Business Futures

Complex and real-time changes will become the norm for business in the 21st century. At the same time we forecast going back to the future. Business leaders need to develop a capacity to envision future opportunities as well as challenges. The short term focus that grips many organizations misses rich opportunities for future success.

There are vast changes yet to come that will frustrate but change every aspect of business. Developing the capacity as a leader to become Future Smart, to learn to anticipate future trends and change may well become the key skill to survival.

Technology will be the major enabling force for business in the future transforming supply chains, value nets, business models, workstyles and opening up new global markets for expansion.

The full integration of technology into business will transform commerce, just as society is being altered. This is the first wave of digital global electronic economics, a new model. The convergence of artificial intelligence, data mining, the next Internet, supply chain engineering, business process change and wireless eBusiness will create both disruptions and opportunities.

The Global Intelligent Marketplace
Much of how business does business is still trapped in 19th century models. There are trillions of dollars of products that are in inventories worldwide. Models for distribution and supply chain optimization, from procurement to marketing are frozen in time, too often disconnected from the electronic web of the enterprise. Suppliers, customers, agents, producers still are paper and distance constrained. The next generation marketplace will find a convergence of applied artificial intelligence, super fast optical networks, wireless systems, smart agents and real-time communications. Hard questions must be asked now to determine core competencies, strategic positioning and corporate identity to meet this fast future.

Future supply chains will possess the super efficiencies of knowledge management, customer data mining; and be linked to Marketplace to Marketplace, M2M commerce. AI enabled decision support systems that are deeply personalized, connecting vendors, suppliers and producers will produce an elegant network of commercial efficiency for customers.

New Visions of Business
Business in the future will need to become even more efficient about providing a highly monetized customer service experience–valuable for customers as well as vendors. As products and services become commodities and pricing is not a sole driver of customer choice, business customer service enabled by IT will win the day. These are the four domains of eBusiness customer service that will shape competitiveness: Speed, Connectivity, Innovation and Quality.

Price Elasticity and Fluid Markets
Real-time anywhere wireless communications will explode competition and open markets worldwide. New marketplaces will revolve around, one minute product offers, predicative demographics, Internet product development polls and other Net-economy innovations. Prices will become highly elastic, moving targets based on the conditions of the moment. Markets will be fluid, very flexible and personalized based on loyalty commitments, dynamic and digitally cash-ready.

Ecash – the new currency of the global electronic economy.
The “wallet” of the future is a smart wireless media appliance, transaction portal, personal computer, and communication device.

New Business Visions
In the next evolution of business, where every business is an e-business, software agents and avatars will play an important role. Agents will help us navigate commerce, find information, negotiate deals and even keep us company.

Our entire idea about supply chains and business will change in the future. Entrepreneur will create on-demand virtual supply chains–super efficient, that come together for a specific project and then dissolve. Someone will build a Virtual Supply Chain Bank, to re-use these resources for others to deploy.

The Digital Lifestyle
The wireless revolution is just beginning. The next generation of consumers, the kids of today, will have less barriers to frustrate their adoption of technology. As communications and commerce merge, as technology becomes per- vasive and invisible, tomor- row’s consumers will forge new lifestyles.

Smart Portals, engines of the B2B universe;
The integration of knowledge management, ERP, collaborative workspace, intelligent media, and the internet.

Global Diversity
We will all have to learn to deal with a multi-cultural world of different values and lifestyles. China will become the largest market in the world.

The New Security
Our world was changed after 9/11 now personal security is on the front burner and will continue to grow in importance to customers.

Changing Demographics Changing Customers
The largest concentration of wealth on the planet is in the hands of the baby boomers. How will we deal with the Age Wars between Generation X, the Millennial and the Boomers?

New Leadership for a New Future
The new leaders of tomorrow must be ready to face a complex set of unknowns never faced before: competition for talent, managing rapid change and creating real-time agility.