: cell phone anti-surveillance & anti-drone tech. Cyber warfare is a major threat here too.
- Sharing Economy (gig-work & resource sharing): We are now starting to face the negative externalities of this trend, esp. around labor disruption, access to healthcare, etc. For now, I’m putting the remote work macro trend here but I may elevate it to its own category.
- Space Exploration: Since yachts have become passe’, this is the new billionaires’ playground. Sci-fi suggests the progression of this will be toward resource extraction (water & minerals) and colonization.
- Supply Chain: Timeless trend with 20th century waves accelerated first by Walmart and then by Amazon. Having over-optimized for lean-inventory, the new focus is on resilience to perturbations.