The pace of change in terms of technology is breath-taking and at the moment we are seeing new products or materials that may revolutionize our lives: 3D printing, the ‘Internet of Things’, Graphene, to name but a few. Some have been in development for a while, others promise to open up new opportunities and create new industries. The entrepreneurs who can envisage future uses and trends will be the ones who may profit most from these new technologies.
I am not proposing to let you in on some big secret about what the next big thing will be, but here are ten that are worth watching, according to the World Economic Forum and identified in the ‘Top 10 Emerging Technologies for 2014’ report:
1. Body-adapted Wearable Electronics - Shifting the boundaries between ourselves and the technology, this is products like Google Glass and Fitbit. These are usually external wearables, but they are morphing into something more sophisticated that will do more than just monitor our heart rate and instead provide a range of real-time feedback.
2. Screenless Display - Releasing us from the physical constraints of a smartphone or tablet screen, screenless display promises to allow the projection of holographic key boards onto a surface, for example, or images projected directly onto the retina.
3. Human Microbiome Therapeutics - Our greater understanding of the thousands of microbes that inhabit the human ecosystem of millions of cells is leading to significant breakthroughs in terms of new treatments for serious diseases and the potential for vast improvements in our general healthcare.
4. Brain – computer Interfaces – controlling computers with the power of the mind is not just for X-Men and Dr Who, we have already seen technology that enables quadriplegics to move their wheelchairs or manipulate a robotic arm to lift an object.
5. Quantified Self (Predictive Analytics) – Basically data gathering on just about everything related to your daily life. Smartphones and other such ubiquitous technology is making vast amounts of data available that will assist everything from urban planning to traffic management. Privacy concerns abound, however.
6. Nanostructured Carbon Composites – Developing stronger and lighter composite materials, which would make vehicles much lighter, but also allow greater strength to absorb impacts. Boundless potential in both defence and civilian uses for these materials.
7. Mining Metals from Desalination Brine – With the Earth’s population exploding, freshwater will become a scarce commodity. Desalination of seawater becomes an attractive proposition, but it uses considerable energy. By extracting valuable minerals and metals, this could offset the costs of desalination.
8. Grid-scale Electricity Storage – Unlike fossil fuels, renewable sources of energy such as wind and wave cannot be stored. New technologies, such as flow batteries, may enable us to store the resulting energy from renewables in a way that is similar to fossil fuels.
9. Nanowire Lithium-ion Batteries – Batteries that could charge more quickly and generate more electricity and may revolutionize the electric car industry.
10. RNA-based Therapeutics – An important part of DNA that enables cells to function. RNA-base drugs offer the promise of treatments for a range of genetic disorders, cancers and other infectious diseases.
You may be able to spot the potential in one of these ten emerging technologies and if you do, you could be the entrepreneur who is lauded as bringing forth the ‘next big thing’.
What do you think will be the next big thing?
Written by Will Trevor – Founder and Training Consultant at Windsor Training: will.trevor@windsortraining.net
Picture Credit: By Tim.Reckmann (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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