In the next two years, the most innovative companies will take advantage of 5 THINK BIG disruptions impacting the workplace, consumers, and sellers across nearly every industry. These changes are being played out now, and will reach their zenith by 2025.
1. Renting Things
Instead of Owning Them
Many large value
purchases will not be sold as long-term capital expenditures, but rented as
operational costs. The automobile and insurance industry will be greatly
impacted by this change. Vehicle ownership will move from individuals with
long-term bank loans and high insurance premiums to corporation investments.
Smart vehicles will become safer and more reliable, thereby reducing the need
for repairs, and necessitating changes in traffic laws.
Even home ownership
will be impacted, as younger consumers increasingly want to work where they
live, instead of being rooted in a cul-de-sac neighborhood. The benefits of a
home mortgage as equity may shift to alternative investments with greater
liquidity. GenX and GenZ increasingly see retirement as a novelty. They prefer
to think of post-work life as an adventure. They will have less need for a
fixed location and greater need for rental experiences.
Computer usage will continue to become a utility. The most innovative companies will not own software, but rent it as-needed. Individual computers will become more standardized and less powerful, as compute power moves to the cloud and consumption is variable. Meanwhile, land-line bandwidth will be obsolete as low-earth orbit internet becomes ubiquitous.
2. Commoditizing
Data as Bundled Offerings
With an overwhelming
bulge of data from IoT devices, the most innovative companies will harvest
targeted segments of information and build data lakes of specialized topics
that can be analyzed and re-sold with device level accuracy at the point of
presence.
Every transaction
made by anyone, at any time, will be available for purchase. Privacy concerns
will give way to consumer convenience. Marketers, sellers, and data analysts
supported by software developers, will use these data lakes with predictive
analytics to influence decision-making on every product, political campaigns,
and personal purchases.
The mobility of data means that the consumer's location is no longer relevant. Data bundles will follow the consumer based on device location, and change as vendors earn trust and vie for their attention. Consumers will care less about who makes the product and more about who delivers what they want, when they want it. The postal address will become less important than the consumer's physical location.
3. On-the-Go
Consumption
The most innovative
companies will find ways to package products and services into
smaller-and-smaller form factors. Purchase labeling like QR codes will become
obsolete as just-walk-out technology eliminates the need to wait in line to
check-out and drone delivery makes its way into our everyday life.
Foods and other
ingestible products will move to capsulized form and condensed packaging, where
the value is weighted by time and convenience. This change will be felt most
acutely at fast-food restaurants, the corner convenience store, and legal
psychoactive drugs dispensaries, where consumers just want to get in and out
quickly. This change lends itself to automation with the increased use of
robotics based on pre-defined and re-sold algorithms that need less customized
training.
This, too, will be impacted by the mobility of data. Ordering pizza and beer on the beach will become more common. In fact, the bundling of data will ensure that your favorite New York slice is also available in Malibu; delivered on the sand without even choosing options.
4. Quality of Life
People will no
longer work to achieve a good standard of living; quality of life will be seen
as a right, not a privilege to be achieved. The most innovative companies will
recognize the value of talent; those that don’t, will struggle to retain top
performers and eventually become obsolete. The power of work will continue to
move into the hands of the worker. Employment packages, ultimatums,
restrictions, contracts, and agreements that control the boundaries of work
will no longer ensure talent doesn’t go somewhere else.
Employers that
demand butts-in-seats and fixed office locations will be seen as out of touch.
People will work where and when they believe it will provide the greatest
quality of life. The five days a week, eight-hour work day is dead. Some
companies will struggle with time-zone differences, but the most innovative
companies will learn to flex worker options and collaborate anywhere and at any
time.
Even governments will be forced to adopt flexible work schedules. This will impact the competitive landscape for large, multi-year contracts. With location no longer a requirement, companies will continue to diversify their workforce and leverage regional cost savings. Those that centralize will stagnate. New specializations in human resources and corporate law will emerge to manage employment requirements and taxes at every local level.
5. Automation
Everything
Any repetitive task
or manual sequence will be a candidate for automation. The most innovative
companies will mechanize everything, driving workplace tasks to higher-value
outputs and lowering human touch. These companies will dramatically reduce
error rates, lower costs, and increase speed to delivery. The smart ones will
transfer savings to customers and deepen trust with consumers, resulting in
higher profits over extended horizons. Others will look internally to benefit and
see only short-term gains that eventually lead to stasis.
Job categories like
human resources, legal, administration, manufacturing, and the entire supply
chain will become increasingly automated through self-serve functionality at
the edge. Quick-click enabled by AI/ML solutions will automate the delivery of
a laptop, the selection of benefits, the agreement of a contract, and the
movement of goods and services. Human-in-the-loop will move from highly
educated subject matter experts, to full-stack software developers able to code
and review algorithms that drive high-value, low-cost outputs.
Robotics will become
common with modular specialization being rented as commodities. New robotics
companies will build specialized platforms for fast food restaurants, big bulk
store stocking, last-mile delivery, household services, and medical care. A
build once, rent many approach to the use of robotics will drive down costs and
make implementation much quicker and easier. The workplace robot will become as
standard as the copy machine.
Conclusion
The widely available
compute capacity, no-code/low-code development, and AI/ML, Robotics, and Space
advancements are making choices more available and easily consumable. The value
proposition is now in the hands of the consumer at the edge and not the
producer at the build point. From new-venture startups to long-standing
big-caps, and from cultural discourse in the public square, to the mom-and-pop
shop down the street, we are living in a time of unprecedented change. If you
thought the Industrial Revolution was something, just you wait. The band is
still warming up.
* Dr. Thomas Ferleman is an Enterprise Transformation specialist at Amazon.com, where he leads Digital Innovation engagements using Amazon’s innovation mechanisms like, Culture of Innovation, Working Backwards (Design Thinking), Innovation Pulse Check (Lean Six Sigma/DMAIC) Roadmap, and SMART Solution Design (Agile) to identify specific end-user problems or opportunities and build customer obsessed solutions. He is a Professor, Data Analytics Engineering (DAEN) Master of Science Program, George Mason University College of Engineering and Computing. He specializes in a broad range of data analytics algorithms, tools, and processes for solving a wide range of real-world problems. He holds a Doctor in Strategic Leadership from Regent University, and MBA, MS in Management, and Bachelor of Science from University of Maryland Global Campus. This post was reprinted by permission from the ALL THINGS INNOVATION blog. For more insights from Dr. Ferleman, go to https://ferleman.com
