The Top Trends & Predictions for 2018
The new year brings plenty of reflection on what worked and what didn’t in the previous year while looking ahead and asking “What’s Next?” Identifying 2018 trends is crucial to success, not only in the year ahead but beyond.
But with all the discussions out there, including announcements at CES, what should you pay attention to? The sheer amount of ideas can feel overwhelming.
We represent some of the leading thinkers on trendspotting. They have their finger on the pulse and help paint a big picture of what’s ahead for you and your organization.
Here the top global trends making waves according to our speakers:
Mike Lipkin encourages audiences to ‘dance with disruption.’ No matter who you are, or what your role is, part of your job is to be a disruptor. We all face a future that is nothing like our past. We can struggle with disruption or we can dance with it. Mike encourages audiences to embrace disruption and create the future one step at a time.
Here are his top-10 trends in 2018:
1. A Strong World Economy
2.The Rise of the Perennial
3. A Focus on Leadership
4. A Year of sports
5. Globalization and Immigration will Accelerate
6. Online Merges with Offline (OMO)
7. Values Matter
8. The Pursuit of Happiness
9. Personal Ownership
10.Intentional Community Building
Watch the clip below to hear Mike break down each of these trends & hear how they’ll impact us in 2018:
Mike offers a keynote program specific to these 2018 trends on Disruption. He will walk your team through the trends and coach them on how to leverage them in favour of your organization.
Request more information on Mike’s keynote presentation for your event.
Cheryl Cran is on a mission. She challenges leaders to strive for higher levels of ‘leadership mastery’ and provides tools, resources and processes to help leaders evolve, lead change and be ready for the Future of Work Now.
Cheryl looks at three trends that affect the workplace:
1. The change in HOW people are working
2. Freelancers subsidizing the workplace with talent
3. More focus on the WHAT and the WHY of work
Watch the video below for her insights on each of these trends & how they’ll impact us in 2018:
Cheryl’s Future of Work is NOW keynote presentation helps organizations deal with these trends & more. The talk helps leaders and their teams survive and thrive now and beyond the year 2020.
Request more information on Cheryl’s keynote presentation for your event.
Nikolas Badminton wows audiences with presentations on the impact of exponential technologies including Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality; Work Productivity; The Sharing Economy; Autonomous Transportation; Smart Cities; Education; The Future of AI integrated with Life and Business; and 2018 trends and beyond.
Here are 10 of the trends Nikolas looks at for the year ahead:
1. Open Citizen Rating Systems
Life would be good if you made the right moves 100% of the time, but that doesn’t happen. What would happen if you were rated on your performance and the actions you took? We could be seeing a personalized rating system like Uber or Airbnb. China is already nearing this with their Social Credit System (SCS), a structure meant to enhance trust nationwide.
2. Data Science Becomes a Core Discipline
Even with more students entering the field of study, McKinsey estimates the market could still be a shortfall of 250,000 data scientists in the job market. By 2024 they estimate these types of positions will have grown 11% over a 10 year period.
3. AI is the new Foundation
We’ll start to see public opinion change around self-driving vehicles. As technology has improved, fears have diminished. Now the big ‘traditional’ automakers are showcasing their efforts to catch up to Google and Tesla. But what are some of the overlooked repercussions? Nikolas believes with the increased safety on our roads reducing the high number of casualties from automobile accidents, we’ll see an organ donation shortage.
4. Smart Cities Investment Rise
BCC Research predicts a 17.7% growth rate by the year 2021. Energy is the biggest sector for smart city investment, with cities seeking cleaner and more efficient systems to manage limited energy resources. There are also opportunities in water and waste management, transportation, e-government services and more.
5. Experiments in Negative Emissions
Global carbon emissions have not slowed down to a level most scientists had hoped for. An alternative form of relief – direct air (CO2) capture – is now becoming affordable, achievable and heading toward scale.
6. Financial Transaction Revolutions
We’ve all heard about the Blockchain trend, but in 2018 we’ll see financial institutions move towards the commercial deployment phase of this technology.
7. Medical Apps Replace Doctors
Currently, there are over 100,000 mobile health apps on the market, but we’ll see that number grow as the FDA ramps up its review and approval of these apps. There’s also progress towards devices that accurately diagnose health conditions independent of a health care worker or facility.
8. Open Source Drugs shake up Big Pharma
In the Bay Area, some DIY biology enthusiasts are creating a freely available, open protocol for insulin production. They are hoping the work inspires other biohackers to band together and create open-source solutions like never before.
9. Nanotechnology Momentum
Nanotechnology will be used for data storage. IBM has now captured 330TB of uncompressed data into a cartridge the size of a hand, all thanks to advanced nanotech and new signal-processing algorithms.
10. Practical Quantum Computing
Quantum Cryptography is coming. An application knowns as Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) could make data safer. Any potential eavesdroppers looking to steal data would need to take measurements of particles, and in doing so, change the particles behaviour…therefore creating detectable errors that can alert users about compromised data keys prior to the encoding of information.
For even more trends and insights, Download Nikolas’ free 2018 Trends Report here.
Nikolas offers industry-specific keynote presentations focused on what’s next with his ‘Future of…’ keynotes. They look at 2018 trends, the year of radical creativity & beyond. View a list of past presentations here.
Request more information on Nikolas’ keynote presentation for your event.
Global trend watcher Vikram Mansharamani helps organizations peer into the future on crucial areas like China, food, the global economy, Africa, housing, investing, financial cycles, energy and much more. At the start of each year, he develops a list of the top global developments to have a big impact on us over the next 5-years. Here are his 2018-2023 predictions:
1. China’s effort to rebuild the Silk Road becomes the world’s most important economic development.
2. As nations increasingly find themselves budget-constrained, funding for the United Nations is continuously cut.
3. The market for human organs booms, leading some countries to legalize the buying and selling body parts.
4. Many nations begin building strategic fertilizer reserves, leading to a scramble for scarce phosphate and potash resources.
5. Policymakers propose regulations to curtail the power that technology titans have acquired by dominating their domains.
6. Venezuelan chaos intensifies, resulting in a full-blown humanitarian crisis that draws global attention.
7. On-demand knowledge, colleges and universities face an existential crisis as society questions the role of higher education.
8. A shortage of skilled labour leads the global construction industry to embrace digital technologies and integrated planning methods to achieve a material improvement in output per unit of input.
9. As currency wars intensify, several countries peg their currencies to a cryptocurrency.
10. A devastating earthquake strikes the Pacific Northwest, displacing millions and resulting in a newfound appreciation for vulnerabilities along the Ring of Fire.
View Vikram’s full list & details of 18 trends for 2018-23 here.
Vikram’s keynote ‘Don’t Let the Future Surprise You‘ is all about Spotting Bubbles Before They Burst. He empowers audiences with practical tools and assures them they don’t need to be an expert to effectively anticipate the future.
Request more information on Vikram’s keynote presentation for your event.
A speaker who brings excitement and curiosity to technical topics, Jesse Hirsh is able to synthesize abstract concepts into digestible and actionable pieces of information. Appearing on CBC’s Metro Morning, Jesse outlined the 2017 trends we saw in tech, and outlined 5 predictions for 2018 & beyond:
1- Techlash: The backlash against large tech companies
The masses will continue pushing back vs. the narrative these companies use. Europe has already been quick to adapt regulation, but in 2018, we’ll see America is starting to pay more attention to the regulatory framework.
2- Bitcoin as a bubble that will burst
The underlying reasoning behind Bitcoin’s emergence is an institutional distrust… That will continue to be relevant regardless of Bitcoin or any other blockchain-brand emerges as a frontrunner.
3- AI becomes a far more effective tool in 2018
AI products are learning more about us and becoming better tools for addressing our needs. One often overlooked outcome is the fact we are also evolving. We’re becoming smarter and learning more about AI and our interactions with it. Because of it, we’ll see the need to regulate the platforms better.
4 – Healthcare in AI will explode
It’s a great potential tool for health & wellness. We’ll continue to see growth here in the year ahead. At the same time, our phones are becoming better at finding out what ails us before we (or our doctors) are aware of it.
5 – The Right to Explain
As AI begins to make decisions for us, it should explain why it made those decisions for us. We’ll see plenty of regulatory debates around this in the year ahead.
Listen to his full tech trends interview on Metro Morning here.
Jesse applies his perspective as a technology expert and futurist to a range of industries with his ‘What’s Next For You?‘ keynotes. In these presentations, he brings forward themes of leadership and innovation while offering up practical solutions for any organization. View a list of Jesse’s Industry-Specific presentations here.
Request more information on Jesse’s keynote presentation for your event.
Some other recommended readings on 2018 trends: Speaker Dana McCauley on Healthy food trends that blew up in 2017 and technology futurist speaker Daniel Burrus on The Top 20 Technology-Driven Hard Trends Shaping 2018.
