As the CTO of a marketing technology company, my main
challenge is to keep up with rapid changes in technology and consumer behavior
in order to create differentiated growth. In the last 10 years, mobile and social media have disrupted
advertising, software and consumer electronics. Just like the rise of the PC
and internet a decade before, these are foundational disruptions. Multiple groundbreaking technologies are looking to change
how we interact with products, companies and each other, and they are being
driven by a perfect storm of dependent innovation.
It's an exciting time, particularly in five key ways.
1. Machine learning will exponentially heighten the
intelligence of our apps and devices.
Machine learning is defined as artificial intelligence that
enables software to learn without being explicitly pre-programmed. These
programs can be given general constraints and outcomes and teach themselves to
grow and change as they are exposed to new data. If it sounds vague, that's
because machine learning is applicable to a wide variety of problems, often
highlighted by complexity or volumes of data. Machine learning is at the crux
of language processing apps like Apple's Siri, Google Voice and Amazon's Alexa.
It helps them understand us and even anticipate our follow-up questions. It's
also powering marketing and advertising technology by offering personalized
products and offers, even in areas as highly subjective as fashion. For
example, StitchFix, an online personal stylist, can accurately predict the
chances you will keep their clothing recommendations after receiving them in
the mail. In addition, machine learning helps optimize logistics to better
route drivers, predict travel times and optimize shipping and manufacturing
processes.
That same learning technology also powers the spatial
processing necessary for self-driving cars to understand the complex world
around them, when to react and prevent accidents, and how to predict the
behavior of others. Those same visual libraries are being used to index images
and videos for search, power facial recognition and much more. It's no wonder
the term "machine learning" has increased threefold in Google Trends
over the last three years.
2. The Internet of Things (IoT) will activate everything
around us.
IoT enables everyday objects to have network connectivity to
send and receive data. IoT unlocks all kinds of possibilities: smart watches
that record our biometrics; Amazon Dash, a magnet on your fridge that can order
household items automatically when you run out; or your Nest thermostat that
you can control from your smartphone miles away. Just as the PC's usefulness
grew exponentially when connected to the internet, so too will the everyday
objects around you. Realizing the dreams of a truly networked world at the
appliance level has required some key advancements. Because many IoT objects
will rarely be connected to a power source, they must use power wisely.
Next-generation batteries, energy conservation and low-energy communication
protocols are the keys to ensuring devices aren't bulky, inconvenient or
expensive.
And because their form factors are often small and tactile,
simplified interfaces are important for success. Voice, tactile and
highly-simplified screen interfaces like Alexa, Amazon Dash and Nest require
extraordinary UX/UI design, as convenience will drive consumer adoption. The
inside story of Amazon Echo is a great lesson on the extraordinary efforts
needed to get an IoT product right.
3. Mobile will continue to influence our lives.
The internet advertising industry has grown 20 percent
year-over-year and is largely fueled by mobile, which has grown 66 percent YoY.
Still, mobile only represents 12 percent of spend versus 25 percent of time
spent, which is to say mobile advertising still has room to double. Entire
generations are shifting from watching TV to watching video on mobile. More
people watched the MTV Music Awards and college football on Snapchat than on
TV. Every aspect of video production, management and delivery will have to
improve at lower costs to keep up with demand. As well, messaging is being
adopted in all areas of our lives, especially Asia, which is ahead in this
area. It's changing the way people bank, hail a taxi or buy online. In the
enterprise space, Slack took just one year to hit a $1 billion valuation.
Lastly, upcoming 5G networks will unlock unparalleled speeds that will untether
us all from hardline cable and fiber.
There will be a huge investment in infrastructure over the
next five years, and traditional hardline vendors, like cable companies, are
going to struggle when the internet is truly mobile. When data is ubiquitous,
inexpensive and lightning fast, data-heavy services will become completely
unshackled.
4. Augmented and virtual reality will become reality.
The popularity of Snapchat and MSQRD prove that we
inherently want to create augmented digital versions of ourselves, and
MagicLeap has shown that we are not too far away from groundbreaking realism in
augmented reality. After a decade of talk, we are finally close to the
"Minority Report" experience. In its first week, Pokemon Go, has
experienced more daily active users than Twitter, demonstrating a mass market
desire to have fun in an AR/VR environment. However, there simply isn't enough
AR/VR content to fulfill projected usage, which represents a huge opportunity
for content creators. There is a tremendous amount of processing power needed
to fuel these apps, and a new wave of consumer hardware with AR/VR at the
forefront will help reinvigorate flat smartphone sales. Networked 360-degree
cameras made popular by Google Maps will now be in our hands and will help make
the mapping of physical-to-virtual worlds photo-realistic.
VR will force society as a whole to reevaluate our role of
the physical world, how much time we spend "plugged in," and how we
can spend time creating a better reality.
5. Security will underlie all big changes.
We are in an extremely fragile state in terms of security.
Enterprises are underprepared for cyber attacks, the director of the FBI calls
cybercrime a top threat, and news of hackers stealing millions of personal
records has become commonplace. We are enabling the objects around us to
collect more intimate data, like where we are, when we sleep, what brands we
buy and how often, and whether or not we exercise. Beyond new transactional and
authentication protocols like Blockchain, security needs to be embedded as a
primary layer in every application. That's a daunting challenge for
governments, enterprises and individuals, and it will be interesting to see how
much fraud and cyber crime we are willing to tolerate as part of our systems. With
these five key trends, our world is changing faster than ever before. Prepare
yourself -- and your business -- for what's set to have a huge impact on the
way our lives operate.
Credit: Inc.com
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