Technology continues to evolve to ensure the best services for humans. Every day new challenges arise for a constantly changing world, forced to face increasingly complex problems and to reinvent itself every time. As a result, organizations must keep pace to track and drive progress.
The McKinsey Technology Council has identified the top 14 technology trends that have marked the year as it draws to a close. This is a list that takes into consideration the most significant trends belonging to two thematic areas: IT and digital technologies and physical technologies in sectors such as energy and mobility.
For each trend, the innovation and interest scores to indicate how much companies have invested in the sector and how much interest there has been, in general, on the web for the topic. The research showed that applied AI was the technology in which the most investments were made and which recorded the most innovative projects; from the point of view of common interest, however, it is the issue of clean energy that has attracted the most attention.
technology trends The 14 trends identified by McKinsey are:
Applied AI, which includes all the models used to classify, predict and manage all problems related to the automation of activities and the field of decision-making processes. Organizations invested approximately $165 billion, up from $66 billion in 2018. AI is the trend with the highest innovation score of all others; advanced connectivity, i.e. low power wireless networks, 5G/6G cellular and terrestrial satellites. These technologies are able to improve industrial productivity by increasing data throughput and geographical coverage, while ensuring less latency with less energy required. Also in this case the investments of the industries have increased and at the same time the general interest in the subject has increased; bioengineering, which includes all the innovations to improve the area of health, agriculture, energy and materials. After the pandemic, sensitivity towards issues related to human well-being has increased, devising increasingly innovative and efficient solutions and products; clean energy, with projects aimed at reducing CO2 emissions along the entire energy chain, starting from generation, passing through storage and arriving at energy distribution. The main solutions combine the latest technological innovations with renewable energies such as solar and wind power and sustainable fuels such as hydrogen. Although research in the field has not increased significantly, the general interest in the subject has increased;
technology trend transport, which today can rely on new technologies for land-air transport of both people than of goods. The trend sees a growing interest in autonomous, electric and always connected vehicles, to improve transport sustainability and efficiency; the sustainable consumption of goods and services, products with the lowest possible environmental impact. Companies are increasingly focusing on low-impact production chains using sustainable materials and low-carbon technologies to try to mitigate climate change; the Web3, i.e. all platforms and applications designed to work with open standards and protocols in a decentralized network. The trend, albeit slowly, aims to decentralize authority and redistribute it among users, giving them back control over their data and resources; "industrialized" machine learning: companies are investing more in software and hardware solutions that support the development of machine learning algorithms to support performance monitoring, resource stability and a general improvement of the production chain. Organizations aim to exploit the full potential of ML by automating processes and solving recurring problems; immersive reality technologies, which are gaining ground after the advent of the Metaverse. Although there is still a certain resistance to novelty and a general climate of distrust, augmented and virtual reality technologies continue to affect most of the world's realities; the cloud and edge computing, among the trends that more than others have experienced a boost in innovation (but not in the general interest). Cloud solutions have increased significantly in the last year and companies are realizing the importance of leveraging remote data centers and implementing comprehensive security solutions; trust architectures and digital identity. Digital-trust technologies are assuming an increasingly important role in a historical moment like this where privacy and personal data are deeply felt issues. Solutions of this type not only allow you to manage risk and protect resources, but also to improve relationships with your customers;
technology trend space technologies have experienced significant development in the last 5-10 years, thanks to a decrease in costs which has made them more accessible. Satellites and launch vehicles have reduced in weight, size, energy required and costs, and investments have increased from 4 billion in 2018 to 12 billion in 2021; quantum technologies have known more investment and interest in the last 4 years. Even if the score calculated by McKinsey is still very low, we must consider that we are in the initial stages of the development of these technologies. The commissioning of Leonardo, one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, is an excellent example of a trend that is catching on right now and in which it is very convenient to invest; the development of "next-gen" software, which includes all the development support tools to generate high-quality applications in less time. Tools like GitHub's CoPilot and low-code and no-code platforms can revolutionize software development by reducing repetitive tasks.