Millennial Leaders
As the number of graduates increase every year, we expect to see an influx of millennial founders and leaders in the next year, competing with the likes of Pinterest, Airbnb, Facebook, Instagram to name a few. Watch out for more horizontal leadership, collaborative working techniques and new career paths in the coming year.

Cities Go Commercial and Smart
As urbanization increases in scale and volume, cities will begin to compete for foreign investment, tourism, and trade. In this quest for competition, cities will increasingly look for business models that generate additional revenue streams including adopting extensive city branding exercises and incorporating smart projects into the city ecosystem.

Peak Physical Currency
2015 could be the year of peak money in some countries in the West. Virtual payments such as mobile payments solutions and other digital wallets will see the decline of hard cash and challenge the credit cards market as well. Mobile payments will see growing importance in B2C but also B2B payments, with international B2B platforms emerging for cross border payments.

Hyper Connected Consumer
Multiple connected devices would allow customers to be less than an arms reach of any virtual information that they need. Online shopping channels, digital advertising, mobile channels, and other e-marketing will be highly leveraged in the coming year.

Transparency is the New Green
Increasingly pervasive analytics and collaborative platforms would make data and processes more transparent than ever before. Governments, corporates, organizations, communities, supply chains and even individuals will be more accountable and liable for policies, decisions and strategies.

Targeted and Personalised Advertising
The onslaught of smart TVs, connected devices and big data analytics will allow advertisers to deliver targeted advertising dynamically into broadcast programming and the retail environment. In this way, advertising becomes specific to each viewer/customer. In show-rooms custom features such as personalised screens and music will give a truly customised and personalised experience.

“Social Goes Corporate” – From Sharing to Business
Peer-to-peer and social networks concepts will permeate into the corporate world such as co-creation, lending structures and even marketplaces. Corporates will soon look into incorporating more sharing and social models into their strategy following in the footprints of parkatmyhouse.com, Airbnb or corporate car sharing to name a few.

Move toward Zero Latency
The world will prepare itself for faster processing speeds and faster response times. The next few years will see a move toward zero latency and human unnoticeable delays providing real-time experiences. This will increasingly be embedded into workflows and other processes.

 

Wellth is Wealth

Individuals will increasingly look towards striking a work-life balance and demanding goods and services around the wellness value proposition. Companies will start shifting their strategies from “profit to purpose” by creating wellness experiences through ergonomically designed environments, new wellness features in products and even health-conscious restaurants (food) to name a few.

Faster Trade Liberalisation
With US and China announcing tariff reducing agreements, Japan-EU discussing FTAs, and India and Australia moving towards free trade plans we will soon see trade harmonization happen in a phased manner. Bilateral economic agendas will ultimately evolve into multi-lateral trading systems with a potentially significant impact on businesses.

Networked Community
Accelerated connectivity will enable community-driven models to transform from a mere knowledge-sharing portal to a full-fledged support group or even a marketing forum. A lot of companies, such as Dell, use this as a platform to liaise with customers and to understand technical glitches and even identify unmet needs.

Women Focussed Strategies
As the policymakers debate and implement policies increasing quota for women in boardrooms in 2015, we will see a lot more women focussed strategies across companies in different sectors. Many firms, such as car companies will develop specific vehicle models and sales channels for women.

Autonomous World
2015 will mark an important transformation of the world becoming truly autonomous. Mobile robots will make in-roads into our everyday life. Drones will be used beyond military applications and the first test pilots of autonomous cars will take place taking us from hands free to feet free and mind free whilst driving.

Mobile Optimization
Mobile optimization channels will become more popular in the next year. Marketers and companies will realize the need to optimize every digital experience into the smaller screen of the mobile including better payment options.

B2B E-Commerce Models
With B2B Ecommerce set to increase to $6.7 trillion in 2020, we will see more B2B models moving away from legacy systems and the use of EDI (electronic data interchange) to ubiquitous and affordable online platforms where buyers and sellers can meet anywhere. This transition will mark a move from the ‘one to many’ model where one company has to work with many suppliers to a ‘many to many’ model where multiple organizations are integrating their processes with e-procurement companies and pure play online B2B retailers to automate the purchase of their goods online.