Gartner has revealed its top strategic predictions for 2017 and beyond. Gartner's top predictions for 2017 examine three fundamental effects of continued digital innovation: experience and engagement, business innovation, and the secondary effects that result from increased digital capabilities.
Last year, Gartner said digital changes were coming fast but this year the acceleration continues and may cause secondary effects that have wide-ranging impact on people and technology.
Top 10 Strategic Predictions for 2017 and beyond
By 2020, 100 mn consumers will shop in AR: The popularity of augmented reality (AR) applications, such as Pokemon GO, will help bring AR into the mainstream, prompting more retailers to incorporate it into the shopping experience.Using AR applications to layer digital information - text, images, video and audio - on top of the physical world, represents one such route to deeper engagement, both in-store and in other locations.
By 2020, 30% web browsing sessions will be done without a screen: New audio-centric technologies, such as Google Home and Amazon's Echo, are making access to dialogue-based information ubiquitous and spawning new platforms based on "voice-first" interactions. By eliminating the need to use ones' hands and eyes for browsing, vocal interactions extend the utility of web sessions to contexts such as driving, cooking, walking, socializing, exercising and operating machinery.
By 2019, 20% brands will abandon mobile apps: Many brands are finding that the level of adoption, customer engagement and return on investment (RoI) delivered by their mobile applications are significantly less than the expectations that underpinned their app investment. New approaches are emerging that have a lower barrier to discovery and install, and offer levels of engagement that approach those of applications at a fraction of the investment, support and marketing cost.
By 2020, algorithms will alter behavior of 1 bn workers: Algorithms can positively alter their behavior by augmenting their intelligence with the large collective memory bank containing knowledge that has been socialized and put to the test. This will help workers "remember" anything or be informed of just-in-time knowledge that they have never even experienced, leaving them to objectively complete the task at hand but also to better appreciate life as it unveils.
By 2022, blockchain-based business will be worth $10 bn: Blockchain technology is established as the next revolution in transaction recording. A blockchain ledger provides an immutable, shared view of all transactions between engaging parties. Parties can therefore immediately act on a committed blockchain record, secure in the knowledge that it cannot be changed. Any kind of value exchange can happen in minutes, not days. Blockchain applications can free up cash, reduce transaction costs, and accelerate business processes. While blockchain development is still immature, it is attracting product and capital investment.
By 2021, 20% of activities an individual engages will involve at least one of the top-seven digital giants: The current top-seven digital giants by revenue and market capitalization are Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. As the physical, financial and healthcare world becomes more digital, many of the activities an individual engages in will be connected. This convergence means that any activity could include one of the digital giants. Mobile apps, payment, smart agents (e.g., Amazon Alexa), and digital ecosystems (e.g., Apple HomeKit, WeChat Utility and City Services) will make the digital giants part of many of the activities we do.
Through 2019, every $1 enterprises invest in innovation will require an additional $7 in core execution: Designing, implementing, integrating, operationalizing, and managing the ideated solution can be significantly more than the initial innovation costs. Thus, Gartner anticipates that for every $1 spent on the digital innovation/ideation phase, enterprises will spend on average $7 for deploying the solution.
Through 2020, IoT will increase data center storage demand by around 3%: The Internet of Things (IoT) has enormous potential for data generation across the roughly 21 billion endpoints expected to be in use in 2020. Of the roughly 900 exabytes worth of data center hard-disk drive (HDD) and solid-state drive (SSD) capacity forecast to ship in 2020, IoT discrete sensor storage will represent only 0.4 percent, with storage from multimedia sensors consuming another 2 percent, for a rounded total of 2.3 percent.
By 2022, IoT will save consumers and businesses $1tn a year: The IoT holds enormous promise in reducing the cost of maintenance and consumables. The challenge lies in providing a secure, robust implementation that can deliver savings over one or two decades, without driving management costs that absorb any savings made. This could be an inexpensive monitoring system based on simple sensors that report defining characteristics to analytical servers.
By 2020, 40% of employees can cut their healthcare costs by wearing a fitness tracker: Companies will increasingly appoint fitness program managers to work closely with human resource leaders to include fitness trackers in wellness programs as part of a broader employee engagement initiative. Healthcare providers can save lives and downstream costs by acting on the data from wearable fitness trackers that show health risks to the user.
All these strategic predictions need to be clearly monitored by organisations so that they are not left behind vis-a-vis their competitors both internally as well as externally.
