Big Data & Digital Technologies Transform Businesses but Lack Capabilities
According to McKinsey’s first annual survey on the topic, most C-level executives say that the three key trends in digital business are big data and analytics, digital marketing and social-media tools, and the use of new delivery platforms such as cloud computing and mobility. These form the strategic priorities at their companies. However, they also report some tough challenges. Nearly half of respondents say their companies’ investments in digital initiatives are too small to deliver on their goals.
New Literacies Needed?
Increasingly, many Western societies face a ‘double whammy’: simultaneous high levels of youth unemployment and skills shortages. But it is not just formal and traditional skills that are needed; ‘new literacies’ from the digital to real world, verbal to visual, scientific and financial are being highlighted as critical to our futures. New literacies could be seen as little more than rebranding of old ideas, but in doing so it may focus attention and garner momentum for change and new solutions for our new economies.
IBM CEO Study: Openness by Social Media Is Key Enabler to Organizational Success
According to the IBM CEO study conducted amongst 1,700 CEOs from 64 countries and 18 sectors, Open CEOs' identify openness enabled and supported by social media and technologies, as a major influence on their organization and its success. These organizations perform better because they are utilizing the collective intelligence, are more agile, able to act quickly to gain higher profitability and growth.
Personal Delivery on the Rise
Collaborative consumption and peer to peer (P2P)systems are taking a new turn: collaborative delivery. P2P delivery sites put people in need of different items locally or in faraway places in touch with people who are willing to bring them. They provide access to much needed items to the recipient; new experiences and an opportunity to do a good deed to the deliverer; and make better use of journey related resources and carbon emissions.
A Coming Food Waste Revolution?
Food waste is a major and growing problem; it is also moving rapidly up policy, corporate and consumer agendas. Reducing food waste is a win: win solution several times over: saving the planet, people, resources and money. It may need something of a food waste revolution but the current combination of pressures, new technologies and new solutions may be enough to achieve it.
Social Media – Digital Recombinant DNA?
Social media has already fundamentally changed the way many of us live our lives or do business. In coming years its role in almost every aspect of public, private, political, commercial and community life is likely to grow; it could be seen as digital recombinant DNA, central to everything but changing and being changed, made up of millions of bits and bytes, with multiple roles, instructions and connections. This extended trend alert indicates some of the trends affecting the current development of social media, as a prelude to further discussions at a forthcoming foresight meeting in London; it does not claim to be comprehensive, but a jump off point.
Dark Tourism Emergent
Two recent events – one a corruption tour, the other the opening of a new academic institute- appear to extend and change the nature of what has become known as ‘dark tourism’- an interest in death and the macabre. New technology will continue to expand the potential offer of dark tourism; it may also do for politics and corruption, what eco-tourism has done for awareness of the environment.
Open Access Tipping Point?
The arrival of eLife, a new open access journal, together with new science networking sites and new metrics to measure the impact of research publications may force the pace of change facing the business of scientific and academic publishing. We may be witnessing a tipping point in collaboration, faster access and new opportunities.
Big Data: Big Hype or Big Value?
The amount of data organizations are expected to manage for planning, transparency, compliance, etc. is expanding, but the amount of data which could benefit these organizations if analysed effectively is growing exponentially with the aid of social media, RFIDs, machine translators, and other tools. The total amount of digital data is growing exponentially leading to the coining of the term big data which has become a major buzzword in the enterprise and even in the general press, but what is the real value behind the hype?
Breaking Language Barriers
Learning a foreign language is exceedingly difficult for many people, but digital technology is making modest translations of text and voice faster, easier, and more accessible. Machine translators (MT) have been around for years, but the level of availability and their quality continue to rise. They promise to cost-effectively unite the world even more than before with a variety of applications from tourism and social collaboration to business and politics.
Material Disruption Ahead
New materials and processes are proving effective against a growing range of bacteria and have wide ranging applications. Similar approaches may also change the way we clean our clothes and how often we paint our houses. They could also prove disruptive to existing sectors’ income streams.
Resilience Rules
Western societies and the systems we depend on to make them function are becoming ever more complex. As a result, they are also becoming more vulnerable to catastrophic, systemic failure. As individuals, communities and societies we may, at the same time, be becoming less able to cope with such events as we lose basic skills, families are more scattered and communities less connected.
Redefining Local Stores
Demand for food grown locally has become a major trend. But local food also includes rising concern about ‘food deserts’, areas where residents have no easy access to fresh fruit and vegetables; the closure of local shops; health inequalities and the obesity. Add in convenience, new technology, and a few entrepreneurs and the result is an emerging redefinition of local stores.
Greening Higher Places
Population pressure and environmental concerns are pushing cities around the world to embrace the concept of green roofs. As climate change distorts natural systems, the environmental, economic and aesthetic benefits of green roofs are set to create a new norm in city management.
Reducing Congestion – Courtesy of Technology and Business Model Innovation?
Congestion is a growing problem in towns, cities and on motorways the world over as the number of cars continues to increase. Two, currently separate but potentially converging developments, namely seriously smart driverless cars and shared ownership schemes, could reduce car ownership and congestion, while still ensuring – even extending –mobility and independence.
Enterprise Social Media Usage Pays Off In Innovation And Knowledge Sharing
This concludes the survey by the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM), the global community of information professionals, authored by Andrew McAfee, a principal research scientist at the MIT Sloan Center for Digital Business and the AIIM Task Force on Social Business and Innovation.
Learning by Doing
New forms of learning by doing seem to be emerging. Technology could play a role in finding innovative ways to enable skills development and greater understanding of personal actions, reactions and decisions.
Boom Time for Robots, but no one Else?
Is the current jobless recovery in the USA a foretaste of what the growing capabilities of robots could inflict on the workforce and the economy? Are we seeing the early indicators of the need for an economic rethink?
Rising to the Challenge of Peak Population
In 2011, world population passed the 7 billion mark. While growth will continue, total fertility rates are falling fast and will result in slower population growth and possibly, according to some, declining total population. Lower fertility rates may bring a demographic dividend, significant opportunities but also challenges. Or, we may be doomed, as others would suggest.
How Human Behavior Can Skew Innovation
A variety of human group behaviors can undermine innovation. For best results, we need to be aware of them and mitigate those that can derail innovation efforts.
Mobilising Health Apps
Mobile health apps are set to change the way individuals can look after their health, doctors can diagnose and monitor patients, and medical research can collect data and develop their research. As health apps go from ‘dumb’, i.e. use only aggregated or limited personal data to intelligent using personalised health records and genetic data, a revolution may be underway.
Innovating with Bug Power
Clean water and clean power, especially in remote areas of Africa and other developing nations, are critical challenges. One piece of technology, Microbial Fuel Cells, (MFCs) could help address both problems, and bring the additional benefits of mobile communications - changing the lives of millions. In one incarnation, it might also reduce the scourge of malaria.
Regulating Nano: Tiny Particles, Huge Questions
It is a difficult time for regulators trying to make sense of nanotechnologies, the engineering of super-small particles to utilize their size and unusual properties. While environmental, health, and safety (EHS) concerns abound, so too do the technological and economic benefits which extend particularly to the electronics, green tech, and health industries. As regulators seek to protect the populace, they also need to avoid undue public backlash which could damage these huge benefits because of poor communication and limited scientific research.
Analytics Spur Competitive Advantage and Bottom-up Innovation
Before getting to this stage, 44% of organizations say the primary barriers to enterprise-wide analytics adoption are cultural. IBM Institute for Business Value and MIT Sloan Management review released research based on a survey of more than 4,500 business leaders from more than 120 countries and a variety of industries.