Frost & Sullivan is a global industry research company that distributes questionnaires to more than 1,000 CEOs from all industries of around the world. In this questionnaire, ask the CEO two important questions:
What important external challenges do you think are there?
What are the internal challenges?
With the accumulation of questionnaires, we found that the answers given by the CEO in terms of internal challenges are basically not much changed, which is how to cite the best strategy to run the business. But in terms of external challenges, CEOs always give different answers.
Through this sharing, I am trying to help everyone understand the huge changes that are taking place around the world and help people find action plans to dealing with (or participate in) changes.
What I want to emphasize is that what we really want to focus on is not the megatrends themselves, but the sub-trends that are relevant to us under the megatrends and the impact they may have on us.
Trend 1: Interconnection and convergence
Sensors and the IOT (Internet of Things) will make the world completely connected. By 2020, on average, each user will have 5 connected devices, and on average, each home will have 10 connected devices. In the market, we will see 80 billion connected devices. More importantly, we will see more than 5 billion world netizens.
High-speed Internet facilities are also accelerating penetration. For example, Colombia has already adopted access to the Internet as a basic human right, as determined by the government. One reason is that the government has realized that access to information online can really empower people.
Sub-trend 1: Internet devices
Produce products and services that make people faster, easier, and cheaper. Whether it's access platforms or access services, there are many opportunities.
Sub-trend 2: 5G network and real-time service
What does the 5G network mean for us? The upstream and downstream speeds of the data will reach 1GB per second, and the data latency will drop below 1 millisecond. This means we are able to access the high speed internet very stably.
There is a relatively straightforward analogy. Now we use 4G to download HD movies, which usually takes an hour. If it is fast, it will take dozens of minutes to download. But if you use 5G data services, it can be completed in 5-6 seconds.
Due to the high speed and stability characteristics of 5G networks, we can expect some real-time services to emerge.
For example, in the future, we don't have to go to the hospital to see a doctor. We can access the medical service 7*24 hours directly on the Internet, and conduct direct consultation with doctors from different countries and regions.
Sub-trend 3: communications satellites and space congestion
There are currently 800 aviation satellites orbiting the Earth. Their main function is to provide meteorological information and some communication services for their respective countries.
However, with the need for rich data acquisition, in the next 10 years, we predict that there will be thousands of communication satellites being launched, and there may even be satellite congestion in space.
The developed countries of satellite technology such as the United States, China, India, and Japan are the first to bear the brunt of the communications satellite.
Sub-trend 4: Virtual Office Environment
The future work environment will also become more flexible. On-demand conference venues and virtual conference systems are becoming more popular. If you can provide high-quality interactive channels such as voice calls, video calls, video conferencing, etc., there will be very good prospects.
Sub-trend 5: robot
We believe that everyone in the next 5-10 years will have the opportunity to own a robot. These robots will become assistants to our lives, wake us up every day and help us prepare clothes and coffee.
In fact, in the Japanese retail industry, we have seen successful cases of robot services. If you go to Japan's mobile phone service provider Softbank (SOFTBANK) to get a mobile phone, from consulting - machine selection - signing - mobile phone delivery - leaving the store, the whole process is done by the machine, the whole process does not have any real human interaction .
Sub-trend 6: big data
With the ubiquitous IOT and sensors, data flooding has followed. In front of these flooding data, how to clean and analyze becomes more important.
Big data has a lot of outputs and applications, such as predictive analytics, assisting business decisions, or as a dynamic pricing tool (such as the insurance industry. If your driving record is good, your car insurance costs will be lowered) If you are a crazy driver, your premium will be improved a lot), but the most important step is to get through the important part of "data analysis" to "meaningful business decisions."
Sub-trend 7: artificial intelligence
I talked about data flooding. Therefore, when we find and retrieve the required data, we will encounter difficulties in obtaining valid data.
Then the future AI search engine can help us solve this problem. By setting some conditions, formats and structures we need, it can collect data on the Internet through AI algorithm, and finally present the data according to the format and structure you need.
This means that in the future, my industry research and information consulting services will also be subverted.
Trend 2: Entities and e-commerce
More and more companies have achieved online and offline access.
For example, the automotive industry. For general car sales, we all think of retail stores. But now they are turning to the online store.
For example, Audi has an unmanned exhibition hall in London. Customers can see and experience the latest models in the exhibition hall, understand the relevant parameters, make purchasing decisions in the store and place orders, but there is no real person involved in the whole process.
There is also Tesla. In the United States, Tesla is completely bypassing the dealer network for car sales. You can place orders online and purchase auto insurance to achieve fast car delivery through logistics.
Trend 3: City is the customer
In the future, the city will become a very important customer of business.
We see a phenomenon in the world, Mega City is rapidly forming. Cities like Beijing, Tokyo, New York, and London, although they are now large, are still getting bigger. However, in this process, the city's energy consumption is severe and infrastructure construction cannot keep up.
Sub-trend 1: Urban infrastructure transformation
Siemens, ABB and Cisco all recognize this. In order to better participate in urban construction and development, they have reorganized and transformed their business models and layouts.
For example, Siemens has integrated the resources of its own automation control, power, construction and other departments, and integrated it in a framework called infrastructure and city. It is designed to solve the overall solution around the megacity problem we just talked about.
Sub-trend 2: urban safety
The bigger the city, the higher the security risks. How can the security department predict crime before the crime has taken place and catch the bad guys?
Some biometric fingerprinting, facial recognition, and iris scanning techniques can be a very important aid to the security department to quickly and accurately identify good and bad people.
Trend 4: Social development trends
We need to have a deeper understanding of different social groups (age, income, gender, etc.).
In India, young people are major part of the population, and we need to design more products and services for young people. In Japan, on the contrary, the products and services of the elderly in Japan will be more needed.
In addition, women's influence and decision-making will be stronger and stronger. We have seen a lot of women entering the position of power. For example, in politics, we have seen that the leaders of some developed countries are all women. South Korea has a female president, Tokyo, Japan has just elected the first female mayor.
Therefore, such a trend requires that when designing products, we should not use men as the default gender, but more to design products and services from a female perspective.
In the automotive industry, car dealers including Ford and BMW, Chrysler and Audi have begun to develop women's models. In the future, the same trend will occur in many other products and services.
Trend 5: Beyond the BRICS countries
When it comes to economic growth in the past, we first think of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). The situation is changing now: the economies of the four countries have experienced a slowdown to varying degrees.
Growth is emerging in other emerging economies. In Africa, we see Nigeria, Turkey and Egypt. In the Asia-Pacific, we see Vietnam and Indonesia, which are becoming new drivers of the economy.
In fact, China has been involved in investment development in emerging economies. There are many Chinese investment projects in Africa and the Middle East. If everyone here wants to participate in the development of the future economy, I believe that it can be found in an easier way.
Trend 6: Innovation to Zero
With innovative to zero thinking, you can get started with designing products and solutions.
What is innovation to zero? It is zero emissions, zero failure, zero waste, and zero pollution. If you can come up with a product solution to the Beijing government, saying that I can achieve zero waste, or zero pollution, I guarantee that you can get the order immediately.
Trend 7: New business model: providing value to more people
In terms of business model innovation, we see several themes, personalization, co-creation, joint development and so on.
personalise. In the past, we used a one-to-one or one-to-many model for personalized services. Now, many-to-many models can also be customized and personalized, and can also achieve economies of scale through commercial operations. The best thing to do more is Alibaba. On its platform, any user can purchase raw materials and products from any supplier.
Create together. Chinese company Xiaomi is doing very well at this point. Today you can submit your suggestions for future Xiaomi products on Xiaomi's website. Once adopted, you will get the company's reward.
If we look at the proportion of global innovation investment, we can see that 75% of the funds flow to incremental innovations such as product innovation, process innovation and delivery model innovation, such as making products faster, better, more types of colors, etc. But these are not real innovations.
Only the remaining 15% is really used in innovation in strategy and business models. Moreover, the investment in entrepreneurial model innovation tends to be higher than the return on investment in product innovation.
Trend 8: Well-being and welfare
Medical costs are rising in both developed and developing countries. The government has spent a lot of money to provide medical services and security for the people.
In the future, we will not only provide treatment services after the onset of illness, but we will also do preventive and predictive treatment before the onset of illness. Some smart wearable devices can be used to encourage people to form good habits and prevent some chronic diseases from happening in advance.
Trend 9: The future of energy
In the next 5-10 years, we will see a large-scale energy revolution, and traditional power companies will face complete subversion.
In the future, each of us will have both the role of a consumer and a generator. Tesla set up a power plant in the United States. The research direction of this factory is to use some advanced energy storage equipment to make every household a potential energy provider. The electricity produced by the family can not only meet the needs of each household. It is also possible to sell excess electricity to the country to get more income. Buildings will not only become more energy efficient, but they will also become energy collectors. Today's centralized power generation will become more and more decentralized.
At the same time, new battery technologies are emerging.
Trend 10: The future of the car
Due to the dense population density in large cities, travel traffic will become an indicator of urban quality. In a big city like Beijing, everyone should have a deep understanding. Buying, driving, parking, and car maintenance are very big burdens. In the future, there will be multiple solutions for urban smart transportation.
One of the most important is the popularity of self-driving cars. Especially in the United States, we predict that in the very near future, telematics-based autonomous vehicles will appear in our daily lives.
Why do you need to understand these big trends?
Whether you are in a business model or working in a large enterprise, you need to understand:
How people consume products and services in the future.
What are the needs that do not exist yet, but will appear in the future.
These are what we call forward-looking innovation. We recommend that you find some sub-trends related to your industry in the framework of the above 10 megatrends and study the possible impact of these sub-trends on your industry.
On the other hand, assess whether existing product solutions can meet future needs and try to develop products or services that may affect the future.
