looking back at the next ten years - fusion symposium 2024

Fusion 2024 Looking Back at the Next Ten Years

Peter Coffee VP for Strategic Research

salesforce.com inc.

BMW’s Winter Olympics Ad

Trying to predict the future is a discouraging and

hazardous occupation, because the prophet invariably

falls between two stools.

• If his prediction sounds at all reasonable, you can be quite

sure that in 20 or at most 50 years the progress of science and

technology has made him seem ridiculously conservative.

• If a prophet could describe the future exactly as it was going to

take place, his predictions would sound so absurd, so

farfetched, that everybody would laugh him to scorn.

If what I say now seems to be very reasonable, then I’ll fail

completely. Only if what I tell you appears absolutely unbelievable,

have you any chance of visualizing the future as it really will happen.

- Sir Arthur C. Clarke, 1964

I Propose To Be Unreasonable – Believably

Facts – what we can see is true right now

Observations – selected facts and calculations

Consequences – projections, scenarios, boundary cases

Actions – what we can do right now

Long View – what to watch; what would change our plan

By no accident at all, this turns out to have an acronym:

Permit me to introduce FOCAL

Mobility: 1/5 of world owned a smartphone, 1/17 a tablet (15Dec’13)

Let’s Begin With Some Facts – in 2014…


Social Interaction: 757M people logged in to Facebook daily (4Feb’14)




Internet of Things: 2-3B devices were already connected





Data Science: Average salary topped $89k (11Apr’13)





Data Science: Average salary topped $89k (11Apr’13)

InfoSec: ½ of sensitive data were exposed (Dec’12)

Higher Ed: ½-life of 4-year degree was ~18 mos. (1Mar’13)

Labor Force: 20-30% of Fortune 100 were “contingent” (Mar’12)

Healthcare: Cancer overtook heart disease in U.S. deaths (CDC & ACS)

Competitiveness: 40% of MFG.com member

companies won new business in 1H12 that

had previously been offshored (27Jun’12)


Observations and Consequences

People connected 24x7 → Social nets are lifestyle rather than activity;

everyone has “trusted advisor” networks and concierges always on call

Smartphone always at hand → control panel available for any device, less

need to shoehorn a UI into everything; hands/eyes-free interaction

Connected devices the norm, not the exception → too many apps, need a

universal container and a common convention for user interface

Graying populations rely on connected/adaptive devices to “age in place”

Data drive new disciplines with accelerating turnover of knowledge;

continuing education and increasing “freelancerization”

Massive data feeds & fusions → unexpected combinations will disclose

activities & associations, with major trust implications

Actions

Connected customers = reduced “retail arbitrage” opportunity: impels

unbundling of services, transparent value-based pricing

Connection explosion creates demand for adaptive algorithms yielding

more autonomous behavior: think Nest thermostat, not Mission Control

Apps explosion has to be contained: requires a universal container /

orchestrator and common conventions for user interface

Everything needs an API that goes beyond exposing functions, able to

participate in conversations for value-adding interactions

APIs and connections must stop relying on obscurity and novelty for

protection, adopting “trust but verify” safeguards & negotiation protocols

Long View

The safest predictions are based on demographics

The next-safest are based on geography

Can disruption be forecast? Research unconvincing

Are basic cultural norms up for grabs?

Gender roles

Work/life balance

Family size & structure

Definition of “standard of living”

Is there an optimal strategy? Or is it all just game theory?

“When the monsoon is over, you don’t throw away your umbrella”

“If a crisis requires change of strategy, you didn’t have a strategy”

“Geopolitics is about broad

impersonal forces that

constrain nations and human

beings and compel them to

act in certain ways.”

– George Friedman

Coda: The Medium View?

“Forecasting is best left to the long run, the

span over which individual decisions don’t carry

so much weight. But having forecast for the long

run, you can reel back your scenario and try to

see how it plays out in, say, a decade.”

“What makes this time frame interesting is that it

is sufficiently long for the larger, impersonal

forces to be at play but short enough for the

individual decisions of individual leaders to skew

outcomes that otherwise might seem inevitable.

A decade is the point at which history and

statesmanship meet, and a span in which

policies still matter.”

– George Friedman

Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

Peter Coffee

VP for Strategic Research

salesforce.com inc. [email protected]

@petercoffee

in/petercoffee

Bibliography

• www.businessinsider.com/smartphone-and-tablet-penetration-2013-10

• www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/feb/04/facebook-in-numbers-statistics

• blogs.cisco.com/news/cisco-connections-counter/

• www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-reports/idc-the-digital-universe-in-2020.pdf

• www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130522085217.htm

• http://trendwatching.com/trends/upgradia/

• www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/education/edlife/universities-offer-courses-in-a-hot-new-field-data-science.html

• www.futuristspeaker.com/2013/03/the-half-life-of-a-college-education/

• blog.lib.umn.edu/cdescomm/cdes_memo/Thomas_Fisher_Public_Sector_Spring2012.pdf

• www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

• www.alz.org/downloads/facts_figures_2013.pdf

• unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/tdr2013_en.pdf

• www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/its2013_e/its2013_e.pdf

• www.forbes.com/sites/mitchfree/2012/06/27/is-the-re-shoring-of-manufacturing-a-trend-or-a-trickle/

looking back at the next ten years - fusion symposium 2024

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