Happy About® Knowing What to Expect in 2009 Business, Electronic, Consumer and Political Trends
By Mitchell Levy with Vasu Shastry
20660 Stevens Creek Blvd. Suite 210 Cupertino, CA 95014
Happy About® Knowing What to Expect in 2009: Business, Electronic, Consumer and Political Trends Copyright © 2009 by Happy About® All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. No patent liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained herein. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author(s) assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein. First Printing: January, 2009 Paperback ISBN: 978-1-60005-138-8 (1-60005-138-3) Place of Publication: Silicon Valley, California, USA Paperback Library of Congress Number: eBook ISBN: 978-1-60005-139-5 (1-60005-139-1)
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Dedication This book is dedicated to all those that have contributed to the top 10 predictions throughout the years and to those who are helping to make Happy About® a reality.
Acknowledgment for the 2009 Contributors • Alexander B. Kasdan, President, Convergence Capital Partners, LLC • Angelika Blendstrup, Founder & Principal, Blendstrup & Associates • Ann H. McCormick, CEO & President, LearningFriends.com • Anthony Migyanka, Managing Partner, Mobile Money Minute, LLC • Anyck Turgeon, Chief Marketing and Strategy, Cross Roads Systems • Axel K. Kloth, Founder, CTO Parimics, Inc. • Bob Beck, Owner, Winning in the 5th qtr Sales Builders • Bob Klag, CEO, Westlake Realty Group Inc. • Brandon J. Mendelson, Author of "Albany Times Union's Graduate Student Survival" • Brian Lawley, CEO, 280 Group, and Author of "Expert Product Management" • Cyril Rayan, President & CEO, Reliligence Inc. and Author of "Moving From Vision to Reality" • Daniel Meyerov, CEO and Co-Founder, OnlyBusiness.com • Dave Muti, Author of "Mortgages: What You Need to Know" • David Bookout, Founder, Effetti, Inc. • David H Deans, Managing Director, GeoActive Group • Dean Lane, Principal, Office of the CIO • Don Gaspar, CTO, Yapstone, Inc. • Frumi Rachal Barr, Advisor • Grant Cardone, Entreprenuer and Author of "Sell to Survive" • Dr. Gregory Alan. Bolcer, Serial Entrepreneur in Internet & Security, Bolcer.org • Hanoch McCarty, Director, Bestspeaker.com • Hugh Simpson, Co-Founder, 7th Haven Development • Ivan Temes, Author of "Care: You Have the Power!" • Jack Yan, CEO, Jack Yan & Associates • Jack Bass, AMP Program • Jay Deragon, Social Media Strategist, The conversation Group and Author of "The Relationship Economy" • Jean Paul, Emeritus, IBM Research / U.C. Berkley
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Jennifer Vessels, CEO, Next Step Jennifer L Jacobson, Founder, Jacobson Communication Jeremy Gutsche, Founder, Trendhunter Jim Cates, President & Founder, LOBI Group, LLC and Author of "Climbing The Ladder of Business Intelligence" Jim Terzian, Principal Consultant, The Terzian International Group Jim O'Toole, Distinguished Professor of Business Ethics, University of Denver Joel Libava, President, Franchise Selection Specialists Inc. John Wilkerson, Executive Director, Bellwether Services Kay Koitzsch, Owner & COO, JBF Consignment Sales, LLC Kay Compton Logsdon, Director, The Food Channel Ken Brand, Sales Manager, Prudential Gary Greene, Realtors Love Goel, Chairman & CEO, Growth Ventures Group Marc Scheer, Author of "No Sucker Left Behind" Marian Salzman, Chief Marketing Officer & Trendspotter, Porter Novelli Michael Bradley, Adviser, Iigroup Nancy Zucker, Founder & President, Nancy Zucker Associates Nicolas Soergel, CEO, T-Systems Japan K.K. & Author of "Happy About an Extra Hour Every Day" Nirvikar Singh, Professor & Advisor, UCSC Pamela Springer, President & CEO, ECNext, Inc. Pat Sonti, President & CEO, Strategic Capital Investments LLC Peter Ostrow President & CEO Technical Communities, Inc. Phil Newbold, Director, RSM McGladrey, Inc. Philippe Lavie, President, KeyRoad Enterprises, LLC Phyllis Rockower, President & Founder, Real Estate Investors Club Punita Pandey, CEO, NetCustomer Ralph Marx, CEO, Advocate Systems, Inc. Rich Goldman, VP, Corp Marketing & Strategic Alliances, Synopsys Robert (Bob) Hagerty, CEO & President, Polycom, Inc. Robert Laura, Financial Speaker, Robertlaura.com Roger Hardy, Co-Founder, Chairman & CEO, Coastal Contacts Sean McCauley, CEO, SMI, Inc. and Author, "DNA of the Young Entrepreneur" Seshadri Sundararajan, COO, Real Soft Sheridan Tatsuno, Principal, Dreamscape Global Stephen Ibaraki, CIPS Fellow, NPA Distinguished Fellow Steve Brown, Author of "Jesus Drank, Judas Repented" Stewart Levine, Author of "Collaboration 2.0" and "Resolution Works"
• Todd Rhoad, Managing Director, BT Consulting and Author of "Blitz The Ladder" • Tom Vanderwell, Mortgage Lender • Tom Scarda, Franchise Consultant, FranChoice, Inc. • Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer, ThinkInk • Vicki Kunkel, CEO, Vicki Kunkel International • William W. McGinnis, Securities Expert, W. McGinnis Advisors, LLC
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C o n t e n t s Part I This Year’s Predictions . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Chapter 1
2009 Predictions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Part II Why Should You Believe . . . . . . . . . . . .37 Chapter 2
Predictability in Previous Years . . . . . . . . . 39
Chapter 3
2008 Predictions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Chapter 4
2007 Predictions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Chapter 5
2006 Predictions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Chapter 6
2005 Predictions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Chapter 7
2004 Predictions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Chapter 8
2003 Predictions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Chapter 9
2002 Predictions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Chapter 10
2001 Predictions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Chapter 11
2000 Predictions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Chapter 12
1999 Predictions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Chapter 13
1998 Predictions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Author
About the Authors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Your Book
Create Thought Leadership for your Company . . . 213
Books
Other Happy About Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .215
Happy About Knowing What to Expect in 2009
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Contents
Part I This Year’s Predictions • Chapter 1: “2009 Predictions”
C h a p t e r
1
2009 Predictions
Looking at this year’s trends, there’s a lot of pessimism. Continued recession (#2), decrease in housing prices (#3) unemployment hitting 10% (#4) and an increase in oil prices (#7). This leads to an increase in SMEs (#5), increased utilization of Web 2.0 technologies (#9) and a cultural business revolution (#10). Most folks do not want to make the same mistake that many folks made in going from 2001 to 2002. We all assumed that the rebound would happen quicker than what we saw. It is my hope that we’re wrong about Trend #1 and that the “Obama Effect” truly allows us to rise out of the recession quicker than is predicted in the pages ahead. Regardless of what happens, reading the opinions of those in the following pages will arm you with some great ideas of what you can do to take advantage of it for yourself and your business.
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3
Top Ten Trends for 2009 1. Obama Brings a "Slight" Optimism and Hope
Increase
2. Despite the Obama Effect, the Economy Will Remain in Recession
in
U.S.
3. Continued Decline in Real Estate Prices by 15-25% 4. Unemployment Becoming a Major Political / Economic Issue Hitting 10% 5. Significant Increase in SMEs 6. China Closes the Gap on Becoming the World's #1 Economic Power 7. Energy Prices Go Back Up 8. The Stock Market Continues to be an "E-Ticket" Roller Coaster Ride 9. Web 2.0 Continues to Play an Integral Part of our Future 10. Tougher Economic Times Business Cultural Revolution
Drives
a
Bonus Trend: Potential Investment Opportunities
Trend 01: Obama Brings a "Slight" Increase in Optimism and Hope Ann H. McCormick, PhD, Learningfriends.com
4
"There will be a surge of hope around the world when Obama takes office, so stock markets surge upward briefly then gradually climb as we face the difficult challenges of the nation and world."
Chapter 1: 2009 Predictions
Phil Newbold, Director, Consulting and Risk Management Services
"Obama mania will cause a stock market rush in the second half of 2009 that will based more on enthusiasm and exuberance rather than fundamentals. Unfortunately, the Obama mania bubble will burst in the Fall causing Americans to again fear their financial future."
Jim Terzian, Principal Consultant, The Terzian International Group
"The new administration will take over as the bills are coming due. Not only will it have lot to deal with a recession an order of magnitude greater than it would have been six years earlier, but the economy and government President Obama will have to face it with are crippled and over burdened, severely reducing the effectiveness of whatever is tried."
Jack Bass, The Apprentice Millionaire Program, amprogram.com
"Short-term predictions based on the anticipated 'Obama Stimulus' 1. Federal reserve will continue to add liquidity to the banking system and 'force banks to lend more aggressively – both to consumers and business. 2. The stimulus package will be at least $500 billion dollars 3. These measures will inspire a general return of optimism and lift the economy; lower mortgage rates will ease foreclosure rates and help lift home sales; will re-inflate the housing market and dispel fears of deflation."
Hanoch McCarty, Director of Training, Bestspeaker.com
"Republicans will continue to argue against any meaningful change functioning as the brakes on the Obama Express. Their negative role will be noted forever by historians. Obama will begin restoring American's self-confidence by the middle of 2010."
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5
Marian Salzman, Chief Marketing Officer & Trendspotter, Porter Novelli
"Chicago, hometown of President-elect Barack Obama, will become the new style-setter for leadership trends and values for the country and the world."
Jim O'Toole, Daniels Distinguished Professor of Business Ethics, University of Denver
"Congress will pass almost all of President Obama's stimulus measures."
Rich Goldman, V.P. Corp Marketing & Strategic Alliances, Synopsys
"The United States' standing in the world takes a significant upward swing, as the trust and credibility that the world has placed in Barak Obama's administration makes a clear and immediate difference. Both our allies and our enemies respect us more as policies of pragmatism, transparency and realism replace policies of dogmatism and cronyism. The United States becomes much more effective as a world leader, making significant strides in climate change, protecting our environment, energy independence and difficult relations in Russia, the Middle East, China and North Korea."
Trend 02: Despite the Obama Effect, the U.S. Economy Will Remain in Recession Pat Sonti, President (CEO), Strategic Capital Investments LLC
6
"The federal budget deficit, trade deficit, and current account deficit will further increase in 2009. Interest rates cannot be raised nor can taxes be raised significantly without hurting the overall economy. The US dollar will depreciate further among various currencies and global
Chapter 1: 2009 Predictions
currency instability sets in. Crude oil and other commodity prices are declining due to price elasticity and income elasticity of demand. "Mark-to-Model" accounting rule has destroyed Wall Street and will continue unless its is stopped by the SEC. Early signs of 'stagflation' in terms of low business activity, hyperinflation, and high unemployment will set in." Nirvikar Singh, Professor of Economics, UCSC, Co-Director and Special Advisor to the Chancellor
"The global economy will get worse in 2009, as the financial sector crisis works it way through the rest of the economy. China and India will see significantly slower growth as well."
Stewart Levine, Co-Author "Collaboration 2.0," and Author "Getting to Resolution and the Book of Agreement"
"We'll all spend the entire year watching for the bottom...and as optimistic as I usually am it may not come in 2009. The economic and market correction we're in the middle of represent a profound restructuring of all facets of global business, political and economic values requiring most people to ask themselves "what's really important?." Many will wait and see where we are at year's end before making big decisions. I think it's prudent to remain an observer until the smog clears."
Grant Cardone, Entrepreneur and Author of "Sell to Survive"
"Companies and industries that can only sell their products by offering free credit to consumers will go bankrupt."
William W. McGinnis, CFA, Securities Expert, W. McGinnis Advisors, LLC
"The U.S. and world economies will struggle to gain footing in 2009. Credit markets, the foundations of commerce and economic growth, should begin to stabilize during the first half of the year. Further improvement can be expected in the later half of the year. A return to normal conditions should not be expected during 2009. The credit dislocations and near standstill of the
Happy About Knowing What to Expect in 2009
7
automotive industry that occurred in the fourth quarter of 2008 will likely have a rippling affect into other sectors of the eonomy." Steve Brown, Author of "Jesus Drank, Judas Repented and God Divorced His Bride"
"The US economy will remain in recession during 2009. As the recession deepens and lags on consolidation will continue in all areas of business and industry including food service, electronics, auto makers, etc. for example, look for Circuit city to collapse, Best Buy to benefit."
Hanoch McCarty, Director of Training, Bestspeaker.com
"The economy will hit rock bottom in the third quarter of 2009."
Bob Klag, CEO, Westlake Realty Group, Inc.
"In spite of the massive financial bailout, our experience is that all lenders (banks, insurance companies, pension & equity funds etc.) are still very risk averse, constricting credit on existing loans and being very cautious on new lending. We believe that this will be the general mood of the credit markets for 2009. Until the credit markets ease, it is very difficult to make new business deals - therefore we believe that economic activity will continue to contract in 2009."
Phyllis Rockower, President & Founder,
"The economy will continue to stay in recession."
realestateclubla.com
Anyck Turgeon, Chief of Market Strategy & Security, Crossroads Systems
8
"Strong push by the government to assist low-performance sectors that will eventually create inflation and substantially reduce the value of the American dollar."
Chapter 1: 2009 Predictions
Jim Cates, President and Founder, LOBI Group, LLC, and Author of "Climbing The Ladder of Business Intelligence"
"Inflation rate will reach 3-4% as the US government tries to spend its way out of the recession."
Love Goel, Chairman & CEO, Growth Ventures Group
"Retailers that survive will become more dominant , 10-15% of supply will disappear - as competitors go bankrupt or shut down stores."
Rich Goldman, V.P. Corp Marketing & Strategic Alliances, Synopsys
"The economy continues to deteriorate through most of 2009. We will see unemployment levels not seen since before World War II. As the year progresses, more and more companies will enter bankruptcy and go out of business as the malaise spreads from industry to industry. Obama stimulus policies will start to make an appreciable impact at the latter part of the year, as the economy hits bottom and begins its long, slow recovery"
Jennifer Vessels, CMC and CEO, Next Step
"Revenue and profits to be down by 20% or more across all industries."
Marian Salzman, Chief Marketing Officer & Trendspotter, Porter Novelli
"By spring, the subprime mortgage debacle was about to trigger a full-on global financial meltdown."
Kay Compton Logsdon, Director, The Food Channel
"In the current economy and for sustenance, people will be dining out a lot less, especially in the midscale and fine dining establishment, and that will hit the restaurant business in the pocketbook."
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9
Roger Hardy, Co-Founder, Chairman, CEO & President of Coastal Contacts
"The global economy will continue to slow for the first 3 quarters of 09 and as the cost cuts and rationalizations take full effect, the economy will up-tick in q4 09 with q1 2010, starting the next bull cycle."
Bob Beck, Owner of Sales Builders, Author of "Winning in the 5th Quarter" and the upcoming book, "Are We in a Recession, or is it Just Me?"
"Companies will show their lack of 'Operational Prudence' in this slow economy, which means they will make broad-brush/wholesale cutbacks regardless of the impact on forward revenue growth."
Punita Pandey, CEO, netCustomer
"It will get worse before it gets better. It will get better. People and businesses retool to survive & thrive."
Brian Lawley, CEO, The 280 Group and Author of "Expert Product Management"
"By the end of 2009 the economy will have recovered enough that most companies and individuals will wish they had not reacted with as much panic as they did. Housing will stabilize due to the fed's actions to lower mortgage rates. The financial system will heal. The American car companies will recover somewhat due to downsizing/restructuring and low gas prices leading to purchases. Venture Capitals will have gotten phenomenally great deals due to "panic-ridden" thinking from startups that leads to ridiculously low valuations. And in the meantime a whole range of very smart people in Silicon Valley will have had a lot of time on their hands and will come up with a new batch of great ideas and products."
John Wilkerson, Executive Director, Bellwether Services
"Fed interest rates will begin to rise as the economy & GDP improves during Q4 '09."
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Chapter 1: 2009 Predictions
Dean Lane, Principal, The Office of CIO
"Tech will be the first to recover (by Q3) while the auto and housing markets will lag behind."
Trend 03: Continued Decline in Real Estate Prices by 15-25% Alexander B. Kasdan, President, Convergence Capital Partners, LLC
"It's going to get a lot worse before it gets any better. Housing prices in overheated areas such as New York area and California will drop by another 25-30%."
William W. McGinnis, CFA, Securities Expert, W.McGinnis Advisors, LLC
"Real estate problems can be expected to worsen at least through mid-year due to the declining employment base and continuing shocks to consumer confidence. Real estate is unlikely to see any recovery during 2009."
Dave Muti, JD, RMA, and Author of "Mortgages: What You Need to Know"
"The housing market will not bottom until half way through 2010. Government intervention will not help in any way. In fact it is prolonging the crash. Loan modifications are just one example of this. More foreclosures will in turn further depress the real estate market causing an increase in short sales."
Steve Brown, Author of "Jesus Drank, Judas Repented and God Divorced His Bride"
"US Real Estate values will continue to erode. The skyrocketing number of 2009 US foreclosures will shatter 2008 records."
Phyllis Rockower, President & Founder,
"Housing prices will come down another 10-20% in "bubble areas" - especially in the higher end."
realestateclubla.com
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Anyck Turgeon, Chief of Market Strategy & Security, Crossroads Systems
"Additional declines in the real estate market particularly in markets that have not yet been affected and in remaining over-inflated markets given the return to group and family living arrangements."
Philip Newbold, Director, Consulting and Risk Management
"Real estate prices in non-Sun Belt areas will bottom in mid 2Q09. Most Sun Belt properties will not find their bottom until late 2009, at best, and will recover more slowly as Boomers continue to show less proclivity for retiring in the Sun Belt than did their parents."
Jack Bass, The Apprentice Millionaire Program, amprogram.com
"Inflation will elevate house prices and reduce the drag of housing on the economy until the point that rising mortgage rates again halt the housing expansion."
Tom Vanderwell, Mortgage Lender and Author at straighttalkaboutm ortgages.com
"The housing market will be showing small pockets of recovery, but the majority of the nation will still be plagued by high levels of inventory, high levels of foreclosures, and low sales."
Tom Vanderwell, Mortgage Lender and Author at straighttalkaboutm ortgages.com
"The savings rate will be higher at the end of 2009 than it is now but the mortgage rates will also be higher than they are now."
Ken Brand, Sales Manager, Prudential Gary Greene, Realtors and Author/contributor – Agentgenius.com
"In the 1st quarter, Uncle Sam will swoon mortgage interest rates into the low 4% and suspend capital gains taxes for real estate investors who buy foreclosed properties. By summer's end, foreclosure inventory will be significantly lower, price stability will begin, consumer confidence will bloom and '09 will be better than '08."
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Chapter 1: 2009 Predictions
Sean McCauley, Author of "DNA of the Young Entrepreneur"
"As housing prices stabilize and flatten we will have a turn in new entry level wealth beginning, as first time buyers accrue equity on there new homes there will be great opportunity for the service related industries."
Trend 04: Unemployment Becoming a Major Political / Economic Issue Hitting 10% Jim Terzian, Principal Consultant, the Terzian International Group
"Unemployment plus Underemployment will top 20%."
Hanoch McCarty, Director of Training, Bestspeaker.com
"The unemployment rate will be about 11% with cities and towns close to bankruptcy."
Peter Ostrow, President and CEO, Technical Communities, Inc.
"Unemployment bottoms out at 11% in 2009 in the second/early third quarter."
Jim O'Toole, Daniels Distinguished Professor of Business Ethics, University of Denver
"Unemployment will peak at a litle over 10% by next summer."
Dave Muti, JD, RMA and Author of "Mortgages: What You Need to Know"
"Mounting layoffs leading to unemployment upwards to 10%."
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Phyllis Rockower, President & Founder,
"California unemployment will hit 10%."
realestateclubla.com
Tom Scarda, FranChoice Consultant & Coach, Host of The Franchise Hour radio show
"The current recession is already worse than 2002 and unemployment rate will be close to 9% by Q1 '09."
Sheridan Tatsuno, Principal, Dreamscape Global
"Unemployment rate tops 9%, leading to a new entrepreneurial boom."
Pamela Springer, President and ECO, ECNext, Inc.
"Unemployment will go to 8% and include many more federal and state employees than usual due to stress all the individual states are experiencing."
Anyck Turgeon, Chief of Market Strategy & Security, Crossroads Systems
"On-going massive lay-offs in the press and analyst communities as social media are empowering the masses to communicate globally for free."
William W. McGinnis, CFA, Securities Expert, W. McGinnis Advisors, LLC
"Job losses and business failures will most likely accelerate at least through mid-year and possibly through the end of the year."
Marc Scheer, Ph.D., Author of "No Sucker Left Behind: Avoiding the Great College Rip-Off
"The number of unemployed college graduates will increase. Salaries for new college graduates will decrease."
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Chapter 1: 2009 Predictions
Todd Rhoad, Director, Blitz Team Consulting and Author of "Blitz The Ladder"
"Career stability for Generation Y and Baby boomers will decrease due to organizational instabilities and transformations, not individual choice."
Nancy Zucker, Founder and President, Nancy Zucker Associates
"Contractors and consultants will be busier than people looking for full time commitments from companies in the first two quarters of '09. Companies will not be ready to hire employees at full time salaries and pay benefits."
Jennifer Vessels, CMC and CEO, Next Step
"Companies continue to downscale and realign to increase productivity and people are working harder and longer for less pay."
Trend 05: Significant Increase in SMEs Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Advisor, ThinkInk
"Entrepreneurship and the revival of small business - In spite of the doom and gloom, a wonderful thing to come from this economic climate is entrepreneurship and the revival of small business. They're the backbone of this country, and one of the great things about living in this culture. A good idea can still pay off if accompanied by realistic goals and hard work. Organizations like NFTE are out there training youth from low-income communities to think like entrepreneurs, to envision possibilities and then how to make them manifest. Their success rate is remarkable. Extensive job slashing will revitalize the small business arena and people who never thought they had it in them will discover their inner entrepreneur."
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Angelika Blendstrup, Ph.D., Founder & Principal, Blendstrup & Associates
"Small businesses survive by re-inventing their business models and are stronger for it."
Pamela Springer, President and ECO, ECNext, Inc.
"Small business will continue to grow as unemployed individuals will become resourceful and innovative...the sustainability of their business will be key, a few gems will definitely pop out as a result of it."
Jeremy Gutsche, Founder, TrendHunter.com
"Do it Yourself (DIY) & the Rise of the Cottage Industry - Troubled job market and the need for extra cash will spark many hobbiests to transition their love for craft into cottage industry. Internet communities like Etsy and Craftster were already sparking interest in DIY projects, fashion and crafts."
Daniel Meyerov, CEO, Co-Founder, OnlyBusiness.com
"Economic Necessity will be the Mother of Entrepreneurial Invention and Small Business rises from the ashes. With the shrinking job market and companies looking to minimize their exposure to staffing and payroll commitments, there will be a marked increase in the number of micro and small businesses that start up. The bottom line is that, with less jobs available, innovation and new approaches to doing business will be the order of the day."
Tom Scarda, Franchise Consultant, FranChoice, Inc.
"2009 will see the most new franchise businesses open in history. Laid off, individuals will be forced into entrepreneurship. What makes franchising so attractive is there are more than 75 industries to consider and many are at an investment way under $100,000 dollars. Many corporate refugees will have a severance package or money saved and franchising is
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Chapter 1: 2009 Predictions
ubiquitous in America and easy to establish. I predict upward of 15,000 new franchised units will be opened in 2009." David Bookout, Accomplishment Artist, Strategist, & Founder, Effetti, Inc.
"As the world re-calibrates and companies adjust head counts to maximize profitability, individuals will find it more and more difficult to compete for the jobs they want and may in fact need. Personal Brand will become a critical factor in professional differentiation."
Sean McCauley, Author of "DNA of the Young Entrepreneur"
"I predict an increase in small business start ups as well. While unemployment increases so will the young entrepreneurs wanting to get traction in the market place. "
Robert Laura, Financial Speaker, Author, & Money Expert
"The Financial Planning Industry will see a seismic shift in financial advisers who will begin to offer financial coaching and counseling services as more middle Americans find themselves in need of money management support and tools instead of just investment advice."
Trend 06: China Closes the Gap on Becoming the World's #1 Economic Power Nicolas Soergel, CEO, T-Systems Japan K.K. & Author of "Happy About Finding An Extra Hour Every Day"
"A lot of companies in emerging countries such as the BRIC countries accumulated a lot of cash and look for opportunities to expand their reach into western markets. Especially in India and China a lot of large corporations are state or privately owned allowing large anti-cyclical investments into further growth. The dollar and
Happy About Knowing What to Expect in 2009
17
the Euro are cheap and stock prices will reach their rock bottom in 2009, so that western listed companies will never be that cheap for a long time. 2009 will therefore see a few spectacular acquisitions of well known large western enterprises by new global players from emerging countries." Stephen Ibaraki , CIPS Fellow, NPA Distinguished Fellow
"With 2 trillion in financial reserves and nearly 600B in expenditures in infrastructure, expect China's fortunes to continue to rise in 2009. China will also become the largest investor in America's future obtaining assets at such sharp discounts that the financial multiples returned in the medium-term future will cement China's leadership. This will be driven by the sharp and extended recession in the US which in 2009 will average more than a 1% shrinkage in the economy over the quarters. 2009 will be the known as the year when China becomes the economic hub or keystone for the planet and replacing the US. As a result, China will become the undisputed leader much sooner than originally predicted - knock 5-10 years off of prior predictions."
Jean Paul, IBM research, Emritus and Scholar in Residence, Univerity of California, Berkley
"The best way to look at the world in 2009 is through Brazil, Russia, India, China (BRIC) filters. BRIC countries and many other and many other emerging regions will have economic growth as measured by their GDP while the developed economies will struggle to even keep their current GDP levels."
Mike Bradley, Strategy Emerging Market and Collaboration Adviser, ii Group
"Western economies will find it increasingly difficult to respond quickly to global dynamic free enterprise markets because financial institutions are now tethered to political desires of the western governments"
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Chapter 1: 2009 Predictions
Axel K. Kloth, Founder, CTO & Vice President of Engineering, Parimics, Inc. R&D
"The world economies are going to continue to implode in 2009, with China and India leading the decline. Malaysia and the Philippines will suffer from reversal of outsourcing of their semiconductor packaging and call center industries, with them being pulled back to the US. This worldwide prolonged collapse of the US-type turbo capitalism will trigger a search for a new, kinder, more stable and less cyclical version of capitalism, pay scales, and taxation."
Trend 07: Energy Prices Go Back Up Nirvikar Singh, Professor of Economics, UCSC and Special Advisor to the Chancellor, UCSC
"The price of oil will start to creep up again, and the US will start to establish global leadership in technologies for sustainability."
Joel Libava, President, Franchise Selection Specialists Inc.
"Gasoline prices will be at $2.99 a gallon by june 15th."
Jim Terzian, Principal Consultant, The Terizian International Group
"Oil will drop to $40/barrel or a little below in Q1 '09, then rebound to $100 a barrel or more in the summer. But neither oil prices nor gasoline prices in the US will go within 20% of the highs of 2008. "
Pamela Springer, President and CEO, ECNext, Inc.
"A stronger, more competitive, energy efficient country can only be better for the long run."
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Rich Goldman, V.P. Corp Marketing & Strategic Alliances, Synopsys
"The United States will see $1.00 per gallon gasoline as the price of oil declines to $25 per barrel."
Dean Lane, Principal, The Office of CIO
"There will be a boom in the energy efficiency / green industry."
Jean Paul, IBM Research, Emeritus and Scholar in Residence, University of California, Berkley
"The way you live and work will be impacted by 'green' thoughts, some of which will take us in unexpected directions, like cloud computing."
Trend 08: The Stock Market Continues to be an "E-Ticket" Roller Coaster Ride William W. McGinnis, CFA, Securities Expert, W. McGinnis Advisors, LLC
"The stock market will likely be a rough ride in 2009 with likely market upswings followed by declines – possible of even greater magnitude. While bottom levels may be found in certain industry sectors early in the year, others will not reach bottom until some time later. The market as a whole is unlikely to reach a bottom until the pervasiveness of the economic problems are clearly seen and understood. That is not likely to occur until late in 2009 or beyond."
Tom Vanderwell, Mortgage Lender and Author at straighttalkaboutm ortgages.com
"The stock market will be lower on December 15, 2009 than it is on December 15, 2008."
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Chapter 1: 2009 Predictions
John Wilkerson, Executive Director, Bellwether Services
"All stock markets will end slightly lower in Q1 of '09."
Jim Terzian, Principal Consultant, the Terzian International Group
"Small and Medium size businesses will lead the recovery; $20 Milllion to $200 Million grossing companies with the focus, agility and drive will be the first to capitalize on this failing economy, then the first to lead the general recovery. Look for the Russell Index to show short term victories and herald the longer term recovery. Just don't look for that recovery in 2009."
Jim O'Toole, Daniels Distinguished Professor of Business Ethics, University of Denver
"The stock market will start a long slow recovery in February."
Peter Ostrow, President and CEO, Technical Communities, Inc.
"Market bottoms for 2009 by March 31 at above 7900 on the Dow Jones."
Philippe Lavie, President, KeyRoad Enterprises, LLC
"Dow Jones back over 10,000 by September '09."
Jack Bass, The Apprentice Millionaire Program, amprogram.com
"The stock market is in a bottoming process and is anticipating a great stimulus package from the new administration, plus the auto bailout will lift the economy. Optimism of a better economy will lift the stock market as billions in investor accounts - now parked - will return to equities. The stock market will rally on the basis of a visibly better housing and U.S. economy and companies producing commodities – particularly oil and gold will lead the stock market recovery."
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Anthony Migyanka, Managing Partner, Mobile Money Minute, LLC
"Stock Market (Dow Jones) rebounds 53%."
Trend 09: Web 2.0 Continues to Play an Integral Part of our Future Seshadri Sundararajan, COO, Real Soft
"Obama will explicitly acknowledge the contribution of technology to solve the problems he is likely to face on assuming the office."
Jennifer L. Jacobson, Founder, Jacobson Communication and Author of "42 Rules of Social Media for Business"
"The White House, major bands, news stations, and television shows will regularly send 'live broadcasts' to social media venues during important announcements, events, and performances enabling an unprecedented level of connectivity with the online public."
Rich Goldman, V.P. Corp Marketing & Strategic Alliances, Synopsys
"The internet continues its trajectory toward more and more relevancy in everyday life. The internet enters politics in a major and nonreversable way as the Obama administration takes advantage of it to provide transparency, and to allow ordinary citizen a voice in the governance of the United States. Social Media continues to increase in importance as people find it an effective way to communicate with each other, and companies find it a cost effective way to market themselves to their customers. Viewing habits continue to be more fulfilled through the internet."
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Chapter 1: 2009 Predictions
Jean Paul, IBM Research, Emeritus and Scholar in Residence, University of California, Berkley
"There will be more transistors in the world than grains of rice, perhaps also at a cheaper price... "Smart Object" will be no longer be an oxymoron but an ever-increasing part of our daily lives, much beyond your cell phone or your GPS enabled car. Object will take advantage of the tremendous quantity of information that is being gathered by the Internet and "mashing" will be a smashing success. There will be more objects using the Internet than humans. Eventually we will reach one trillion users and the Internet will become the Intranet."
Jay Deragon, Social Media Strategist, The Conversation Group and Author of "The Relationship Economy"
"Google, or someone else, will release 'smart agents' which enable users to learn faster and save time engaging in relevant conversations."
Jim Cates, President and Founder, LOBI Group, LLC and Author of "Climbing The Ladder of Business Intelligence"
"IT budget reductions and data overload will make BI a sought after skill for getting business impactful information."
David H. Deans, Managing Director, GeoActive Group USA
"Tele Presence and all other forms of online meetings or collaboration will develop new momentum in 2009 as business leaders reduce most non-essential business travel."
Marian Salzman, Chief Marketing Officer & Trendspotter, Porter Novelli
"Technology and media advances will help people to create a self-curated, media-driven Third Place to escape the pressures of home and work."
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Daniel Meyerov, CEO, Co-Founder, OnlyBusiness.com
"As the costs and limited flexibility that comes from traditional bricks-and-mortar presence continues to undermine traditional retail chains, more and more businesses will come to rely on the flexible and affordable performance of the online business channel, The web will see a major push as a dominant market channel for small business."
Jay Deragon, Social Media Strategist, The Conversation Group and Author of "The Relationship Economy"
"Social Commerce" will create a new definition of economic value and subsequently we may see the dawn of a new currency (Social Capital will take on new meaning and measure). Social Media emphasis will shift from marketing and public relations to customer and supplier relationship models (Doc Searls VRM). Convergence of social technology will cut across all devices and broadcast mediums bringing new meaning to the terms "always on".
Brandon J. Mendelson, Author of the "Albany Times Union's Graduate Student Survival"
"Twitter will peak in 2009 before starting to decline at the end of 2010. The explosion of the Gphone and iPhones will allow for more mobile video to be shared, leading to a growth in companies like Seismic; however, it will continue to be difficult to monetize both because:Advertisers don't want to waste money on poorly designed videos. Twitter users have mounted a rebellion against inststream Twitter ads."
Michael Bradley, Strategy Emerging Market and Collaboration Adviser, ii Group
"Collaboration tools will increasingly replace business travel for communication convenience cost and security reasons"
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Chapter 1: 2009 Predictions
Angelika Blendstrup, Ph.D., Founder & Principal, Blendstrup & Associates
"Social group in Facebook etc. will move offline to do business together".
Jennifer L. Jacobson, Founder, Jacobson Communication and Author of "42 Rules of Social Media for Business"
"Major mergers to happen in the social media space between sites that offer completely different types of social media, like book marking and video streaming.
Brian Lawley, CEO, the 280 Group and Author of "Expert Product Management"
"Just as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other websites/services have appeared in previous years at least one major new company will become a massive viral hit. This is due to the fact that the web 2.0 infrastructure is mature and prevalent enough now and there are so many people familiar with social networking etc. that a new application can (and will) gain adoption faster than any yet seen."
Ralph Marx, CEO, Advocate Systems, Inc.
"Twitter and Facebook, just on the basis of sheer numbers alone, will lock down their dominance as the primary social networks. A few others will find survival via a shift of their business models to the needs of a society in recession and undergoing a strong cultural change. A market place based on bartering would be a good example."
Stephen Ibaraki , CIPS Fellow, NPA Distinguished Fellow
"We are at an historical inflection point. For the first time, the UN-Founded, International Federation for Information Processing is launching a global certification and professionalism program in 2009. The Program is called IP3 and is based upon common
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standards. It will deliver the outcomes of global standards, professionalism, trust, code of ethics, a stronger voice for the IT practitioner, and a sense of common identity. Also the program will deliver a feeling of being an engineer or executive versus a geek or pirate; business solutions over technical features; a career path, progression, and recognition over a soiled job."
Trend 10: Tougher Economic Times Drives a Business Cultural Revolution Cyril Rayan, President & CEO, Resiligence Inc. and Author of "Moving From Vision to Reality"
"When times become tough, we are forced to innovate to get out of the tough times. That's exactly what is needed and what will happen in the business world in 2009. Those who will not innovate will be no more. We will need to work with fundamentally strong business models and provide a compelling value proposition to succeed."
Frumi Rachel Barr, MBA, Ph.D., Advisor to Business Leaders,
"2009 will be a year of creative approaches and re-examining business paradigms. People stuck in old belief systems will be left behind."
clarityandresults.com
Brandon J. Mendelson, author of the Albany Times Union's Graduate Student Survival
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"The economy will sink to new lows in 2009 as there are too many businesses using outdated business models to prop themselves up. Until these old businesses adapt, and sadly, they make up many large companies, we will all suffer from their inability to evolve."
Chapter 1: 2009 Predictions
Vicki Kunkel, CEO, Vicki Kunkel International
"Global shifts in consciousness. 2009 will be a period much like the 1960s in that there will be a renewed "battle" between the "old guard" and the "new generation. "The biggest outcome of this will be a greater focus on eliminating corruption in all industries and at all levels, as well as an increasing interest in a "we" society, instead of a "me" society. People will begin to focus not so much on how to improve their own lot in life, but how to improve the life of mankind in general. Any industries that promote community and working for the greater good will succeed in a big way."
Roger Hardy, Co-Founder, Chairman, CEO & President of Coastal Contacts
"2009 will continue a record number of hedge fund and other opportunistic business plan failures as the economy returns to a "back–to–basics" mentality, where investors invest in what they understand."
Ralph Marx, CEO, Advocate Systems, Inc.
"The ongoing radical change in our economy is going to cause some big shifts in our culture and will cause some changes in the way we live."
Robert Laura, Financial Speaker, Author, & Money Expert
"Internet Real-Estate (buying and selling of domain names) along with website development will become the hot niche as the economic crisis creates a significant upswing in entrepreneurs who want and know the benefits of a solid web presence."
Jack Yan, CEO, Jack Yan & Associates
"Recessionary times will lead to more soul-searching, which will make people more considerate for a longer time than after 9-11. It's not just about economizing, but about being less selfish and more willing to reach out to other territories and markets—which will lead to a fairer and more balanced concept of globalization."
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Kay Koitzsch , Owner and Chief Operating Officer, Just Between Friends Seattle
"The re-use and re-sale of clothing (and just about everything else) will become more and more popular as people downsize and learn to use their resources better! (and it makes me happy!)"
Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Advisor, ThinkInk
"Less is more - a possible good thing for 2009 is that Americans will learn what others around the globe already know - which is that less is often more. 2009's economy should be looked at as opportunity to reconsider our value system, individually and collectively. I just don't believe we need so much of the frills and froth that we THINK we do. I believe people will continue to spend, albeit cautiously, and companies will take this crunch as an opportunity to re-define and listen to their core audience, resulting in the emergence of all sorts of new and successful niche markets based on values."
Ivan Temes, Author of "Care: You Have the Power"
"Volunteer organizations and non-profits will have additional assistance from a portion of the many laid-off workers who now understand more the importance of 'giving.' Many people who believe that giving presents to others will begin to see that what is really needed is 'presence' – more so than presents."
Ann H. McCormick, Ph.D., CEO,
"Online education for children will be well funded so it can actually work, bringing incomparable benefit to society at a tiny cost per child, like Sesame Street did in the sixties and after. There will be a great emphasis on children in the economy of 2009, no matter what else happens in the world, we will take a broad and long view to make sure children are warm, dry, well-fed, with loving people, and given fine learning opportunities."
LearningFriends.com
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Chapter 1: 2009 Predictions
Kay Compton Logsdon, Director, The Food Channel
"We are in search of healthier food as a lifestyle, not as temporary diet. Living La Vida Locavore – grow, buy fresh and eat local to stay healthy. Our perspective has changed in this economy, and eating at home this time around is about both entertainment, sustenance and healthy. We see people and companies stepping up to incorporate food philanthropy to address the hunger in the world. Food drives will be enhanced by that $1 donation at the grocery checkout lane, or the purchase of a pin ribbon label product."
Mike Bradley, Strategy Emerging Market & Collaboration Adviser, ii Group
"International companies in the consumer markets will have to increasingly embrace social and environmental responsibility else customers will vote with their feet"
Marian Salzman, Chief Marketing Officer & Trendspotter, Porter Novelli
“Shifts in generational and gender dynamics, as cuspers (born 1955 to 1964) take leadership roles in government, business and communities, and the emergence of the Female Economy will have major impact on getting the world back on its feet.”
Hugh Simpson, Co-Founder, 7th Haven Development
"More of the Social Enterprise model as I'm using with my new dome kit manufacturing business. Kids today want to offer something to the improvement of the world in addition to filling their pocketbooks. This model allows for re-employment in what I see is as the trend for 2009 and beyond - the return of the Small Manufacturer in the USA."
Vanessa Horwell, Chief visibility Officer, ThinInk
"Out with the Old - Today, job security will require initiative and a desire to learn things that keep the employee not only useful to the company, but also mentally alert and challenged. Those who
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view the world as it is today will be far better prepared for any hard knocks coming their way, seniority is no guarantee." Grant Cardone, Entreprenuer and Author of "Sell to Survive"
"Individuals that don't produce far in excess of what is expected will find themselves in unemployment lines. Management that does not insist on and ensure that their people work to achieve targets will be demoted back into the work force where they probably won't be able to find a job."
Vicki Kunkel, CEO, Vicki Kunkel International, and Author of "Instant Appeal: The 8 Primal Factors that Create Blockbuster Success."
"Expect major changes in the way consumers are marketed to: advertising will be replaced with interactive consumer education campaigns. As part of the focus on the "we society", media companies that will prosper will go away from traditional advertising to reach consumers, and will instead focus on consumer educational content that is highly interactive. The marketers will be the sponsors of educational content that consumers crave. The key to the success of these programs is the interactivity of the clickable video. Early adopters of these consumer engagement education campaigns will be the "healthcare" and "green" industries, and will be widely accepted by most other markets by mid 2010.
Bob Hagerty, CEO & President, Polycom
"2009 will be a tipping point for visual communication. Across industries, we are seeing visual communication solutions help customers work faster, smarter and more effectively than their competition. The promise of visual communication originated in the late 50s, but today the bandwidth, network management tools, business drivers, the quality of experience is here. People love using the current HD video
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Chapter 1: 2009 Predictions
and telepresence technology and they value the significant business and work-life balance benefits that it delivers." Bob Beck, owner of Sales Builders, Author of "Winning in the 5th Quarter" and the upcoming book, "Are We in a Recession, or is it Just Me?"
"Organizations won't be able to employ the same cookie cutter sales approach they used in a good economy. The most open-minded, progressive, and forward-thinking individuals and organizations will thrive in 2009."
Marian Salzman, Chief Marketing Officer & Trendspotter, Porter Novelli
"Technology and media advances will help people to create a self-curated, media-driven Third Place to escape the pressures of home and work."
Anthony Migyanka, Managing Partner, Mobile Money Minute, LLC.
"At least one major television network airs their entire schedule on-demand via the internet."
David H. Deans, Managing Director, GeoActive Group USA
"Video communication will more than double in adoption as distribution costs continue to decline."
Peter Ostrow, President and CEO, Technical Communities, Inc.
"The NY TIMES companies merge with a privately held media company."
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Bonus Trend: Potential Investment Opportunities Jack Bass, The Apprentice Millionaire Program, amprogram.com
"A tidal wave of money will lead to a tidal wave carrying inflation and gold to new heights. In the short term the massive trillion dollar packages put in place have had the effect of lowering mortgage rates and inter- bank lending rates. However, they have thus far failed to promote bank lending to the degree that companies have access to borrowing. indeed , General Electric and Goldman Sachs had to turn to Warren Buffett for billions. Those without access to Buffett and/ or the AAA credit rating are having to delay expansion and lay off workers."
Phil Newbold, Director, Consulting and Risk Management Services
"Following the historically brief recovery of the U.S. Dollar in 2008, the dollar will return to its retreating ways in mid-2009 leading to a rediscovery of commodities investing and significantly higher energy prices."
Anthony Migyanka, Managing Partner, Mobile Money Minute, LLC
"At least 20 new funds started that invest in "human capital loans" and low-income housing solutions."
Joel Libava, President, Franchise Selection Specialists Inc.
"2009 will start out ugly, and by late summer, we all just may feel that there is some light at the end of the tunnel. The US Treasury will be printing money well through the late spring."
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Chapter 1: 2009 Predictions
Jim Cates, President and Founder, LOBI Group, LLC and Author of "Climbing The Ladder of Business Intelligence"
"Corporate Bond rates will reach their highest yields in 10years due to constraints in the financial loan market from banks. Thus, solid corporations will have to pay these yields to get dollars from risk taking investors. Most investors will purchase treasuries and CDs."
Dave Muti, JD, RMA, Author, "Mortgages: What You Need to Know"
"The exotic types of mortgages referred to as option arms and pick-a-payment will begin to reset in 2009 and beyond increasing the number of defaults."
Love Goel, Chairman & CEO, Growth Ventures Group
"The next generation of specialty retail leaders will begin to emerge - catering to changing consumer demographics, behaviors and lifestyles."
Dr. Gregory Alan Bolcer, Serial Entrepreneur in Internet & Security, Bolcer.org
"Similar to the explosion of computer viruses in the 90's, corporate data breaches have hit their tipping point. Corporate piracy will become rampant as non-technical executives will happily pay the ransoms for breached data rather than face the public scrutiny and lawsuits. These exchanges that you won't read about in the news will be the catalyst for a self-reinforcing vicious cycle."
Don Gaspar, CTO, Yapstone, Inc./RentPayment, Inc.
"Finally seeing the traction of printed materials going away: books, magazines, bills, etc. Amazon's Kindle and Sony's eReader are leading the way as we see traditional publishes vanish. Look at the Tribune Company filing for bankruptcy as an example. Companies in the publishing space that do get it will do better than ever. Marvel Entertainment gets it. They see they were NOT a comic book publisher, but rather an entertainment company with their own
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characters and that comics happened to be a form of presenting their stories to their audience. Now look at their block buster movies. Don Gaspar, CTO, Yapstone, Inc./RentPayment, Inc.
Distribution media really getting digital traction exceeding traditional media. Another obvious one, music, shows, movies, but an overlooked item is eBills. Getting your bill through your email is more convenient, easy to add payment reminders, and very useful to load into Excel or any program to track your finances. As the bigger banks start using eBills, we'll see the Pony Express mail going away with our newspapers, books and magazines.
Margaret G. Orem, CEO Execsolution, Inc.
The protection and safeguarding of, and focused/limited/controlled access to information and intelligence gather by and used by governments will become one of the main issues in a nations' security considerations. Technology infrastructure will become a critical componenent in governmental strategic plans and initiatives as well as the management of information systems and data.
CONCLUSION Increased Government spending on bailouts around the world, high unemployement and low interest rates lead to one not-so-good outcome: stagflation. In transition times like these, there are many that will lose, but there are few that seem to prosper. Maybe with this information in this chapter, you find your way to prosper.
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Chapter 1: 2009 Predictions
Good luck in the year ahead!
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Chapter 1: 2009 Predictions
Part II Why Should You Believe • Chapter 2: “Predictability in Previous Years” • Chapter 3: “2008 Predictions” • Chapter 4: “2007 Predictions” • Chapter 5: “2006 Predictions” • Chapter 6: “2005 Predictions” • Chapter 7: “2004 Predictions” • Chapter 8: “2003 Predictions” • Chapter 9: “2002 Predictions” • Chapter 10: “2001 Predictions” • Chapter 11: “2000 Predictions” • Chapter 12: “1999 Predictions” • Chapter 13: “1998 Predictions”
C h a p t e r
2
Predictability in Previous Years
The predictions for a future year are typically made in October or November of the preceding year. At the end of the following year, we look at the previous predictions to determine whether they came to fruition. Here is how Mitchell Levy's predictions have faired over the last 11 years. •
2008: 85% accurate
•
2007: 85% accurate
•
2006: 85% accurate
•
2005: 85% accurate
•
2004: 80% accurate
•
2003: 75% accurate
•
2002: 40% accurate
•
2001: 95% accurate
•
2000: 70% accurate
•
1999: 70% accurate
•
1998: 65% accurate
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Chapter 2: Predictability in Previous Years
C h a p t e r
3
2008 Predictions
If this were not a presidential election year, we'd be uttering the "R" word for the first time in a decade. The U.S. economy is in serious trouble; huge budget deficit, sliding dollar, increased oil prices, high unemployment, and lack of a long-term focus on the fundamental components of prosperity (education, jobs, stable economic environment, etc.). Let's hope that the new president brings the tenacity and focus that allows us to get out of the downward spiral we've been in for the last decade.
Top Ten Trends for 2008 1. A Tough Year for the U.S. and the World Economy 2. Green is the New Black: Global Warming and Environmental Concerns Affect Businesses 3. The U.S. Continues
Dollar’s
Long-term
Decline
4. The Largest Asset Most People have Becomes Somewhat of a Liability! 5. The Internet Ride continues to thrill
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6. Rise of 'Chindia' Continues to Threaten the U.S. as the Dominant World Power 7. Rapid Demographic Change and Ways to Reach Them: The Internet is Bringing about a Change in Marketing and Advertising 8. Ascendancy of the Mobile Sector 9. Market Pressures Foster More Innovation 10. Hi-Tech and Software Evolve Dramatically Bonus trends: 1. Bio-Tech Brings Forth Good Promise 2. Predictions on U.S. Elections and Politics 3. Interesting Tidbits
Trends #1: A Tough Year for the U.S. and World Economy Ric Urrutia, CEO, Taos Mountain Software
"The banking crisis will worsen considerably, forcing the Fed to continue to lower rates, making the dollar weaker relative to world currencies, and oil will go to $120 a barrel."
Allan Kramer, Chairman of the Board, Bridgebank
"Overall, the economy in 2008 will be choppy and flat, at best. A worst case scenario, not unreasonable to expect, would be a mild recession."
Brad Peppard, Partner, MarketingBank
"Stagflation returns. Not since the early 1970s has the U.S. economy experienced the dual problems of inflation and slow economic growth. However, the explosive inflationary economic
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Chapter 3: 2008 Predictions
policies of the GW Bush administration (high spending combined with low taxes) over the last six years, which have been offset by the deflationary impact of Chinese productivity in combination with their maintenance of an artificially low exchange rate, are finally going to hit home. Expect a couple of years of pain (at least), while the U.S. economy works its way out of the hole that has been dug." Eddy Coenye, CEO, Nubiquity
"The Western world will be in recession in 2008. Consolidation will be the way to maintain stability. Mergers will reach an all time high. Venture Capital will be hard to get in 2008, due to the economic slow down."
Frank Slootman, President & CEO, Data Domain, Inc.
"A severe economic slump, mostly affecting 'Walmart shoppers', widens the gap between the haves and have-nots. Causes: Oil prices, weak dollar, budget deficit, massive mortgage foreclosures, and the housing market continues to go down and sideways."
Stewart L. Levine, Esq., Co-Author, 'Collaboration 2.0' (Publisher: Happy About)
"Unfortunately the U.S. will be challenged in 2008. Global political stature, balance of payments and deficits will weigh on the economy. The politics of the election and dissatisfaction with the current political climate will take a toll on the economy when coupled with the sub-prime collapse. It could be a very messy year. It reminds me of the early 1980's when the U.S. had lost its edge."
Dennis, Former CEO, Okidata Corporation
"The challenges of the financial industry are only in their infancy and I predict major write- offs and employee challenges in the first half of 2008."
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Jon William Toigo, CEO, Toigo Partners International
"The sub-prime lending fiasco will be the final nail in the coffin for the economy. A full-blown recession is imminent."
George L. Roman, Senior Enterprise Consultant, Rockville, MD
"The Fed will continue to print money like there's no tomorrow. Exports will rise and imported goods will get very expensive. Any further significant turbulence in the Middle East will send oil to $150 a barrel."
Michael Drapkin, CEO, Drapkin Technology Corp.
"2008 will be a spotty and uneven year for the economy and business. The crash of the sub-prime mortgage market will continue unabated through the rest of the year, causing disruptions in the real estate market and continued free falls in property prices in the affected areas, as well as tightening of credit to mortgage seekers. The spike in oil prices will hit the gas pump, causing tightening of general consumer spending, which will both affect the retail markets and influence the presidential race, to the detriment of the Republican candidate, whoever that ends up being."
Mike Heintz, President, University Electric
"The outlook on next year's economy is that it will play out about the same as 2007. Small projects will be put on hold while larger ones will go ahead. I think we should see the upturn sometime in the 4th quarter next year. Look for a big holiday season of shopping as the election will be over and a new confidence is restored."
Rohit Talwar, CEO, Fast Future
"The U.S. economy will go into a downturn--if not a full recession--driven by a combination of a credit crunch and associated crisis in the banking system, selling of U.S. T-bills by foreign countries, declining value of the dollar, rising oil
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Chapter 3: 2008 Predictions
prices and a general loss of confidence in many markets. The rest of the world will follow the U.S. down at differing rates." "Major banks globally will collapse and either be bailed out by the central banks or be forced to sell up or merge with other entities."
Trend #2: Green is the New Black: Global Warming and Environmental Concerns Affect Businesses Kurt Doelling, Vice President Supply Management, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
"In 2008, more and more companies will recognize the importance of deploying a green and socially responsible supply chain. A key element in creating green supply chains is the availability and acceptance of consistent industry standards. We are at a tipping point, ready to make a major ecological shift in the way business is conducted globally; but for this shift to be truly sustainable, we must also emphasize how it can also be profitable. A green supply chain has the potential to not only impact a company's environmental record, but also its bottom line."
Ralph Marx, CEO, Advocate Systems, Inc.
"The concept that we do have alternatives to oil will finally take hold. This will open doors for solutions that have not been even conceived as of yet. This shift from the question, 'Is it viable' to 'This is doable, now lets look at what really is viable' will spur a huge invention cycle and a wave of entrepreneurial ventures."
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Ian Browde, Global Village Idiot and Social Technologist
"Significant innovations in alternative energy, and hence, transportation and land use, will start to emerge as the majority of global society recognize that global warming is a more complex issue than 'the planet is getting warmer'. These innovations will help humanity recognize that our global system of transportation, energy use, and land development (including food and agriculture) are integrated and each affects the other."
Sheridan Tatsuno, Principal, Dreamscape Global
"$100+ per barrel oil prices, combined with oil market volatility and growing concern over global warming, will lead to accelerated venture and corporate financing of alternative energies, lifestyle services, and business models. Example: Current moves to include externalities into pricing."
Anyck Turgeon, Chief of Market Strategy & Security at Crossroads Systems
"Providing renewable clean energy and water will become globally very important--starting in 2008."
Bobby Jadhav, CTO, Siterra
"Awareness to ‘green living’ and environmental friendliness will improve."
Brock Hinzmann, Technology Navigator, SRI Consulting Business Intelligence
"In 2008, a very large number of alternative renewable energy technology companies will be breaking ground or starting up production in such areas as thin-film solar cells, wind power, algae-based bio-fuels."
Rob Ingersoll, Contributor to Foolosophy (Publisher: Happy About)
"Alternate fuel vehicles will be seen popping up all over the country but big oil companies will try to squash the competition since they still have more then enough oil to keep people going for the next hundred years."
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Chapter 3: 2008 Predictions
Buddy Arnheim, Partner/Member of Firm's Executive Committee, Perkins Coie LLP
"Solar will become a major topic as the price of solar panels falls, and the efficiency of related technology (converters, etc.) improves."
Catherine Kitcho, The Launch Doctor, and Author, 'Happy About Being a Baby Boomer' (Publisher: Happy About)
"Substantial venture capital investment will be targeted for renewable energy and the infrastructure required to develop, market, and deliver it."
Peter Paul Roosen, Author, 'Overcoming Inventoritis: The Silent Killer of Innovation' (Publisher: Happy About)
"Carbon dioxide is now being widely viewed as pollution rather than plant food. It is both. But the CO2 that comes from burning fossil fuels comes in larger amounts than the planet can handle. It also comes with other surprises. There is more uranium and thorium waste produced in a coal-fired power plant than a nuclear plant of equivalent energy output uses as fuel. How's that for an argument in favor of nuclear energy? The costs of industrial production are going to increasingly include the environmental costs. The traditional producer was only concerned about getting unwanted stuff up the smokestack, out the drainpipe or into a dump. Now they are going to retain ownership and title to the waste progressively longer. As part of this, the long-resisted carbon taxes are starting to appear."
Ross Sedgewick, Director, Global Product Marketing, Siemens Enterprise Communications
"Even more focus on mainstreaming of green technologies, energy sources, and alternatives to burning fossil fuel and/or creating CO2 emissions, which will start trickling down to most power/fuel consuming products in some way."
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Sam Gill, Co-Author, 'Climbing the Ladder of Business Intelligence' (Publisher: Happy About)
"Green is going to be at the top of the agenda for the next decade as governments and industry move to implement the Kyoto Protocol."
Rob Ingersoll, Contributor to Foolosophy (Publisher: Happy About)
"The electric car will make a comeback in the next year with solar powered paint or panel on the car that will charge the vehicle as it's going to get a much longer time out of the batteries."
Trends #3: The U.S. Dollar's Long-Term Decline Continues Eddy Coenye, CEO, Nubiquity
"The U.S. dollar will tumble to its lowest level since World War II. Gold price will exceed $1400 per ounce."
G. Mark Towhey, President, Towhey Consulting Group Inc.
"The biggest risk facing businesses globally in 2008 is the fast decline of the U.S. dollar. There are trillions and trillions of U.S. dollar bills stuffed into shoeboxes and under mattresses around the world. Each of these tiny pieces of paper represents an 'I.O.U.' from the people of the United States. Each of these dollars is basically a check--written by the U.S. in exchange for some foreign good or service. Unlike most checks, however, these dollars have never been returned to the bank to be cashed. Rather, they are hoarded and exchanged from hand to hand outside the country for further value. At this point, these trillions of dollars represent a massive liability in 'un-cashed checks' written by the U.S.
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If the U.S. dollar loses its status as the 'most trusted currency' then these checks will begin finding their way back to the U.S. Treasury to be cashed. Promptly. Could the U.S. Treasury do so?" Barbara L. Harley, Author, 'International Business Incubation for Global Trade' (to be released Winter 2008)
"In 2008, the U.S. dollar will lose some of its ability to attract foreign currencies. The strength of the Euro and the positive impression of the new governments in France and Germany will siphon some of the currencies into the Euro. Since it will take the U.S. government at least twenty four months from now to significantly change its economic policies and rate of spending, the deficit will continue to weaken the dollar and the overall economy. A weak dollar may provide more export sales and may encourage more tourism into the U.S., but it will limit the ability of U.S. tourists to travel and shop abroad."
Mahmood A. Khan, Hewlett Packard Services, Business Strategy and Implementation, Application Outsourcing and EAS Practice Principal
"The dollar will be much lower, especially compared to Euro. This will spurt growth in exports of goods and services, especially in the area of computers, software, and health sciences related products."
Stephen Ibaraki, CIPS Fellow (FCIPS)
"When one of the world's largest holders of U.S. currency reserves, China, with well in excess of a trillion dollars, decides that there's a need to diversify, and then takes notice. Expect more pressures on the U.S. dollar providing new opportunities for those who watch carefully."
Mark Rabkin, CEO, Closet Factory of Silicon Valley
"The dollar will continue to weaken against foreign currencies through 2008."
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Anyck Turgeon, Chief of Market Strategy & Security at Crossroads Systems
"The Canadian dollar and the Euro will keep on gaining points over the U.S. dollar."
Robert D. Cormia, Associate Professor, Foothill College
"We are in a quandary over inflation--as the price of oil is now somewhat tied to a declining dollar, which is tied to our debt, and flight from the dollar will have a further upwards pressure on oil prices. So our misdeeds at home (debt) affect currency, which affects the price of energy (oil and then gas), and flight from the dollar into metal commodities drives up gold, suggesting further we are in an inflationary period, when actually the value of the dollar is the real issue."
Michael Britti, CEO, TU Rental Screening Solutions
"Long-term value of the dollar and its use as a 'reserve' in the global economy is far more important than any short-term market adjustment."
Brad Peppard, Partner, MarketingBank
"We will see a continuing weakness in the U.S. dollar. As the U.S. fights recession, the value of the dollar relative to foreign currencies will continue to fall. The only forces supporting it will be the relatively inflationary policies of our primary trading partners. No doubt some European countries will take cover in the weak dollar to avoid dealing with their internal problems (specifically the costs of current social welfare programs) as aggressively as they might otherwise. Still, at the end of the day, we are still a ways off from the bottom of the dollar versus the Euro, and an even longer way off from the bottom versus the Yuan."
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Catherine Kitcho, The Launch Doctor, Author, 'Happy About Being a Baby Boomer' (Publisher: Happy About)
"The U.S. Dollar's current decline in world markets will lead to the beginning of a reversal in offshoring because companies will find American employees to be affordable again."
Ian Browde, Global Village Idiot and Social Technologist
"U.S. dollar weakens: Increasingly large economies, corporations, and private individuals will shift significant aspects of their finances away from the U.S. dollar, causing it to weaken further. At the same time, in the margins but increasingly present, alternatives to the global money system will start getting publicity. These exchange systems will include barter but they will be more innovative than just local trading and they'll be tried out in virtual environments like Second Life."
Trend #4: The Largest Asset Most People have Becomes Somewhat of a Liability! Jon William Toigo, CEO, Toigo Partners International
"We will begin to see the largest up tick in foreclosures on private property since the Depression as the economy slows, layoffs accelerate, and homeowners can't keep up the payments on properties they purchased during the housing valuation bubble."
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Dave Nielsen, Director, ISV & Developer Program, Strike Iron
"National housing sales/prices continue to drop ~10% spurred on by the credit crisis and a downturn in the job market. The bottom doesn't come until 2009. Some micro-regional pockets like Silicon Valley increase by 10%."
Mark Moore, CEO, Omni Agri Resources LLC
"The housing slowdown will continue through 2008 and turn around starting in 2009. It will be the determining factor for the health of the economy."
George L. Roman, Senior Enterprise Consultant, Rockville, MD
"The sub-prime mess is worse than it seems. Lots of people who thought they had built a large equity stake in their homes will learn that that amount has shriveled up or even gone negative. Spending will dry up and we'll see a recession."
Allan Kramer, Chairman of the Board, Bridgebank
"The real estate market will continue to slide with further fallout from the sub-prime loan situation."
Johnny Khamis, Author, 'Costi and the Raindrop Adventure' (Publisher: Happy About)
"Housing prices will continue to go down but at a slower pace."
Mahmood A. Khan, Hewlett Packard Services, Business Strategy and Implementation, Application Outsourcing and EAS Practice Principal
"The financial Industry will bounce back towards the later half of the years due to careful lowering of interest rate step-by-step and getting closer to 2%. This will lead to stabilizing of housing markets and growth."
Mark Rabkin, CEO, Closet Factory of Silicon Valley
"Housing prices will continue to fall but this will be healthy as real estate has been over-valued for several years."
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Michael Britti, CEO, TU Rental Screening Solutions
"The 'solutions' created by politicians in D.C. and the states will be worse for the economy than the actual sub-prime meltdown and adjustments in real estate value.
Phillip Howells, Self-Employed
"Driven probably by the U.S. weakening economy, the UK house price increase rate will slow and the economy will suffer as people begin to realize they have debt they cannot repay."
Robert Klag, Co-Author, 'Apartment Management' (Publisher: Happy About)
"The sub-prime lending issue is expected to impact the real estate markets. Strict credit evaluation has reduced the liquidity in capital markets and will hold down cap rates for properties. We expect to see greater demand for apartments which will drive rent increases over the next year. Maybe next year."
Trend #5: The Internet ride continues to thrill Jim Sterne, Chairman, http://WebAnalytic sAssociation.org
"Social media moves from life as a curiosity to a competitive edge. What was exciting for kids and a necessity for students has crept into the business world as a collaboration tool. Companies that get it will allow it and their employees will be more productive."
Sheridan Tatsuno, Principal, Dreamscape Global
"Social networking for enterprises will lead to new collaboration systems and business models. Example: iPhone and smartphone social networking apps for field sales and fleet management."
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Gemma Lim, Co-Author, 'Apartment Management' (Publisher: Happy About)
"Sales2.0 will take off. More deals will be closed without any face-to-face interaction but instead through relationships developed over the Web. A leader in this revolution is Webex.com's web-touch sales model, which has been the key to the company's 100X revenue growth."
Richard Simoni, Partner, Asset Management Company
"In 2008, we'll see a large number of the Web 2.0 companies funded in the past 4 years go out of business, as they fail to catch on in a big enough way and run short of funding. These failures will be largely under the radar, as the media doesn't generally cover 15-employee companies that fail. There will also be a handful of spectacular Web 2.0 successes, which will garner substantially more attention than the failures. And, if the broader equity markets remain long-term positive, we will see the return of the dot-com IPO, based largely on the promise of future monetization of a large user base."
Phillip Howells, Self-Employed
"The Internet and social networking activities will become ever more pervasive and we will be aware of an increasingly 'virtual living' option in life!"
Bryan D. Stolle, Partner | MDV Mohr, Davidow Ventures
"Enterprise use of cloud-computing (aka: utility computing) will have crossed 'the chasm' and entered the tornado as Geoffrey Moore likes to say. From utility models like Amazon's S3, development/hosting platforms like Force.com, or application providers like NetSuite, SalesForce, Omniture, etc., enterprise computing outside the four walls will become the de facto standard."
Bobby Jadhav, CTO, Siterra
"Social and consumer software will make big strides both on platform and applications space."
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Peter Paul Roosen, Author, 'Overcoming Inventoritis: The Silent Killer of Innovation' (Publisher: Happy About)
"While the Internet continues to bring more of the world into the growing community, it will become more regionalized in 2008. In well-established markets search engines will return increasingly regionalized results as commercial interests continue to take greater control of this powerful media."
Jean Paul Jacob, IBM Research Emeritus and Visiting Scholar at U.C. Berkeley
"Too many bytes are being created for business and by business. The Internet knows everything but tells us almost nothing. We will see new ways to search for information with a strong component of 'social networks and their wikis', some of which will be economic forecasters. In education, the Horizon Report is a good example of a social network producing a wiki of technological forecasts for education. It is only a matter of months before other fields, including business/economy catch up."
Brock Hinzmann, Technology Navigator, SRI Consulting Business Intelligence
"Google, Microsoft, and other providers of real-world mapping data and who have introduced easy-to-use 3-D computer-aided design software for use by average consumers, will form partnerships and adapt the technology to form practical mashups in virtual worlds. Small enterprises will be able to leverage mashups into real business opportunities that expand their normal geographical limitations."
Bill Cullifer, Executive Director, World Organization of Webmasters (WOW)
"Microsoft will start paying consumer users sizable cash incentives and rebates to switch from Google search to MSN Search. As a result, shares of Google will dip."
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Peter Paul Roosen, Author, 'Overcoming Inventoritis: The Silent Killer of Innovation' (Publisher: Happy About)
"Blogging will reach its peak in 2008 if it hasn't already."
Buddy Arnheim, Partner/Member of Firm's Executive Committee, Perkins Coie LLP
"Online shopping is going to hit a record this winter, only to be surpassed next year beyond expectations."
Trend #6: Rise of 'Chindia' Continues to Threaten the U.S. as the Dominant World Power Mitchell Levy CEO & Publisher Happy About
"A couple years ago, I thought it would be 10-20 years before the U.S. is not considered the #1 world economic power. Now, I think it will happen in the next 5 years.”
Stephen Ibaraki, CIPS Fellow (FCIPS)
"China--through its double-digit GDP continuing growth, rapidly expanding consumer base, world's largest manufacturing base, and market potential of the U.S. and the European Union times two--represents both a resource opportunity and draw on the world. This will continue to drive resource economies."
Deepika Bajaj, Founder and CEO, Invincibelle
"Asia becomes a force to reckon with in the world of business. Emerging countries like India and China will foster entrepreneurship and develop
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products to serve the local markets. Examples are Baidu.com: China's lead search engine; and Reliance: India's largest telecom provider." Stephen Ibaraki, CIPS Fellow (FCIPS)
"With 700,000 engineering and science graduates a year, the largest representation of graduate students, China is destined to be the innovation leader for the world and in the medium term. Overall Asia will have 90% of the world's engineers and scientists in just a few years. This represents a tremendous opportunity for innovation and investment. The future is grassroots-driven thought leadership and collaboration enabled by the pervasive use of the Internet, on mobile platforms, and by an entrepreneurial population base, which honors diligence, hard work, sacrifice, and scholarship. With Internet usage soon to the world's largest, cell phone usage larger than the next three countries combined, China is perfectly situated to lead this revolution. Watch for the rise of ‘Global Giants’ from China impacting every major sector—the shift from West to East is happening and it's now."
Barbara L. Harley, Author, 'International Business Incubation for Global Trade' (to be released Winter 2008)
"In 2008, the trend of far fewer international attendees at U.S. universities and research institutions will continue because alternative locations (such as Australia, Brazil, China, Sweden, UK) are working hard at recruiting and providing easier immigration processes.”
Axel Kloth, CTO, Parimics Inc.
"The U.S. economy will see a strange phenomenon in which its local economy seems to recover, but by year's end (2008) the devaluation of the Dollar and the resulting rise of all other currencies will lead to near-collapse of the U.S. economy, and the rise of India and China to economic superpowers will continue
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without the need for the U.S. market. The U.S. of A will then completely reverse course and de-globalize to save its local economy, with a new theory of economics (more precisely: only macroeconomics) behind it." G. Mark Towhey, President, Towhey Consulting Group Inc.
"The Chinese government has already voiced its quiet threat to liquidate some of its U.S. denominated foreign reserves for more stable currencies. While the Chinese threat is mere posturing at this stage, since unwinding their U.S. positions would further devalue the dollar (and their own positions), it is indicative of a broader move with, ultimately, disastrous consequences for the U.S. economy–and much of the western world."
Stephen Ibaraki, CIPS Fellow (FCIPS)
"Expect more examples of short-term 1 trilliondollar-market capitalization companies coming from China [PetroChina is just the first]. However, in the medium term, the short term promise will build into long-term reality. This represents a unique opportunity for West and East."
Rohit Talwar, CEO, Fast Future
China and India will slow their rates of economic growth but still grow at over 7%."
Peter C Harrison, Chief Executive Officer, GlobalLogic Inc
"Any new government immigration legislation that may materialize in 2008 will have little to no effect on the pace of offshoring." "China will continue to grow as a percentage of total U.S. IT outsourcing, but will still be only a small fraction work sent to India."
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Ralph Marx, CEO, Advocate Systems, Inc.
"Economies worldwide were on a tear last year, raising questions about the continued dominance of the U.S as an economic super power. This will be the year where the list of winners and losers starts to take shape. For instance, once oil comes back down to reasonable prices, will Russia really have a second act in its playbook? No matter how things shake out, it is clear that one can no longer ignore the rest of the world when planning for business growth and expansion."
Peter C Harrison, Chief Executive Officer, GlobalLogic Inc.
"Growth of outsourced R&D will continue to outpace the growth of the overall offshoring sector."
Dennis, Former CEO, Okidata Corporation
"The Olympics will show case the changing China to the world, a new realization for many."
Phil Hood, Principal, Transcend Strategy Group
"At least two Fortune 500 companies will be bought by Chinese companies."
Trend #7: Rapid Demographic Change and Ways to Reach Them: The Internet is Bringing about a Change in Marketing and Advertising Ian Browde, Global Village Idiot and Social Technologist
"Citizen Press and the beginning of the decline of the aligned media: where new forms of news services will arise on the Internet and people will increasingly get their news from real people experiencing real stories in their own
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environments, and contributing text, images, and even video clips via mobile devices and digital cameras. This will herald the loss of power of the media like the major newspapers and TV stations that are all but owned by private interests." Jim Sterne, Chairman, http://WebAnalytic sAssociation.org
Michael Silton, CEO, Rainmaker
"Pay-per-click search marketing continues to be a money magnet. Newsworthy? Not really. More marketing companies are finally getting to it. More marketers are finally getting the hang of it. More people are going to use web analytics and figure out how to optimize their ROI." "Pay-per-click will evolve to pay-per-sale."
Catherine Kitcho, The Launch Doctor, and Author, 'Happy About Being a Baby Boomer: Facing Our Newfound Longevity' (Publisher: Happy About)
"The TV and film industry will (finally!) wake up and realize that the currently coveted 18 to 49 demographic is actually smaller than the 50+ audience that is expanding due to 78 million aging Baby Boomers. Studios will begin targeting more of their films and programming to older audiences."
Jim Sterne, Chairman, http://WebAnalytic sAssociation.org
"Widgets will be the latest, cool marketing technique but will be massively difficult to master. Can you spell 'viral software application'?"
Janek Kaliczak, Senior Partner, Designing Hyper-Spectral Cameras, NSKR (Research and Development Group)
"With over 150 million copies of World of Warcraft out there and up to 5-million people online worldwide, how are advertisers going to reach a generation of viewers who do not watch TV, read a paper or own a telephone? My prediction here is there is going to be a lot of
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smooth talking going on in boardrooms to try and correct this problem. Just think of the $10+ plus a month per online subscriber per month."
Trend #8: Ascendency of the Mobile Sector Rohit Talwar, CEO, Fast Future
"The mobile phone will increasingly become our 'remote control for life'–gradually replacing laptops–aided by projection screens and keyboards and an increasing array of functionality."
Janek Kaliczak, Senior Partner, Designing Hyper-Spectral Cameras, NSKR (Research and Development Group)
"Phone cameras will achieve full motion video recording and hi-resolution images with simple editing for both. We should thank Philippe Kahn for his invention here."
David H. Deans, Managing Director, GeoActive Group U.S.A.
"The formation of the Open Handset Alliance will free the North American and European mobile Internet consumer experience from the prior limitations of the wireless service provider's restrictive walled-gardens. These previously handicapped markets will now be able to catch up with the mobile multimedia global market leaders (in Japan and South Korea)."
James E. Biorge, Chairman/CEO, LibertySmart
"The rising cost of fuel with reduced computer prices will encourage home and mobile office models that are dependent upon increased security systems that authenticate the access by device and user to enterprise systems from anywhere at anytime."
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Bobby Jadhav, CTO, Siterra
"We will see a Mobile Internet (may be WiMAX) and related devices/applications."
Dr. Gregory Alan Bolcer, VP Engineering, High Tower Software Inc.
"Cellphones will include WiMAX and VoIP as standard features."
Janek Kaliczak, Senior Partner, Designing Hyper-Spectral Cameras, NSKR (Research and Development Group)
"State Public utilities commissions are going to be facing a problem as more people switch over from land lines to cell phones and web phones. Congress would be committing political suicide if they tried to TAX or even change the way it is happening now."
Trend #9: Market Pressures Generate More Innovation Deepika Bajaj, Founder and CEO, Invincibelle
"Consumers will lead the next level of innovation. We observed the rise of consumer identity with Internet. Many consumers are used to getting things for free online and pay for things that increase their capacity to work and play. No doubt, Google is the darling of consumers and businesses."
James E. Biorge, Chairman/CEO, LibertySmart
"Look forward to seeing how the creative American mind finds ways around these challenges and proves that challenges are the mother of invention."
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Barbara L. Harley, Author, 'International Business Incubation for Global Trade' (to be released Winter 2008)
"The size of U.S. markets and the exceptional investment opportunities for new companies and innovative technologies will continue to attract businesses despite the general negative feelings expressed."
Jean Paul Jacob, IBM Research Emeritus and Visiting Scholar at U.C. Berkeley
"Business and the economy will start catching up with the fact that in our services economy, the competitive advantage is given by innovation, and new companies and consultancies will appear in the marketplace, helping business innovate."
William Toigo, CEO, Toigo Partners International
"'Do more with less' will become the driving mantra in business information technology. Businesses will become much more concerned about how they are managing infrastructure and data within the context of three objectives: driving labor costs out of operations, deferring more technology acquisition, and ‘greening’ (reducing power consumption) in data centers."
Ross Sedgewick, Director, Global Product Marketing, Siemens Enterprise Communications
"Consumers will backlash against being overrun by 7x24 communications technology, and that will impact work life as well as people’s realization that always being connected really means distractions, fragmented focus, interruptions, and ultimately attention deficit and lost productivity."
Deepika Bajaj, Founder and CEO, Invincibelle
"Gen Y will need more meaning at work. They will demand training and more responsibility and more time. They will prefer working virtually and in international locations. This generation is now entering the work force and has more opportunities than any generation before them.
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The high turnover in these 20-somethings has already made companies like Deloitte evaluate work-life balance programs." Anyck Turgeon, Chief of Market Strategy & Security at Crossroads Systems
"Entrepreneurship will be on the rise in the U.S.A. as employees will be pressed to work longer hours without much pay raises, given this recession."
Trend #10: Hi-Tech and Software Evolve Dramatically Bob Worrall, CIO, Sun Microsystems
"With the IT industry poised to take advantage of more network-based, secure application services, the role of IT will change significantly. The traditional roles of applications developers and operations support staff will give way to roles such as vendor management, contracts administration, and communications. Equally important, the business analyst will continue to be a vital role within the department. However, that role will focus less on the actual design of technological solutions and more on the definition of clear business requirements, which will be built and operated by trusted partners and delivered as services over the Internet."
Bryan D. Stolle, Partner | MDV Mohr, Davidow Ventures
"Enterprise IT spending will accelerate, driven by line of business executives who need solutions now, going outside constrained corporate IT groups to solutions offered in the cloud (eg: SaaS, Outsourced Business Process suppliers, etc.)."
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Robert D. Cormia, Associate Professor, Foothill College
"Virtualization continues to drive the desktop / network environment, and virtual communities comes into the mainstream from interpersonal (long distance) business."
Jean Paul Jacob, IBM Research Emeritus and Visiting Scholar at U.C. Berkeley
"A new technology will find its place in the ‘spectrum of intimacy’ in communications where e-mail is at one extreme and face-to-face meeting at the other extreme. New technologies to occupy vacant positions in the communications spectrum of intimacy are 3D Virtual Worlds."
Axel Kloth, CTO, Parimics Inc
"Multi-Core CPUs (more precisely: homogeneous multi-core CPUs) will be not only in the desktop and laptop, they'll penetrate the embedded space too."
Dr. Gregory Alan Bolcer, VP Engineering, High Tower Software Inc.
"Class action lawsuits on behalf of users will finally overwhelm IT bad practices for storage and handling of sensitive customer data as the number of data loss incidents explodes exponentially."
Anyck Turgeon, Chief of Market Strategy & Security at Crossroads Systems
"Data breaches will keep on increasing and costing much to so-called 'advanced' nations as companies and the financial world are focusing on short-term profits.”
Dr. Gregory Alan Bolcer, VP Engineering, High Tower Software Inc.
"Intrusion detection systems will grow up from focusing on down-in-the-trenches, real-time detection to focus more on broad management and integration of security data, events, and incidents across all types of hardware and software deployed in a business."
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Axel Kloth, CTO, Parimics Inc.
"The current model of writing, testing, and deploying SW on these new multi-core CPUs completely breaks since the resulting code does not show performance advantages over single-core CPUs, but requires a lot of hand-coding of OS and application layer software to just balance the load."
Ralph Marx, CEO, Advocate Systems, Inc.
"One could describe Open Source software as a ‘Two heads are better than one’ concept on steroids. The remaining stumbling block is to create a fair system that properly rewards the efforts of the brains and creativity that go into pure inventing with the stifling effects that patents can cause to overall technological progress, and thus, the advancement of society as a whole. This year will be the year where we make some major strides in this area. Expect influence from many sectors ranging from Google to the courts."
George L. Roman, Senior Enterprise Consultant, Rockville, MD
"Oracle will accelerate its domination of the enterprise space. They've shown the world that they can skillfully integrate high value-add acquisitions and deliver on the service infrastructure required to support them."
Peter Ostrow, President and CEO, Technical Communities, Inc.
"Apple eliminates DRM altogether from iTUNES song downloads."
George L. Roman, Senior Enterprise Consultant, Rockville, MD
"Apple will prove to be the Linux-on-the-desktop solution that all the Open Source advocates wish they had. Apple will see 20% market share of the desktop by year end."
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Bonus Trend #1: On U.S. elections and politics Jim O'Toole, Daniels Distinguished Professor of Business Ethics, Daniels College of Business, University of Denver
"The Democrats will win the Presidency and secure both houses of Congress next November. Both as a cause, and as a result, there will be increasing pressure to clean up the excesses of Wall Street. When President Sarkozy of France spoke to the joint session of Congress about those excesses, he was expressing what most people around the world, including the majority of Americans, feel. Now, the debate is public and it will grow, and the salaries of CEOs of large corporations will be the immediate subject of criticism."
Dave Nielsen, Director, ISV & Developer Program, Strike Iron
"Democrats take the White House and stock market drops 10% at the end of the year, ending a 6 year bull market and setting the tone for a 2009 bear market."
Evelyn Preston, Author, 'Memoirs of the Money Lady' (Publisher: Happy About)
"With recession threatening, American voters will finally raise their collective voice and loudly demand that a new President and do-nothing Congress find realistic, bi-partisan solutions to the rising health care, energy, and tax burdens."
Ric Urrutia, CEO, Taos Mountain Software
"In November, Hillary will be elected as our first female president."
Anyck Turgeon, Chief of Market Strategy & Security at Crossroads Systems
"U.S.A. launches a stronger war against illegal immigrants and limits entrance of legal immigrants."
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Frank Slootman, President & CEO, Data Domain, Inc.
"Continued quagmire in Iran and Afghanistan, more Islamic militant activity, including new terrorist attacks in Europe and North America."
Peter Paul Roosen, Author, 'Overcoming Inventoritis: The Silent Killer of Innovation' (Publisher: Happy About)
"The American empire reached its peak just before U.S. troops crossed the border into Iraq. 2008 will see further realignment and relative declines as the rest of the world challenges the U.S. position. The U.S. military will need to maintain its strong presence in the Middle East to prevent the euro and other currencies from taking over the oil business."
Bonus Trend#2: Biotech brings forth good promise Buddy Arnheim, Partner/Member of Firm's Executive Committee, Perkins Coie LLP
"Pharma related will be under considerably regulatory pressure, despite the emergence of some very interesting drugs. Good time to buy those stocks."
Claes Gustafsson, VP Sales & Marketing, DNA2.0
"We will see the first publication of an organism with a completely synthetic chromosome. It will create significant media attention and large interest in synthetic biology."
Bryan D. Stolle, Partner | MDV Mohr, Davidow Ventures
"Personalized medicine will impact in a positive way a majority of people in 2008, through better diagnosis and choice of more effective therapeutics."
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Brock Hinzmann, Technology Navigator, SRI Consulting Business Intelligence
"Neurological research will result in some new therapy within the next year. It could be curing a sleep disorder, migraine headaches, some neurological disease, or the ability to recover some lost capability due to a sensory loss or brain damage. It might be in combination with a chemical or an implant, but ideally it will be a noninvasive technique that does not need a lengthy FDA approval period to reach the market. So many people are conducting research on the brain that I believe something will pop out. Gamer interfaces have already been introduced that use brain waves. This area will grow."
Bonus Trend#3: Interesting Tidbits Peter Ostrow, President and CEO, Technical Communities, Inc.
"Yahoo is acquired or merges with an entity that is as large as or larger than Yahoo."
Rohit Talwar, CEO, Fast Future
"Investor interest will increasingly shift to post-conflict nations in Africa such as Angola and the oil rich central Asian countries such as Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan."
Mark Moore, CEO, Omni Agri Resources LLC
"The U.S. GDP will be 1.5-2.5%. Inflation will stay in check (2%) but unemployment will rise above 5%."
Michael Silton, CEO, Rainmaker
"Pay for performance will become the norm for outsourcing relationships."
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Dr. Ivan Misner, Founder and Chairman, BNI
"Online and face-to-face networking will continue to flourish. Online networking works, but relationships must still be part of the process. The more ‘high tech’ business owners become, the more and more they really need to foster those ‘high touch’ opportunities that face-to-face networking affords."
James E. Biorge, Chairman/CEO, LibertySmart
"The out of control costs for healthcare will motivate development of technology that optimizes consumer driven healthcare models, preventing the disaster of government intrusion while creating healthier and more productive employees capable of standing up against global competition."
Dr. Ivan Misner, Founder and Chairman, BNI
"Small companies will continue to have the edge over big companies relating to business networking. The problem is–big companies don't effectively add referral marketing into the process. When it comes to developing social capital and the networking process, small business is king."
Sheridan Tatsuno, Principal, Dreamscape Global
"The Hollywood writers strike will drag on for months, pushing more production overseas and creating opportunities for digital distributors."
Frank Slootman, President & CEO, Data Domain, Inc.
"Environmental activism steps up: hybrids, bottled water, recycling."
Ian Browde, Global Village Idiot and Social Technologist
"Privatization of military systems--a softer way of saying mercenary military systems--will become more of an issue as various ‘wars’ against drugs, immigrants, Iraqis, Afghanis, etc., get outsourced."
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Dennis, Former CEO, Okidata Corporation
"Tourism in the U.S.A. will have a major boost in 2008 due to currency imbalance with the rest of the world."
CONCLUSION I have had the privilege and pleasure of talking annually to thousands of business executives who share their views and predictions on the next year's economy. As detailed in Chapter 2, you can see that the accuracy of my predictions has been precise (with the exception of the year 2002). As you plan for the year's activities, taking these predictions into consideration will allow you to prepare, plan, and execute more effectively.
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C h a p t e r
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2007 Predictions
This chapter focuses on predictions for 2007. Although we've seen a number of these trends, there are two mega trends that can be pulled from these predictions: our natural resources are diminishing and the US continues to become less important on the world stage •
Trends # 1 & 2 deal with the world and the impact that a growing industrial population has on it. As our supply of natural resources continue to diminish, these trends (unless reversed) will continue to be a focus of business and consumer alike.
•
Trends #3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10 deal with the continued utilization of the Internet and its effect on spreading capitalism around the world
After reading and digesting these trends, please share your feedback. It's most certainly welcomed.
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Top Ten Trends for 2007: NOTE The italics represent the accuracy of the predictions as of 12/08/07 1. Global Warming/Environmental Concerns Effect Business (right) 2. Energy Continues to Take Center Stage (right) 3. The Internet Continues to Grab Mindshare by Getting Incorporated into Daily Processes (right) 4. The World Continues Going Mobile (right) 5. Marketing Starts Moving From and “Art” to a “Science” (partial) 6. The US Dollar Becomes Less Important (right) 7. Capitalism Continues to Spread Throughout the World (right) 8. Rapid Adoption of Mass Customization (partial) 9. Software Continues to Morph (right) 10. Online Networking Becomes a Key Business Asset (partial) Bonus trends: 1. Industries/Trends to Watch 2. Fun Predictions Including
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Trend #1: Global Warming/Environmental Concerns Effect Business Margaret Heffernan, Author, "The Naked Truth" and "How She Does It"
"Global warming will start to impact consumer decisions and buying habits."
Deep Sahni, CEO, Global Now
"Global warming will take center stage in the media."
Christopher Hazen, Managing Director, WSP Environmental Strategies
"Climate change concerns will drive a wholesale re-evaluation of the "environmental" agenda by business and government, resulting in significant regulatory and market changes. Among these, the US Government will be forced, at the Federal level, to begin drafting national legislation."
Robert D. Cormia, Associate Professor, Foothill College
"In 2007, as one house of congress passes under democratic control, we will see legislation working towards a formal 'cap and trade' commitment to greenhouse gas reductions. It will likely resemble the California legislation, but will have additional requirements for mandatory CAFE increase in mileage standards and energy efficiency."
Bob Corbett, Principal, R.E. Corbett Associates
"Concern for the environment will move from being a concern of a small lobby to become a mainstream issue. This is the cumulative result of Katrina, leadership at the city and state level (note the recent legislation passed with collaboration of Democratic-controlled legislature and the Republican governor of
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California.), and a plethora of natural resource issues, including water contamination and increased health awareness." Andrew 'Flip' Filipowski, Owner, Chairman & CEO, SilkRoad equity, Inc.
"Environmentally sensitive products that are ‘green’ will become equally acceptable and pursued for profit by all political factions.....Bio-degradable plastic bottles made from organic materials will become the rage..."
Neerja Raman, Sr. Research Fellow, Stanford University
"Global warming issues go beyond activism to technology solutions for alternative energy, research investment and deployment."
Dave Asprey, Sr. Manager, Strategic Planning, Citrix Systems
"Continued climate change (helped along by idiots in Washington) will cause companies to seriously pay attention to disaster recovery and business continuity. Insurers will demand strong DR and BC procedures in order to insure against business loss."
Andrew Greenberg, CEO, Greenberg Brand Strategy
"Green. Green. Green. The color of money? More than that, it's the mantra for corporate America. Today and tomorrow, F500 companies will lean heavily on this moniker of currency, claiming to have done well by the environment. In an attempt to create good will and a better relationship with its consumer, brands will tout their royal 'green-ness'."
John Montgomery, Partner, Montgomery Law Group, LLP
"The second wave of the Internet will be evident and the first wave of clean technology will be rolling."
Christopher Hazen, Managing Director, WSP Environmental Strategies
"Thin film solar technologies will drive the hottest IPOs in 2007."
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Lawrence J. Udell, Executive Director, Intellectual Property International, Ltd.
"In 2007 we will see a dramatic increase in both famine and disease in areas of the world where it is not a potentially profitable resource area such as mining, oil, etc. The over population in these areas will have a huge resource drain on the rest of the worlds financial resources."
Neerja Raman, Sr. Research Fellow, Stanford University
"Investments in technology for social development goes mainstream. Corporations form government partnerships to scale in emerging economies for poverty reduction, improved education. MIT style open courseware becomes mainstream."
Richard Brenner, CEO, The Brenner Group, Inc.
"As China prepares for the Olympic games, their environmental issues, such as pollution, will become a worldwide concern, slowing economic growth in that region."
Trend #2: Energy Continues to Take Center Stage Andrew 'Flip' Filipowski, Owner, Chairman & CEO, SilkRoad equity, Inc.
"Global warming will be recognized as a serious issue by all political factions and alternative fuel sources will become more acceptable including nuclear power generation...."
Kimberly Wiefling, Founder and President, Wiefling Consulting
"Alternative energy sources, underserved by the centralized utility companies for decades, will be boosted into high adoption rate by individual consumers weary of waiting for transformation to come from the big players. Dramatically increased adoption by consumers will drive the rapid expansion of alternative energy companies
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and products, led by electric car manufacturers offering cars that run on electricity powered by solar powered house power supplies. Why do you think Ford owns 1/3 of Mazda, the only company in the world with a hydrogen-powered car?" Thomas M. Evans, President, The Tax Co-Op, Inc.
"Within 24 months it will be generally acknowledged that the solar cell is on the same revolutionary path as the integrated circuit. Similar to what happened to the IC, cost per unit of output will continue to decrease dramatically thereby stimulating more demand, investment, and research which will further cut price/performance. This virtuous circle will reach a ‘tipping point’ within five years when the tangible economic benefits alone are sufficient to switch to this power source. At that time, mainstream planners in the housing, transportation and other industries begin to design in solar power as a standard alternative to conventional sources of energy."
David Krueger MD, Executive Mentor Coach
"Energy and raw materials will lead a tumultuous market upswing catalyzed by sporadic world conflict. Refineries and organic resources must be protected from direct contamination and computer terrorism."
Ralph Marx, CEO, Soiree
"Despite lower oil prices, alternative energy companies will popup faster than tulips in the spring time. Alternative fuels such as ethanol have seen vast acceptance in the U.S. in the last year. 2007 will likely be the year where everything else takes hold. From conservation methodologies to vast technical improvements that create lower cost and greater efficiency amongst all forms of energy production and CONSUMPTION!"
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Neerja Raman, Sr. Research Fellow, Stanford University
"LED technology goes mainstream resulting in cheaper displays, more energy efficient lighting, energy efficient buildings etc. Key Players GE, Phillips, Osram...."
Robert D. Cormia, Associate Professor, Foothill College
"As John Doer has said, greentech / cleantech will be key targets of venture funding, and NOT singly because of oil prices, war, energy independence, or climate change, but simply because it's time to 'move on from carbon'."
Mark Rabkin, CEO, Closet Factory of Silicon Valley
"There will continue to be a rising tide of investments in businesses around the macro trends of clean, renewable sources of energy that will be coupled with a desire to begin reduction of greenhouse gasses to mitigate global warning."
Brock Hinzmann, Technology NavigatorSRI Consulting Business Intelligence
"Micro-Energy. New businesses will appear all over to make and sell devices that produce relatively small amounts of energy or that save energy when they replace an existing device. These products will show up in the home, in offices, in cars and trucks, and all over. They will be based on solar, wind, water flow, temperature change, body motion, or whatever force that generates a little bit of energy that can be saved."
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Trend #3: The Internet Continues to Grab Mindshare by Getting Incorporated into Daily Processes Buddy Arnheim, Partner/Member of Firm's Executive Committee, Perkins Coie LLP
"The Internet will continue to grab mindshare and leisure time from the US population, as people transform their use of the Internet from 'search and retrieve' to 'receive and interact.”
Richard Hasenpflug, President, R.L. Hasenpflug & Associates
"The world is moving past Web 2.0, at least as it is often defined. The most interesting developments on the Internet will be beyond the traditional concepts of Web 2.0 as simply a vehicle for enhanced collaboration and integration, moving instead into new paradigms for work and social structures. These require not just new technologies and applications, but fundamental changes in the way we work and live."
Jean Paul Jacob, Emeritus, IBM Research
"The convergence of telephone, instant messaging, texting, movie making, browsers that can modify a "site", browsers which know which other browsers are in the same space, etc, will start to happen in 3D Massive Multiplayer Online Environments, of which Second Life is a good example."
Stephen Ibaraki, CIPS Fellow (FCIPS)
"Expect wider enterprise adoption of Web 2.0 through broader acceptance of enabling tools and users demanding more. Consumers lead the charge and then enterprises follow. Look at history with the internet, cell phones, and e-mail. Converged user experiences with integrated: blogs, shared rich media (podcasts, photos, videos), group collaboration (wikis, "Groove"
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networks), personal communications (VoIP, instant messaging, web-video), user tagging and content control--create an expectation and demand that will reach further into enterprises as these experiences become the norm with consumers. Moreover, expect to see this transformation growing into a wider build-out of 3-D like virtual worlds and experiences. The journey to wider main-stream acceptance will begin in 2007 where users create online virtual world economies with links to real dollars. This will focus business, education, media and finally governments into these virtual world environments." Mike Bradley, Managing Director, 4tech Support - the Nationwide IT Support Service for SMEs
"Businesses and organizations from micro to multinational will increasingly adopt and obtain enormous productivity gains from the adoption of the smarter working practices made possible with the use of audio and web collaboration tools. They will improve communications, optimize resources, reduce costs, enhance competitive advantage, extend global reach, improve crisis management and more smoothly manage change.
Mark Rabkin, CEO, Closet Factory of Silicon Valley
"Either Skype or Youtube will turn out to be the Netscape of Web 2.0. Ushering in the next wave of high-technology investments both early-stage and IPOs. There will be a boom but as in the past only a few long-term winners. And perhaps fewer exit strategies will include an IPO with more companies being bought by the likes of Google, Microsoft, eBay and Amazon as the turf war for the desknet continues. "
Brian Lawley, President & Founder, 280 Group LLC
"Web 2.0 and many interesting new ideas will continue to emerge. Startups in this area that gain momentum and user bases rapidly will be
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snapped up within 12-18 months (or less) by Google and other players looking for "Land Grab" opportunities. Most of the others will find that the barrier to entry is too low to justify keeping the doors open." Peter Ostrow, President and CEO, Technical Communities
"Business to business Internet-based firms will make a comeback in valuations and begin to trade at a 7-10X EBITDA multiples in 2006. This is a result of the fact the public market will begin to recognize that the Internet brings efficiencies and communities to the B2B market in a similar manner as they do to the C2C market."
Dave Asprey, Sr. Manager, Strategic Planning, Citrix Systems
"2007 will be the year of virtualization. Server virtualization, desktop virtualization, and data center virtualization will combine to make it economically and technically attractive for IT administrators to deploy Windows desktops in data centers instead of end user PCs, providing data-center-level security and availability to end user applications."
Michael Worry, CEO, Nuvation
"Virtual meetings, in worlds such as Second Life, will become accepted forms of business communication."
Ed Lambert, VP, Bridge Bank
"The next generation of Web 2.0 companies will focus on actual sales models vs. eyeballs."
Dr. Gregory Alan Bolcer, Chief Software Architect, Encryptanet, Inc.
"Internet Collaboration. Yes, 'Collaboration' means everything to everybody (and thus nuthin to nobody), but expect it to become a hot area again as competition between Google and Microsoft heat up. Collaboration this time around will mean 'Internet-enabling' desktop applications for joint use."
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Ian Kaye FCCA MBA, Director, ISK Limited
"As we come to the end of 2006 we can already see that traditional areas of the economy are being surpassed by the youthful online market. Noticeably in the UK we have seen Google outweigh advertising income compared to the TV channels. Similarly I predict other areas of the economy will be larger online then offline. A specific example I am involved with - recruitment - by the end of 2007 we will see more advertising on online job boards then in the more traditional newspaper based adverts."
Mike Myatt, Managing Director, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth
"In 2007 there will be a dramatic macro-economic consolidation impacting social media. While the social media industry as a whole will continue its overall expansion as well as increasing in acceptance and popularity, 2007 will signal the beginning of a much needed regression to the mean…it is a sustainable medium that will be a long-term survivor forever changing the way we interact."
Trend #4: The World Continues Going Mobile George Roman, Senior Enterprise Consultant, Arion Systems Inc.
"2007 continues the March of the Handheld. Phones, PDAs, cameras and mpeg players get cheaper and more powerful, and now they'll be integrated in ways most people will love."
Rodger Raderman, Co-founder, Veeker
"In 2007, a video shot with a mobile phone will be seen by the world."
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Brad Peppard, Managing Partner, Marketing Bank
"Games finally reach US cell phones in a serious way."
George Roman, Senior Enterprise Consultant, Arion Systems Inc.
"WiMax will prove it's for real, and give the telcos and cable companies a run for their money."
Hannah Kain, CEO, ALOM
"Functionality of mobile phones will increase -every second new phone will have GPS."
Gary Rudman, Founder and President, GTR Consulting
"As this generation of teens who we refer to as 'Technomads' get more and more mobile, they'll become less likely to connect with traditional advertising media. Marketers will have to consider the “third screen,” (cell phones/video iPods, etc.) and develop strategies to optimize and deliver message content appropriate to those devices."
Trend #5: Marketing Morphs While Becoming More Quantifiable Jim Sterne, President, Target Marketing
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"'Web analytics'" will make the transition to 'marketing optimization' as more companies realize that online behavior provides a clear picture of the desires of the marketplace. More companies will alter their offline efforts as a result of observing online activity which will result in higher customer loyalty and market share."
Chapter 4: 2007 Predictions
Chris Consorte, President & CEO, Integrated Worldwide
"Advertising will become ROI focused. Lead generation and acquisition marketing will continue to gain popularity. Pay per call and other prospecting and acquisition methods will begin to see larger shares of the ad market."
Vijay S. Chattha, Chief Talker, VSC Consulting
"The business of public relations will rely more on quantitative tools than any year before it."
Jim Sterne, President, Target Marketing
"Internet marketing no longer belongs to the early adopters. We are well into the tall part of the Crossing the Chasm bell curve. The amount of money spent for online marketing will continue to hit all time highs as larger percentages of marketing and advertising budgets are dedicated online efforts."
David Krueger MD, Executive Mentor Coach
"Neuroscience and psychological research of money behavior and financial decisions (Behavioral Economics) will be applied in innovative marketing strategies to transcend current paradigms."
Mark Walsh, Managing Partner, Ruxton Ventures LLC
"Key TV viewing demographics will become more and more striated: 15-30 year olds becoming web streaming personalized entertainment consumers, 55+ watching traditional network programming. In between will be advertisers "bread and butter", but will be more and more difficult to amass volumes of... so major annual destination viewing (Super Bowl, etc.) will become more crucial for brand building."
Jim Sterne, President, Target Marketing
"Companies will continue to Not Get It when it comes to the Cluetrain Manifesto admonition that markets are conversations. They will continue to make embarrassing gaffes by trying to
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manipulate that conversation (as WalMart did in 2006). A handful of firms will get lucky and learn not to push against the social network, but embrace it as Coke and Mentos did. But only a couple will find new and exciting ways to help promote the conversation - which will give them a serious competitive edge." Chris Consorte, President & CEO, Integrated Worldwide
"Animation will continue to gain popularity in both the advertising and entertainment worlds. Low-cost animation will replace high-cost celebrity talent -- and companies will begin to use animation in their overall image marketing campaigns."
Trend #6: The US Dollar Becomes Less Important Kim Singh, Executive Director, Asian American Public Policy Institute
"The US will see its global position erode further via a via China in 2007. The balance of trade will tilt even more markedly in favor of China. The US will continue to lose jobs due to outsourcing to China and India. The US economy will continue to be underwritten significantly by the Chinese."
Ravi Thatte, Executive Director / Coach, Dixtinct Services Pte Ltd
"China will allow the Chinese currency to move closer to its real value (the gap between the real and the regulated value will become less unreasonable than before but will still continue to be unreasonable). This will enable the dollar to maintain its bloated value for another year. The Euro will get stronger."
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Brad Peppard, Managing Partner, Marketing Bank
"No decline in deficits, but another hit to the dollar: 10% to 15%. It would be a lot more except that further declines (after the 30% over the last few years) will make US exports competitive, plus Europe isn't doing so well so they'll inflate along with us, plus we're still the main reserve currency so it hurts everyone to see the dollar drop. Note that we used to be the only reserve currency, but we're losing steadily to the Euro. Expect countries to hold 20% to 30% of their reserve in Euros in the future, with the balance in dollars."
NOTE If the following doesn't happen, there'll be a continued exodus of companies to non-US stock exchanges. Lawrence Dietz, Research Director, Sageza Research
"Corporate 'panic' over Sarbannes Oxley will subside as the marketplace, law makers, and the judicial system agree on what is normal. A common sense approach will dominate where solid governance, noble intentions and clear, complete documentation constitute compliance."
Ed Lambert, VP, Bridge Bank
"There will be increased lobbying attempts to lighten the impact of Sarbanes Oxley as the M and A and foreign IPO markets continue to grow as alternatives."
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Trend #7: Capitalism Continues to Spread Throughout the World Ravi Thatte, Executive Director / Coach, Dixtinct Services Pte Ltd
"Sounds almost like a no-brainer but China, India will continue to grow at speeds not known to the western world since years. In addition, there will be other economies that will start growing at a furious pace - Vietnam, Burma, Indonesia and Pakistan. For the last three, politics will be the only risk/constraint. Since the size of those economies are relatively small, their achievements will go largely unnoticed."
Kimberly Wiefling, Founder and President, Wiefling Consulting
"Expect a surprising rise in Japanese creativity and innovation as Japan leaves the low ground of 'better, faster, cheaper' to China and India for more profitable business territory. Western business people may not see this coming due to outdated notions of a risk-averse Japan where failure was fatal. Now entrepreneurism and innovation are driving the collective consciousness of Japan to strive with great intensity toward another economic transformation every bit as big as the one Demming helped catalyze in the 1950's."
Jim Anderson, President, SVB Analytics
"In order to maintain productivity growth and profits U.S. companies will accelerate their efforts to arbitrage labor rates internationally. This will impact software development and service sector support jobs most dramatically. Despite a wage pricing advantage which has declined from 20:1 to 7:1, no U.S. market participant will be able to ignore the benefit that remains in the face of a weakening economic environment."
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Stephen Ibaraki, CIPS Fellow (FCIPS)
"Expect mobile and wireless business models in Asia driving adoption of similar models in the West. The Eastern leadership becomes more pronounced in 2007. West first, China second is now evolving into China first, West second. The dynamo that is China, which I forecasted 4 years ago as a force to be recommended with, will now become the force to lead the world."
Hannah Kain, CEO, ALOM
"Chinese prices will increase -- both due to the currency rate and due to normal competitive behavior."
Ulysses Wong, VP, Sales and Business Development, Alps Electric
"The global economy will gain robustness, placing a premium on effective global relationships."
Jack Yan, CEO, Jack Yan & Associates
"Another major, global fund-raising effort illustrates that social responsibility actually helps companies' bottom lines."
Lawrence J. Udell, Executive Director, Intellectual Property International, Ltd.
"The acquisition spree of the big getting bigger will dominate the business and economic landscape and create drastic problems for the establishment of new ventures and innovation. America was founded by individuals with ideas and the opportunities were obvious. The huge investment portfolios controlled by greed will destroy this freedom."
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Trend #8: Rapid Adoption of Mass Customization Brock Hinzmann, Technology Navigator, SRI Consulting Business Intelligence
"Cocreation Services. Businesses will become interactive with customers to create new versions of products and services of all kinds, from food to toys to manufactured business supplies. In most cases, such services will start out as a make-your-own kind of service, where the business provides a place, tools, and starting materials. Eventually, the business will cherry-pick the best items or recipes and make them and most of the customers will learn to quick making their own and just buy the best picks."
Patricia Seybold, CEO, Patricia Seybold Group
"'Customer Empowerment'" will be a Popular Strategic Initiative in 2007: Customer empowerment is an easy concept around which employees and partners can align. Customer loyalty, customer experience and customer self-service initiatives have all had their heydays. Customer empowerment combines all three concepts into a simple, easy-to-understand test: Are we empowering our customers? Does this action we're contemplating empower or dis-empower our customers? The Goal: Empower our customers to get the results they care about. How do we do this? We enable customers to serve themselves. We make it easy for them to find things. We make it easy for them to accomplish their tasks. We streamline their processes. We empower customers to roll their own solutions, to customize and extend our products. We help
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them innovate. We make it easy for them to strut their stuff by sharing their ideas and creations so that others can appreciate them, re-use them and build upon them. Empowered customers are loyal, profitable and enthusiastic customers. They'll grow your business!" Stephen Ibaraki, CIPS Fellow (FCIPS)
"2007 is all about the user experience and consumer personalization driving business, government, industry, education, and media. Technology does not drive business, the consumer, and user; rather the user/consumer drives business and this in turn is a catalyst for technology. The question is no longer about learning the technology and seeing how it can be used but what the consumer/user expects, wants, needs, what is the context for this experience, and then how can technology enable it. Consumers/users determine and drive technological innovation."
Rajesh Setty, President, Foresight Plus, LLC
"Co-operative applications will become more common. This will range from simple mashups to leasing and licensing other applications to build their own applications. The reason is simple why re-invent the wheel?"
David H. Deans, Managing Director, GeoActive Group USA
"The notion of a mass-market is finally laid to rest, as marketers uncover effective ways to reach clusters of individual consumers that have similar lifestyles, interests and behaviors. At least one big multinational ad agency will fail to evolve, by embracing this transformation. As a result, they will be disregarded as fossils from a bygone era."
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Brock Hinzmann, Technology Navigator, SRI Consulting Business Intelligence
"Intimate Computing. We will see increasing numbers and types of personal, wearable sensing and recording devices that will be intimate to our bodies as well as be sensing and recording intimate details of our lives, which will be shared with increasing numbers of other people, including healthcare providers, family, and friends. Lifeblog projects are underway, sponsored by Microsoft, Nokia, and others, to record and make sense of personal information. Eventually, our daily blogs could be semi-automated, much as sports and financial news releases are increasingly written by softbots today. Even if we maintain editorial control, laziness or hackers will eventually lead to large amounts of intimate details being revealed. Even though we know our robotic servants are there, listening to our every word, anticipating how to serve us even before we know what it is we want (something I refer to as the Gosford Park phenomenon), we will become accustomed to ignoring them and the privacy implications. As sensors and interfaces based on nanotechnology become more widespread, the intimacy of details will reach the cellular level."
Trend #9: Software Continues to Morph Rajesh Setty, President, Foresight Plus, LLC
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"Open source will continue to change the software landscape. Being one of the founders of an open source company in late 2000, I have had an opportunity to watch this space keenly. The time has now come for open source. Saying that Open Source will take over is a bit extreme but in 2007, we will see that Open Source will significantly change the software landscape."
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Dr. Gregory Alan Bolcer, Chief Software Architect, Encryptanet, Inc.
"Free-to-Play! We've been through all possible combinations of letter-2-letter the past decade--this year's hot item will be F2P. F2P allows any software, but Internet gaming software at first, to be freely available, but include small downloadable or unlockable components that are purchased through a micro-commerce channel. Imagine getting a copy of Microsoft Office 2007 with basic editing features for free, but adding in the image manipulation, effects, and clip art components for a much smaller purchase price than buying the whole suite of software. Korea invented this technique of upselling users after giving away the game. See this technique to make a big splash in North America with both gaming and corporate software publishers."
Amy D. Wohl, Editor, Amy Wohl's Opinions and President, Wohl Associates
"SaaS market will flourish like wild fire - not just for SMBs. Software from China and India will start to be a factor in the US market. Google will stop fooling around and start offering a complete on-line office suite. Microsoft will have to counter."
Moses Ma, Partner, Next Generation Ventures
"There will be continued uptake for Ruby (500K downloads and going strong), the open source "meta-programming" language, and Rails, Ruby's full-stack framework for web application development. This is possibly the most important open-source project to be introduced in the past 10 years. It has an elegant syntax that is natural to read and easy to write. For example, it takes only 58 lines of code to create an Ajax-enabled weblog application."
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Frank Cohen, founder of PushToTest
"Enterprise CIOs will be very happy to see IT operations costs reduce as the efforts behind Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Master Data Management (MDM) merge."
Trend #10: Online Networking Becomes a Key Business Asset Patricia Seybold, CEO, Patricia Seybold Group
"Rapid Growth in Online B2B Customer Communities: While MySpace and Facebook and other social networking sites attract mobs of teens and other consumers, business professionals will be expecting their suppliers to offer online communities of knowledgeable peers who can explain and help support the suppliers' products in ways that only other knowledgeable users can. Do you have a strategy in place to attract, nurture and support a vibrant online customer community?"
Julia Hubbel, President, The Hubbel Group Inc.
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"The art of charisma will determine success. People are realizing that hard-core sales techniques, managing by title, intimidation and status no longer work. Old school ways of influencing people don\'t work with the younger generations and the older generations are tired of being browbeaten. The most successful people in the world spend about 54% of their time building and maintaining relationships- it\'s how they do it that makes them unique. They are about creating value, being empathetic, helping others be successful, listening with intent, focusing on making a difference, and leaving
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others feeling larger than how they felt at the beginning of the conversation. These skills will increasingly be in demand in our leaders and in our everyday managers because they will be the influencers of tomorrow. We are in the Century of the Network, and it belongs to those who know how to move other people's lives with grace and courtesy." Dr. Ivan Misner, Founder & Chairman, BNI
"The current trend in networking and social capital education will emerge in the form of private professional training organizations in much the same way that private industry has controlled the educational market on “sales techniques” (another area that colleges fail miserably). Companies like the Referral Institute (www.referralinstitute.com) that are offering a series of trainings specific to the techniques and systems of networking, social capital, and referral marketing are starting to pop up with a very refined and polished slate of seminars and trainings for those business owners who want to learn how to harness the power of word-of-mouth marketing."
Ian Kaye FCCA MBA, Director, ISK Limited
"Consolidating this will be the continued growth of social platforms like Facebook and myspace. I think niche platforms will also spring up allowing more communication and more areas of the economy to be conducted online"
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Bonus: Industries/Trends to Watch Companies Influencing the Landscape (Apple) Peter Ostrow, President and CEO, Technical Communities
"IPOD market share will decline by at least 10% in 2006 as the market responds to competitive offerings on the hardware side by Microsoft and others and begins to penalize Apple for its DRM issues."
Jeffrey S. Young, Author, Rose Springs
"Apple Computer will become the leading distributor of studio movies over the Internet, expanding its iTunes business into iVideo. As part of this effort the company will also invade the home entertainment arena and dislodge all the traditional home electronics companies, reinventing itself as a digital entertainment company. The iPod will trash Microsoft's Zune, and every other competitor, and the company will have to split its stock again."
Companies Influencing the Landscape (Google) Jeffrey S. Young, Author, Rose Springs
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"Google will continue to defeat everyone in monetizing search and expanding its franchises. The You Tube acquisition will make no sense economically, but will be a giant win in terms of visibility and continuing to give Google the leading spot in mind share over the development of online video. The stock will move past $750 a share on its way to $1000."
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Phil Hood, Principal, Transcend Strategy Group Dean Lane, CEO, VariTRAK, Inc.
"Google stock will hit $600 in July, 2007."
"Google stock will rise above $600.00 per share."
Companies Influencing the Landscape (Microsoft) Richard Brenner, CEO, The Brenner Group, Inc.
"Microsoft VISTA will reinvigorate PC sales worldwide, and the demand for semiconductors and systems will increase by at least 10% worldwide over 2006."
Moses Ma, Partner, Next Generation Ventures
"Office 2007 is going to become the next big thing... it's not just an application, it's a brand new Internet platform. We'll see enterprise applications taking advantage of new capabilities to create a new breed of solution. It's not middleware, it's 'officeware'."
Brad Peppard, Managing Partner, Marketing Bank
"Vista, of course. It's a no-brainer to say that it will be a huge success. Or is it? Has Microsoft's time finally come? I'm betting with Steve Ballmer, that this is going to herald a renaissance in Microsoft's fortunes. Their stock is up 38% this year, from what was effectively a five year low about six months ago. But I expect the joint release of a new OS and a new Office to set record revenues for msft. For the rest of computing, this is going to be a very good thing, injecting excitement and creating new opportunities across the board: for both hardware and software."
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Dean Lane, CEO, VariTRAK, Inc.
"There will be growing concern about Microsoft’s Operating System, Vista, and its proprietary nature."
Consumer Rich Goldman, VP, Strategic Market Development, Synopsys
"Consumer Wars will reign throughout the year, with Microsoft on the short end. Microsoft's Zune won't make a dent in Apple's iPod kingdom. Sony's PS3 will take market share from the Xbox 360, and Microsoft's Vista will prove to be a nonevent. (Who needs another search engine when Google rules the world?) Nevertheless, Microsoft will log another good year of profits. You will need all your toes and fingers to count all the new portable video devices. Meanwhile, consumers are completely confused about HD DVD vs. Sony's BluRay, and will stay away from buying either. It is the Beta vs. VHS of the decade."
Gary Rudman, Founder and President, GTR Consulting
"Teens are faced with more and more stress. They are always plugged in to the Internet, tuned in, and connected with their friends and the world. As they mature and deal with more technology and more responsibility, what we call Brain Blur is going to turn into absolute overload. Teens will look for ways to step back and distance themselves from overwhelming pressure in their lives. In the not-too-distant future, they will search for 'safe,' comfortable, stress-free ways to unplug."
Ralph Marx, CEO, Soiree
"The individual is now empowered with a whole new ability to communicate to the world and to express themselves. The next phase will be one of skepticsm over what is real and what is not as
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well as a need to be protected from the vast amounts of relevant data. It will be incredibly interesting to see how these problems are solved and by whom." John Spence, Executive Educator, John Spence Consulting
"It will continue to be a 'War for Talent.' Companies are realizing more and more that the only sustainable competitive advantages left are truly talented people and consistently superior customer service (which of course is delivered by... truly talented people!). Location, technology, access to capital, scale, proprietary processes... are all diminishing as ways to differentiate your business and dominate a market. In today's global marketplace products are becoming commodities - only the "experience" of purchasing them is what sets one apart from another. So what is the killer app of today? Bright people who dazzle and surprise customers with consistently superior service."
Healthcare Hannah Kain, CEO, ALOM
"Healthcare reform will come from the private industry, not from the politicians. WalMart's drug sales for $4 is just the start."
Bob Corbett, Principal, R.E. Corbett Associates
"The USA will have universal health care within 5 years. Unlike previous eras when doctors and business leaders opposed 'socialized medicine', big business and labor are now behind it. Business leaders want a health care solution which levels the playing field with offshore manufacturers. Detroit is 'making noises about the need and labor has always been behind it. Institutions are ready to have their costs reduced from today's mandatory emergency care."
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David Krueger MD, Executive Mentor Coach
"Scientific findings will increasingly demonstrate the use of vitamins and nutritional supplements in health enhancement as well as disease prevention and treatment, partly in response to a worsening healthcare crisis. Organic growers, supplement makers, and micro farms will experience growth in the high double digits."
Housing Christopher Hazen, Managing Director, WSP Environmental Strategies
"Growth in new multi-purpose, high-density commercial/residential developments will outpace the housing sector as a whole."
Andrew 'Flip' Filipowski, Owner, Chairman & CEO, SilkRoad equity, Inc.
"The housing bubble will return after only a brief plateau as the baby boomers insist on a multiple homes especially near the coast.....and begin acquiring in anticipation of a booming market trying to buy at the bottom...."
Mark Walsh, Managing Partner, Ruxton Ventures LLC
"Pockets of deep housing cost depression will appear, similar to southern California in the eighties, causing bank-stock depression and a more general malaise. High-end vacation homes will stay strong."
Mark Rabkin, CEO, Closet Factory of Silicon Valley
"The housing market slowdown will be the number one economic impact story of 2007. However, I believe the slowdown will be a relatively soft one buoyed by lowered interest rates by the Federal Reserve in the latter part of 2007 in preparation for the 2008 Presidential election season."
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Phil Hood, Principal, Transcend Strategy Group
"In late 2007 the country will experience a sharp recession. Eighty percent of the time, real estate downturns such as we experienced in 2006 are followed by stock market downturns a year later. It will be over quickly, unless monetary policy makers react stupidly."
Mike Heintz, President, University Electric
"If the housing market continues to be slow and people are not moving because they cannot get their asking price then we will see more kitchen and bathroom remodeling because people are not going to remodel only to move. This is what happened in the early 90s and also in 2004."
Market/Financial/M&A Warren Myer, CEO, Myers Internet
"Fed cuts interest rates in Q3, Foreclosures rise to record levels, Stock market (DJIA) is up 15% for 2007."
Ric Urrutia, CEO, Taos Mountain Software
"M&A will be up, Nasdaq will be up, IPO will be slow, more startups being funded so IPO back but not next year, etc."
John Montgomery, Partner, Montgomery Law Group, LLP
"There will be an increase in the number of IPOs of venture capital backed companies."
Jay Conrad Levinson, the father of Guerilla Marketing
"Our economy will flourish as a result of our increase vigilance."
Love Goel, Chairman & CEO, Growth Ventures Group
"Private equity firms will continue to acquire companies at an ever increasing pace. Companies will have to reorganize and reorient themselves to become competitive with private-equity owned companies - i) they will
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have to attract and build strong management teams, ii) they will have to hold these teams accountable, and iii) they will have to take a longer term perspective focused on creating sustainable value. Or else, they might become attractive candidates for buy-outs." Love Goel, Chairman & CEO, Growth Ventures Group
"Multi-channel players (i.e. bricks and clicks companies) across several sectors - retail, financial services, media, travel - will accelerate taking online market share from pure play internet leaders like Yahoo, eBay, Amazon, Expedia and eTrade."
Buddy Arnheim, Partner/Member of Firm's Executive Committee, Perkins Coie LLP
"The tech economy will continue to grow, with large investments in communications infrastructure and new dramatic pharma and med device breakthroughs."
Bill Lockyer, California Attorney General
"California will make significant strides in extending health coverage to uninsured and reforming system to try to control costs. Infrastructure investment in California will continue to ramp up dramatically. California bond sales will double or triple during year compared to previous high volumes."
Outsourcing Axel K. Kloth, CTO, Parimics
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"India and China as low-cost outsourcing countries will be replaced by Eastern European countries, with much higher initial quality hardware and software engineers, and shorter project times than we ever saw in China or India."
Chapter 4: 2007 Predictions
Bill Widmer, CEO, g8solutions
"Offshoring will migrate to bestshoring and nearshoring. Rising labor costs in India, quality issues arising from labor transitions, and potential political issues will move work into Viet Nam, eastern Europe, South America and yes, back to North America. This best shore approach will provide full business recovery capabilities, improved service quality and overall lower blended costs."
Bill Widmer, CEO, g8solutions
"Over the last few years organizations have been outsourcing activities in a piecemeal fashion to best of breed companies-in a 'smartsourcing' fashion. The outsourcers have quietly been evolving from strong niche players into vertically integrated service partners--very similar to the major industries of the late 80's and 90's but with the benefit of having its infrastructure leveraged across many more revenue streams. This shift has now allowed the outsourcing organizations to also start going back to having only one source for multiple needs, eliminating the smart source culture and allowing the industry to go back to a one call sourcing as it was 10-15 years ago. This will lead to growth of the big outsourcers and a slow death (by attrition or acquisition) of the smaller niche players."
Regulation Mark Walsh, Managing Partner, Ruxton Ventures LLC
"Air travel will become so striated between the "fully vetted with retinal scans or other biometrics" versus the common masses that the travel industry will begin crisis mode and a steep decline... HDTV Videoconferencing will become a viable alternative, as will "NetJets" style individual flights."
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Anyck Turgeon, Chief of Market Strategy and Security, Crossroads
"More security regulations and compliance requirements will be deployed in the USA and Europe."
Semiconductor Industry Rich Goldman, VP, Strategic Market Development, Synopsys
"The Semiconductor industry will stay in a Goldilocks environment, not too hot, not too cold, just nice steady growth of under 10% with a few scary moments (a k a inventory corrections) thrown in for good measure. Growth will be led by SRAM to power all those new MP3 players, digital cameras and other great consumer gadgets, and Foundries will continue to gain market share. Nonetheless, watch out if you start hearing people say that we have broken out of the semiconductor cycles. If you hear this, then you can sure we are headed for a downturn."
Axel K. Kloth, CTO, Parimics
"General-purpose multi-core CPUs are going to be mainstream."
Michael Worry, CEO, Nuvation
"While Moore's Law on increasing transistor density shall continue, growth of single CPU processing power will slow substantially. This will lead to not only the multi-core processors being seen now, but a convergence of traditional processors with programmable logic."
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Fun Predictions We Couldn't Resist Including: John Spence, Executive Educator, John Spence Consulting
"Since I do work with a handful of the nation's top financial institutions the one other thing that strikes me is that there is a massive amount of money on the move. As baby-boomers retire, down-size, cash-in their 401Ks / IRAs and begin to collect pensions and such, there is going to be the largest transfer of wealth in the history of our country. I am not sure where it will all end up, but there will be literally trillions of dollars re-distributed within the next few years."
Jean Paul Jacob, Emeritus, IBM Research
"Electronic paper will make its appearance in e-books and e-newspapers."
Andrew Greenberg, CEO, Greenberg Brand Strategy
"The rise and fall of Martha Stewart was impressive to witness, both its heights and depth. More impressive, however, is her resurgence — from the ashes rise the Phoenix. 2007 will be the year of forgiveness…"
Jack Yan, CEO, Jack Yan & Associates Jeffrey S. Young, Author, Rose Springs
"Bob Barker loses his hair."
"OJ Simpson will finally disappear from the cultural landscape...and good riddance."
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C h a p t e r
5
2006 Predictions
This chapter focuses on 2006. Although we've seen some of these trends over the last 9 years, trends #1 and #2 are surfacing for the first time. Go to Part 2 and view the trends since 1988 and you'll see the preliminary focus and buildup of the trends we see this year. The three major hurricanes in the United Stated and the continued expansion of the middle classes in China and India will put a strain on energy availability, which will have ripple effects around the world. We also see some very interesting devices using the Internet and changing the way the population uses the product and forcing the corporations to modify the way it sells and services it. Almost all of the 10 trends this year relate to one catalyst: the Internet. As we continue to move into the 21st century, the democratization effects of the Internet will continue to dramatically change the world. Times of shifting power structures present opportunities. Keep your eyes open and you might be one of the next big winners. Best of luck using these trends to your advantage.
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Top 10 Trends for 2006 NOTE The italics represent the accuracy of the predictions as of 12/20/06 1. Energy issues take a front burner on the world stage. (right) 2. The Internet's democratization effect expands to traditional media. (right) 3. Marketing expenditures and activities continue to shift to the Internet. (right) 4. China's continued growth significantly affects world commerce. (right) 5. Outsourcing continues to expand to other sectors of the economy. (right) 6. Services continues to play a bigger role in Western economies. (partial) 7. Usage and proliferation of mobile commerce expands. (right) 8. Adoption of VOIP continues. (right) 9. Employer/employee relationships strengthen for the first time in years. (wrong) 10. Security and privacy issues raise their heads again. (right)
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Trend #1: Energy Issues Take a Front Burner on the World Stage Rohit Talwar, CEO, Fast Future
“Oil prices will top $100/barrel and average over $80/barrel and oil prices will drive at least one country to effectively declare bankruptcy and call in the World Bank/IMF.”
Bob Cormia, Faculty Member, Foothill College
“Americans will have to start to think about energy, and especially Peak Oil. (http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/) While oil prices may drop somewhat, demand will seriously out-strip production, and we are at the leading edge of the escalation to $100/barrel (well before 2010).”
Sue Kunz, President & CEO, Solidware Technologies
“The rising anger over fuel costs in America gives the administration an opportunity to pass legislation approving oil drilling in the Alaskan wilderness.”
Peter Ostrow, President & CEO, Technical Communities/ TestMart
“Investment in alternative energy sources and services will skyrocket. Publicly traded companies in the sector will see significant bump-ups in valuation.”
Dan Shafer, Technology Visionary and Author
“Globally, I expect China to emerge as a serious leader in the emergent field of alternative energy technologies. Some time in 2006, China will announce a major undertaking -- fueled in part by American Venture Capital -- to become the OPEC of the 21st Century, while the United States, true to form, stays on the sideline nursing its petroleum hangover and wondering what hit it. While it is hazardous to predict precisely what alternative energy might emerge as important in
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2006 China, I think it's safe to say it's not likely to be a technology, per se, but probably agrarian-based. Think biofuel.” Ralph Marx, Former CEO, Acteva, and Strategic Business Advisor
“Higher energy prices will effectively lower the demand side of the standard demand/supply curve, thus reducing the total impact on our economy. Yet it will provide enough concern about our energy future that this will prove to be a boon to companies that are involved in alternative energy.”
Jack Yan, CEO, Lucire LLC
“A larger shock on gasoline prices means that even crossover SUV sales become doubtful. Sales of larger SUVs collapse totally.”
Gerard Wen, Principal, The Alternative Board Silicon Valley
“Over 50% of the current “over 2 tons” SUV owners will choose a crossover SUV or a non-SUV vehicle in their next purchase or lease. General Motors and Ford will continue to lose money in their U.S. operations for a minimum of 12 months. Additionally, they will continue to lose market share because of poor product mix.”
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Trend #2: The Internet's Democratization Effect Expands to Traditional Media Sue Kunz, President & CEO, Solidware Technologies
“Apple's release of the video iPod leads to a whole new revolution.”
Karl Shaikh, Co-founder, Virtual Directors, London, England
“We the public can all become journalists and will have in our pockets the capacity to contribute content into mainstream media. We will be able to submit our media content to news channels: news media houses will encourage submission of public-generated content particularly video generated by mobile phones.”
Karen Howe, VP, AOL
“Blogs, podcasts, and videoblogs are not a fad. They're here to stay. With the continued democratization of traditional media, new high-end but user-friendly tools will continue to be built. As a result, younger and younger users will create increasingly more complex content with higher production value. Heck, who doesn't know a 4th grader who’s made a movie?”
Karl Shaikh, Co-founder, Virtual Directors, London, England
“Video blogging will take off. We will also be open to receiving video content broadcast more readily to our cellphones. Alternative formats of the original TV content will be distributed as mini serials or mini episodes. The iPOD phenomenon will extend to video, and video iPOD will achieve some early success, although this market will not be as easy for Apple as the original iPOD was. The industry dynamics are different, and people's consumption behavior patterns are very different to the consumption of Music. The
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creative industry will also need to adjust to this new opportunity to ensure we have the right content.” Ann Revell-Pechar, President, Revell-Pechar, Inc.
“Social Media. Taken Seriously. This might be the most widely booed of all, because those bloggers who still fill 'em up with segues into who they danced with last night will be moved to the National Enquirer level. But Publishers and Editors, CEOs and Industry Movers... this is the format. Businesses who want to be recognized, who want to be heard, will have to begin to rely on Social Media methodologies.”
Ann Revell-Pechar, President, Revell-Pechar, Inc.
“Video over Broadband Gets Real. No more watching tiny little screens in lo-def format... no no no! 2006 will be the year that there's an enormous breakthrough in streaming media. Finally, you will be able to get hi-def, full-screen video piped to your gorgeous flat panel monitor! And not only that, there will be tools to let YOU post video without going back to programming school.”
Jack Powers, Director, International Informatics Institute
“The number of television screens we watch will double, as tens of millions of LCDs and flat panel displays turn up in cars, mobile phones, pocket computers, billboards, store signs, appliances and office machines. Print is not dead, it's just being displaced by video in the next generation. (http://pervasive.TV)”
Bill James, CEO, Digital Media Services BT
“We will start listening to our digital music playlists through our home stereo. New devices that make our playlist available to our hi-fi system will allow us to enjoy our digital music in a more traditional way and enjoy the experience at home comfortably.”
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Jim (J.C.) Carlton, Retired, President and CEO
“Global interaction will continue to make the planet feel smaller, and worldwide communications will be more common for the average person.”
Trend 3#: Marketing Expenditures and Activities Continue to Shift to the Internet Kevin Lee, Executive Chairman, Didit.com LLC
“2006 will be the first year that major marketers will truly consider Internet advertising part of the media plan. The shift of media consumption away from newspapers, TV and radio to the Internet is irrefutable. This shift will spur significant M&A activity.”
Stewart Quealy, Sr. Conference Program Director, Incisive Media
“Search Engine Marketing (SEM) continues its scorching pace in 2006 as marketers push more and more of their ad dollars online. Religiously reading Search Engine Watch (http://searchenginewatch.com/) and ClickZ (http://www.clickz.com/) will remain the best strategy for keeping pace as Google and the rest of the search universe evolve at breakneck speed. Regarding search, the WSJ recently noted that, “The best way to find new customers is to make sure they find you.” Hard to argue with that bit of logic given that “search is the door to the store.”
Chris Consorte, President & CEO, Integrated Direct LLC
“Pay-Per-Call online advertising will begin to emerge and start impacting Pay-Per-Click models such as Google and Yahoo! Overture. Advertisers will focus, more than ever, on viable
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leads and absolute results in their online marketing plans. With this, clicks alone won't be enough to prove positive ROI from the Web. Actual phone calls will drive the ultimate measurement, tracking, and conversion to sales.” Chris Consorte, President & CEO, Integrated Direct LLC
“Managers will, once again, place an emphasis on marketing and advertising and increase their expenditures to grow their business. Marketing will make it's long-awaited come-back as decision-makers realize it's the right time to jump back-in and use direct mail, telemarketing, the Web, TV, and other marketing initiatives to drive new business.”
Nigel Woods CEO, Need More Sales, www.needmoresal es.co.uk
“E-Commerce will continue at the expense of other forms of marketing. This, together with a tightening on outbound call regulations, will result in a decrease in large call centre business, but a corresponding increase in B2B niche business.”
Stephen Ibaraki, Chairman/ Board Director, iGEN.ca/CIPS/ NPA/ ChinaValue.NET
“In 2006 to 2008, expect ad revenues to begin shifting dramatically from traditional media, stalling growth in this segment, to online led by blogs where revenue models will reach the critical point for wider acceptance. Also see a dramatic increase in readership, and the move to wider-spread audio and video segments, video search capabilities, and broadcasts; a dramatic increase and move away from traditional television and radio. There will be an increasing array of online video content providers and aggregators, which include search capabilities, which fuel more growth. And, expect to see the rise of professional blogs, including key ones from China and the Asia region. The semantic Web will become yield semantic blogs (sblogs) in
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2006 so that blogs links will be meaningfully searchable and have some underlying useful context.”
Trend #4: China's Continued Growth Significantly Affects World Commerce Stephen Ibaraki, Chairman/ Board Director, iGEN.ca/CIPS/ NPA/ ChinaValue.NET
“In 2003, I predicted the tremendous opportunities in China and in the e-business arena. Expect this trend to continue, with 115 million Internet users in 2005, 180 million in 2007, and more than 210 million in 2008, making it the largest center for Internet usage in the world. However, with market Internet penetration still under 20%, this also represents a long-term growth market; with usage now exceeding 50% in key cities as an indicator of things to come. Cellphone usage exceeds 300 million and text messaging exceeds any other nation worldwide. Expect even wider Internet penetration of the 1.3 billion-consumer market with the introduction of sub$100 computers for non-profit distribution, and sub$200 computers in the retail market in 2006. The business models in the Internet arena that worked in the West will work in China, but domestic [China-based] companies will dominate, driving further strategic alliances and partnerships from companies in the West who want a greater foothold in a great economy. See increasing investment in Internet-based media properties, including China-based blogs. Due to the nature of the underlying infrastructure, technology allows China to leapfrog Western limitations in the adoption of newer technologies.
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What does this mean? Higher reliance on the Internet for consumer activity, including bill paying. These trends will begin a long-term upward spike beginning in 2006.” Philippe Lavie, President, Keyword Enterprises, a Customer Centric Selling Affiliate
“Continuous emergence of China and India will contribute to further increases in oil prices, reaching $70/barrel in 2006.”
Rohit Talwar, CEO, Fast Future
“At least five Chinese corporations will list on international markets. China's growth rate will defy all the analyst's predictions and top 10% and at least two fortune 500 companies will receive takeover bids from Chinese corporations.”
Kevin Nikkhoo, President & CEO, Simplex, Inc.
“IT outsourcing from China: Chinese IT outsourcing companies will start penetrating the US market and compete successfully in niche markets.”
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Trend #5: Outsourcing Continues to Expand to Other Sectors of the Economy John Zenger, CEO,
“The advent of virtual teams, with members from widely different geographic locations, cultures, and time zones will spark new initiatives in how to get maximum productivity and performance from such groups. The solutions will include innovative uses of communications technology along with some insights from the behavioral sciences about ways to make these teams effective.”
Andrew Greenberg, CEO, Greenberg Brand Strategy
“Countries as Brands. In 2006 countries will start overtly branding themselves to increase export visibility. Made in Luxembourg? You bet. We've seen it with wine brand, Australia takes over as the number one imported wine in the UK. Yellow Tail has Beringer Blass, Robert Mondavi, and others in a catch up position.”
“AGK” Karunakaran, President, GDA Technologies Inc.
“Globalization in product development. More companies will have distributed development taking advantage of the global talents and cost structures.”
Jack Yan, CEO, Lucire LLC
“India's middle class booms more rapidly than China's, thanks to innovations for the masses that have huge export impact globally. India realizes it needs to compete through intellectual property. Chinese growth is in existing products, which only serve to widen the rich–poor gap.”
Joe Tedesco, Founder & CEO, Architech Corporation
“An option that will continue to gain popularity in 2006 is nearsourcing, keeping the work in the neighborhood. Contracting with a local IT partner
Zenger|Folkman
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enables a company to take advantage of the benefits of outsourcing (focusing on its core business, cutting costs, and adding value), while reducing concerns about security and avoiding hidden costs.” Narry Singh, Founder, Tacit, Inc.
“2006 is the year Business Process Outsourcing crosses the chasm. This year will see a significant increase in outsourcing related to non-voice processes.”
Trend #6: Services Continues to Play a Bigger Role in Western Economies Jean Paul Jacob, IBM Researcher, Emeritus
“Amazing acceleration of the economy of services. IBM as a company has more than 50% of its revenue from services. In '93/94 IBM was a computer company, but about two years ago things accelerated: buying PWC, letting go of the PC division made it happen overnight. For next year, we will see an acceleration of the knowledge workers working in a services economy, where the competitive edge is given by innovation. Expect the services component of US GDP grow from 72% to 80%.”
Stephen Ibaraki, Chairman/ Board Director, iGEN.ca/CIPS/ NPA/ ChinaValue.NET
“In the IT world, see a strong move towards professionalism and stronger credentialing, much like that found in the other traditional professions. Also, a movement towards the unification of IT professionals worldwide into a common network, vision, and mission centering around community. Moreover, the trends towards
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business-centric rather than tech-centric will continue. For example in the security arena, a traditionally tech-centric arena, the focus will be on corporate brand protection, strengthening governance issues, compliance with laws providing accountability and protection from liability, trade law and corporate interoperability, privacy, and identity.”
Trend #7: Usage and Proliferation of Mobile Commerce Expands Rip Gerber, CMO, GM-Ecommerce, Intellisync Corporation
“Office in your phone. Millions will be carrying mobile devices that do more than voice, e-mail, and text. Videos, Web conferencing, unified messaging, PowerPoint presentations, mobile access to any content using infobots, and more are coming.”
Thomas Wong, CEO, Koyale LLC
New mobile browsers such as Bitstream Thunderhawk and Opera Mini will drive the popularity of mobile Web. This in turn will drive the development of new mobile applications and devices.
Vamsee Tirukkala, Co-founder and EVP, Zinnov
“This year we will see more products (cellphones, smartphones etc.) based on Wi-Fi standards. I would expect an iPOD with Wi-Fi capabilities to download directly! Also WiMAX technology, which extends the rage of Wi-Fi will be more popular. My guess is that a couple of local network providers will offer this service by the end of 2006.”
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Kevin Nikkhoo, President & CEO, Simplex, Inc.
“Wireless Technology: WiMax, both 802.16A (2004 standards) and the mobile version 802.16B (2005 standards), will start coming into the market. Prices will be very competitive with the existing offerings, but the technology will provide better bandwidth and speed for both consumers and businesses.”
Rip Gerber, CMO, GM-Ecommerce, Intellisync Corporation
“Era of the 3G devices is finally here along with the second wave of unified messaging – mobile unified messaging. Mobile unified messaging will be the killer app. There will be a greater variety of third generation devices, albeit with higher adoption rates in Asia. But users all over the world will use their smartphones not just for receiving/sending e-mail, but also for instant messaging, voice e-mail, and trading. Carriers will choose one vendor for all their wireless message service needs versus point solution providers. They are already experiencing support issues with the various point solution vendors they have been using over the past 3-4 years.”
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Trend #8: Adoption of VOIP Continues Gerard Wen, Principal, The Alternative Board Silicon Valley
“Continued adoption of VOIP (voice over IP) by consumers and businesses of all sizes.”
Thomas Wong, CEO, Koyale LLC
Unified telecommunication systems that use VOIP, SMS, e-mail, fax, data, and Internet will become business-friendly and attractive to use.
Tony Di Franco, CEO, Mail2Net
The VOIP explosion is in full swing in Europe, but increasing volumes together with increased competition and lower prices and margins at wholesale level will force a re think in Market strategy. Many second-level VOIP wholesale operators who previously were acting as bridging gateways between larger Telcos will need to extend their reach into retail market opportunities to average margins and consolidate their business. This will be essential to avoid their VOIP business becoming a very volatile commodity trading activity with very high-volume fluctuations.
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Trend #9: Employer/employee Relationships Strengthen for the First Time in Years Prasad Kaipa, Ph. D., CEO Advisor and Coach, The Kaipa Group
“Talent management and retention will become important again.”
Diana Hoffman, Former-CEO,
“Going to be a real strong push to bring things back into this country to help within. To build within. As such, labor is going to rethink its positions. In short, jobs will be more important than increased pay (greater cooperation between labor and management).”
Brandon Hall, CEO, Brandon-Hall.com
“There will be increasing respect for VPs of human resources in organizations since they are the key to building talent in the organization (per Jack Welch). We will also see an emergence of the concept of human capital management throughout the enterprise that will consolidate all the efforts in HR, training, and knowledge management.”
EnvironSystems
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Trend #10: Security and Privacy Issues Raise Their Heads Again Jim (J.C.) Carlton, Retired, President & CEO
“Security is going to continue to be at the top of the list for cost for both individuals and companies. Better approaches are being discovered everyday.”
Andrew Fife, VP Business Development, Cryptine Networks
“IT security software market will begin a process of consolidation in 2006. In the past, security was an annual event that took place in the form of an audit. However, the increasing speed at which vulnerabilities are discovered and exploited necessitates that security become a regular part of network management. Security vendors are isolated in many niches (firewalls, IPS, vulnerability assessment, identity management, access control, etc.) that make it difficult for customers to effectively manage security. Ultimately, enterprises seek to minimize the likelihood of security breaches and it is only in concert that existing products offer this ability. I believe that current security market leaders such as Cisco and Symantec will begin to integrate their individual product lines to offer customers solutions that focus on managing security while network management vendors such as HP (OpenView) and BMC will likely enter the security market through acquisition.”
Karen Orton Katz, VP of Marketing, Sales, and Business Development
“Reputation and personal identity management how do we know and ensure that someone is who they say they are? In business and in personal interactions on the Web.”
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Dave Anderson, CEO, Sendmail
“E-mail will start to be more secure. We need authentication two ways. I am always giving info to identify and authenticate myself to companies. They need to learn to authenticate themselves to me. Show me a piece of data about me that a criminal couldn't know when you send me an e-mail.”
Dave Anderson, CEO, Sendmail
“Crime on the Internet will be more rampant than ever. Why? Sutton's law. Willy Sutton the bank robber said he robbed banks because, “That's where the money is.” As the value of commerce online grows, in all forms, crime will follow. This has nothing to do with technology. It is likely a safer environment than walking around with a bunch of cash.”
George Sidman, Chairman, Chief Technology Architect, WebLOQ, Inc.
“In 2006, the Internet will move up from it's juvenile delinquent adolescence to a more mature and private place for business. 2006 will be the year that new levels of privacy will be introduced that allow any end-user device to achieve complete e-mail, IM, and blog privacy. To put a new spin on how privacy is achieved, technology will be introduced that leaves the nasty old public Internet to operate like skid road, while a new private community approach frees professionals and businesses of all types to operate in complete privacy. It will be delivered as a free download, require zero tech expertise to install, and will achieve multi-point privacy far superior to a VPN. It will turn any wireline or wireless connection private without any additional equipment, and at very low cost.”
Chapter 5: 2006 Predictions
Fun Predictions on the Economy Michael Drapkin, CEO, Drapkin Technology Corp.
“Wall St. stock prices will continue to be stagnant, with the exception of upstarts Google and eBay. Google releases its “Google Government,” which eliminates the need for elective democracy, and eBay (on the heels of its Skype purchase) buys the exclusive right nationally for garage sales from a cash-strapped federal government.”
Peter Ostrow, President & CEO, Technical Communities/ TestMart
“The giants of e-commerce will look to fuel their growth through acquisitions. Specifically, they will target business-to-business marketplace providers looking to consolidate with their existing business the users, the virtual inventory, and the transactions.”
Vamsee Tirukkala, Co-founder & EVP, Zinnov
“Industry consolidation will fuel VC funding to reach 2000 levels.”
Suzette Cavanaugh, Independent Consultant
“The Big Get Bigger. 2006 will mark continued consolidation of the high-tech industry. The large companies with big bank accounts will continue to gobble up the mid-size companies.”
Jean Kovacs, CEO, Comergent
“Enterprises have “bottomed out” and are now looking at ways to increase revenue (as opposed to just cutting costs). We see new channels and new business models often leading this.”
Ian Lessen, Auditel
“I predict that a combination of high energy prices, further natural disasters, and increased terrorist activity will send the World on the precipice of a recession, possibly hitting in 2007. (I hope I'm wrong.)”
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Frank Jewett, VP Business Development, RedFlagsHelp
“Silicon Valley will continue to build and maintain a robust economy. The Silicon Valley economic engine will be a driving force in the market base economy of California and the Nation. This will be achieved through incisive technology and innovation.”
Michael Drapkin, CEO, Drapkin Technology Corp.
“Economy will grind forward, but will be hampered by increased interest rates and high fuel costs, with problems compounded by out-of-control government deficit spending because of the continuing debacle in Iraq and the hurricane disasters in both New Orleans and Galveston TX.”
Barry Weinbaum, President & CEO, NanoOpto
“Higher interest rates, hyper energy prices, the Iraq War, and the cost to rebuild the Gulf States following Katrina and Rita will slow the economy in 2006, impacting mid-term elections.”
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Other Fun Predictions Dan Shafer, Technology Visionary and Author
“On the Net, 2006 will be the “Year of the Google Bird.” I look for Google to unleash a spate of new applications, primarily fed by Ajax and similar technologies. The result will be a sea change shift of applications away from the desktop and onto the Web, a change that would have been inconceivable without the emergence of the Rich Internet Application and its Ajax acceleration. I also see Google moving into some new strategic areas that will make it more of a Microsoft competitor than a Yahoo, AOL, or MSN competitor as I think they will leapfrog over the notion of a personal portal to become the first real Personal Virtual Desktop. And that will trigger other trends.”
Ann Revell-Pechar, President, Revell-Pechar, Inc.
“RSS Notifications Supplant e-Mail as primary form of messaging! Everyone's complaining about e-mail - we're getting too much, spam's too rampant, viruses abound, sometimes the server's kaput. We also know that RSS is the wave of the future. And now that you don't have to be inside some aggregator to get an alert, you'll know whenever information that you really care about has been published. This will completely change the nature of our e-communications.”
Jack Powers, Director, International Informatics Institute
“On Jan 1, 2006, the first Baby Boomer turns 60. The richest, best-educated, most spoiled generation in history -- 76 million strong -- has money, power, and high expectations. They want to live well and live forever, and they will transform our 20th Century healthcare system with their demands. (http://healthcareNBIC.org)”
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Jack Powers, Director, International Informatics Institute
“The convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science will produce innovations that cross over traditional discipline boundaries: machines that think, cells that compute, animals that cure disease, stores that are smarter than their customers, humans who live longer, see farther, think quicker. (http://in3.typepad.com/ hnbic/2005/05/nbic_analysis_a.html)”
Stewart Quealy, Sr. Conference Program Director, Incisive Media
“As Ryan Mathews and Watts Wacker precociously pointed out in “The Deviant's Advantage” back in 2002, “...spirituality will replace sexuality as the most effective marketing tactic available to business.” Forward thinking movie producers like Mel Gibson (“The Passion of The Christ”) and Disney (“Chronicles of Narnia”) have already harnessed this concept, but look for more big business categories to ride the “faith wave” to a corporate crescendo in 2006.”
Andrew Greenberg, CEO, Greenberg Brand Strategy
“2006 will mark the rise of the “brave” brand. Brands have been hammered by their lack of response to natural disasters, Walmart after Katrina, for example. More and more brands will begin to acknowledge the importance of good will and corporate citizenship. In the wake of Enron, consumers want (and will get) their share of brands that respond responsibly.”
Philippe Lavie, President, Keyword Enterprises, a Customer Centric Selling Affiliate
“Results from stem cell research sponsored by all governments and by private enterprises will see its first significant medical accomplishments prior to end of 2006.”
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Prasad Kaipa, Ph. D., CEO Advisor and Coach, The Kaipa Group
“Toyota will become Number 1 automaker in the world overtaking GM, while Ford will gain more respect and will break away from other domestic automakers.”
S Sundararajan,
“Opera's visibility will increase in browser usage. With its recent decisions to identify itself as Opera (rather than IE) and also become a full freeware, Opera will be more visible, especially with its great capabilities.”
Head of Operations, Real Soft
Steven Rothberg, President & Founder, CollegeRecruiter.c om
“The job market for college graduates will continue to improve, with an increasingly percentage receiving multiple job offers within six months of graduation.”
Daniel Anthony, MBA Student, Class of 2007, The Johns Hopkins University, Regional Advisor, Marketing, Envision EMI, LLC.
“The buzz for 2006 business leaders will be: competitive intelligence. Renewed focus on this classic concept will hit its peak in 2006. From cutting edge data extraction techniques to classic product de-engineering, companies will be looking at more ways to boost thin profit margins through intelligence gathering on the competition. The key ingredient in the 2006 wave of competitive intelligence: relationships with the enemy (the competition). Your business and ideas could be the target of competitive intelligence. Watch for the coincidental run-in with competitors at luncheons and happy hours!”
Michelle Aden, Standards Strategist, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
“Standards collaboration efforts and technologies will flourish now that all parties can openly discuss intellectual property royalties well before patented technology becomes part of a standard.”
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Jack Yan, CEO, Lucire LLC
“As Wikifying gets mainstream, it attracts less knowledgeable people, who begin to render some of the services less useful.”
Bob Cormia, Faculty Member, Foothill College
“Local search and meta data start to become popular in Websites, using XHTML, RSS, and XML site maps to better catalog local business data.”
Jean Paul Jacob, IBM Researcher, Emeritus
“2006 is the year of the search. The Internet knows almost everything, but tells us almost nothing. Data no longer has value; it's what you extract from it that's relevant. The main tool to get to knowledge workers will be in search. Will see new search companies breaking out and growing tremendously.”
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C h a p t e r
6
2005 Predictions
This chapter focuses on 2005. Interestingly enough, most of the trends are continuations on trends we've seen in past years. The key element is that capitalism and democracy is working. This is not always a good thing. The advent of the Internet has helped spread democracy and capitalism better than any other vehicle we've ever seen. This is good for many, but not for telecommunication companies, those effected by offshoring, and anyone in an industry or country where the economic power is changing. If you're not actively working on incorporating some of these trends into your business plans for 2005 and beyond, you should. Business and life as we know it is changing.
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Top 10 Trends for 2005 1. VOIP goes mainstream (partial). 2. China's Power and World Influence Grows (correct).
Economic
3. Working at Home Goes Mainstream While Small Business Thrives (partial). 4. Pickup in Offshoring Activity (correct). 5. While the World is Shrinking, the World Market is Expanding (correct). 6. Increase in Technology Stocks (partial). 7. Cell Phones look More and More like PDAs and vice versa (correct). 8. Blogging and Social Networking Become Accepted Business Tools (correct). 9. Continued Confidence in Using the Internet (correct). 10. The World Keeps Changing (correct). Bonus Trend: 1. Included the Most Interesting Predictions this Year.
NOTE The italics represent the accuracy of the predictions as of 10/31/05.
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Trend #1: Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) Goes Mainstream William Grosso, VicePresident of Engineering, Echopass
“Right now, VOIP, while widely heralded, is not particularly widely adopted. Free services such as Yahoo Voice (offered through Yahoo Messenger) and low-cost services such as Skype are beginning to break down the barriers to adoption. In 2005, we'll see more and more people abandoning traditional phone service for a combination of Internet-based telephony and a cellphone. By 2015, Costco won't even carry traditional phones.”
Ming Shao, Sr.Product Manager, Covad Communications
“VOIP is catching fire in the corporate world. US businesses are having low penetration of using VOIP at rate of under 10% today. Year 2005 will bring VOIP to the corporate world with much higher penetration rate up to around 40%.”
Bill Widmer, President & CEO, g8solutions
“Voice over IP will take off as corporations combine networks to gain efficiencies and further integrate systems. VOIP will handle over 40% of the voice traffic for corporate America.”
Sheridan Tatsuno, Principal, Dreamscape Global
“Skype and other VOIP services will add integrated communications services, calendar, directory and other conveniences to appeal to consumers and small businesses.”
Amy Wohl, President, Wohl Associates
“We are moving from a wired to a wireless society. This will make most of the traditional telcos' infrastructure investments irrelevant and push the change to VOIP.Maybe the last mile doesn't count after all. Maybe you just do it yourself.”
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Trend #2: China's Power and WorldEconomicInfluence Grows Sheridan Tatsuno, Principal, Dreamscape Global
“China will continue as the economic juggernaut, expanding its R&D, manufacturing, logistics, and its domestic market, increasing pricing pressure across the board. Supply chain management is becoming a big new opportunity for companies that prefer to 'switch rather than fight' the onslaught and leverage their end-use markets. For tech firms, R&D centers in Shanghai and other major cities will become mandatory for building a presence in China.”
Dr. James Lin, President & CEO, QLQ International
“The global economy and competitive markets will shift from US dominance to China dominance. FTA among China and SE Asia will undercut US interests in Asia Pacific.”
Jean Su, Partner, Champion Scott Partners
“China will become a major market for technology industry. We will see Chinese companies making it to the U.S. market in the next year.”
Bill Liao, COO, http://openbc.com
“China will continue to buy commodities at an increasing rate and thus it will be good for those who are long in oil and steel.”
Axel Kloth, CTO, Parimics, Inc.
“Rise of China and India in terms of proportional trade in world trade and in internal markets, with India's economy ending hyper growth.”
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Trend #3: Working at Home Goes Mainstream While Small Business Thrives William Grosso, Vice President of Engineering, Echopass
“Many knowledge industries already have some personnel who work at home one or two days a week. In 2005, the trend will continue as employers realize the cost savings and productivity increases possible (one impact of outsourcing: businesses are already 'virtual'-this change amounts to realizing even the local employees don't need to be on-site).”
Mike Johnson, President, Sales Solutions
“Trend towards virtual offices will accelerate as companies seek ways to reduce costs and accommodate the growing trend towards a balance between work and personal life.”
Bahar Gidwani, CEO, Index Stock Imagery, Inc.
“There will be a big increase in 'portable workers.'These are people who rely on wireless infrastructure to support a mobile work approach. They will work at home, on planes, in cars, and in their regular office. More businesses will tolerate and support this style of operation, because it will help them cut occupancy and infrastructure costs. It will also allow them to attract the right talent for their needs, without the costs and disruptions of relocating people across the country (or the world). And, the trend will further entrench the trend towards outsourcing of jobs to other countries.”
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David Krueger, DavidKrueger MD Executive Strategist, Executive Mentor Coach
“Increasing self-reliance for financial autonomy willsignificantly expand the numbers of self-employed.”
Chris Consorte, Managing Partner, Integrated Direct
“2005 will be the year of the small business. Small businesses will be the catalyst driving economic growth and recovery, and put the US economy back on track. Small businesses will proliferate through hiring and spending. While large companies continue to merge and purge employees, small businesses will adapt and grow to thrive in this economic environment.”
Trend #4: Pickup in Offshoring Activity Brandon Hall, CEO, brandon-hall.com
“Outsourcing, although it can have a difficult impact on particular individuals who are outplaced, is a more efficient model for using specialists and less expensive labor, therefore, further enhancing productivity and use of resources.”
Dr. Marguerite Raaen, Consultant, Raaen Consulting
“With the Bush win, we are going to see much more offshoring occurring in the first two quarters of 2005 to improve the balance sheets of many large corporations. The Federal government just came out with a set of regulations for government executives about the approval of offshoring for technology, call centers, and other types of government activities if you can show substantial savings. This is a first in the history of the US.”
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Valerie W. Perlowitz, President and Founder, Reliable Integration Services
“The biggest IT challenge facing organizations over the coming year will be finally undertaking a variety of neglected initiatives that could increase margins or even spur revenue growth, while at the same time more cost-effectively managing infrastructure. That's why we're going to see more outsourcing. Organizations will outsource routine network management and maintenance, freeing in-house IT managers to tackle the more strategic concerns. Look for security to finally take its turn at the top of the list of those issues.”
Mike Gospe, Principal, KickStart Alliance
“In the US, Fortune 500 companies will continue to downsize and not replace employees with as many full-time resources (for every two employees let go, only one will be replaced with a full-time headcount.) Consultants and contractors will be in even more demand to replace these downsized workers.”
S. Sundararajan, Head of Operations, Real Soft
“Though outsourcing will grow, movement of jobs outside the country will not grow significantly.”
Bill Widmer, President & CEO, g8 solutions
“Offshoring will come back to this hemisphere with South American growth of call centers and software developers. Costs are similar to that of Asia (India) and the quality is excellent. As an added bonus, they are closer and in the same time zones.”
Karen Orton, VP marketing, Encentuate
“Hopefully, we will see government address the issue of job loss through outsourcing and automation. Retraining of our citizens for new careers will need to be addressed on a countrywide level.”
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Sheridan Tatsuno, Principal, Dreamscape Global
“Fast-growing Indian and Chinese companies will enter the U.S. and hire Americans for local sales, marketing, and R&D.”
Trend #5: While the World is Shrinking, the World Market is Expanding Jean Su, Partner, Champion Scott Partners
“Globalization will continue. More companies will expand into the U.S. markets and U.S. companies will continue their growth overseas, in particular, Asia.”
Dr. James Lin, President & CEO, QLQ International
“The East-West synergy in knowledge, talents, and cultural exchanges will narrow down the global divides for more equal economic opportunities. The East will be the global economic and business equalizer while the West will depend more on thesupports from the East for survival in the global economic scale.”
Tonny Yu, CEO, Mailshell
“The Euro and China currency will continue to grow in strength compared to the US dollar. Foreigners will continue to buy US bonds and fund the growing US deficit. This will lead to greater US exports.”
Dan Shafer, President, Shafer Media
“The Euro will become the most stable currency in the world markets, with more and more smaller nations pinning their currency valuations to it rather than the dollar. While this may cause near-term perturbations in the United States, the long-term benefit for the global economy will be
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enormous and eventually, America too will benefit though not without going through some painful adjustments.” Jack Yan, CEO, Jack Yan & Associates
“Young people who have grown up with Clinton-era ideals of a global economy begin in better jobs in the economy, creating what advertisers brand a 'global class'.”
Trend #6: Increase in Technology Stocks Dr. Marguerite Raaen, Consultant, Raaen Consulting
“Increase in technology stocks due to the big business fear that ‘Kerry would win’ being snuffed out. The major technology purchases that were delayed until after the election will now be pushed through as RFPs. With Bush winning, many F1000 companies now feel more secure in making large technology purchases.”
Jean Su, Partner, Champion Scott Partners
“The U.S. economy will pick up more in 2005, there will be more hires in the tech sector compared with the past three years.”
Brad Peppard, Partner, MarketingBank
“Corporations see unexpectedly high productivity gains, pushing earnings above expectations.”
Gary Pearson, COO, PocketThis, Inc.
“Technology continues to recover and drives unemployment in Bay Area below 5% by year-end.”
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Tim Lundeen, CEO & Founder, WebCrossing, Inc.
“We will see continuing strong economic growth in 2005, up 4% for the year. All indicators are positive, with lower taxes in the US and Europe's taxes trending down, productivity growing nicely, new jobs being created at a high rate, and more economic freedom throughout the world.”
Rick Giorgetti, President, Montgomery Professional Services Corp
“Slow but steady with some bumps--but trend is up. Have you driven the Silicon Valley roads between 6-10 a.m. and 3-7 p.m.?Lots of congestion. BIG difference since 2002. Look for continuing traffic woes!!!!!”
Margaret A. Schaninger, President & CEO, Info Plus International
“The economy will improve, spurred by corporations spending on IT and infrastructure upgrades. Most companies upgraded their systems and infrastructure for Y2K back in 1999 and now have outdated systems in place. Times have changed significantly for how companies spend on technology; any and all technology change-out and upgrades must be accompanied by a solid business case. But with many vendors no longer supporting older systems, companies must upgrade. This will help fuel the growth for the economy.”
Peter Ostrow, President & CEO, TestMart
“Look for more IPOs from Internet-based e-commerce companies. Yes, I am aware of what I have just said.”
Neil Sherratt, Founder Director, iProof Limited
“The number of IPOs from the Internet Services sector around the world will increase.”
Sandip Chintawar, CEO, Arion Systems
“Companies will start spending on IT by incremental development on existing infrastructure. IT services companies and ASPs will benefit.”
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Trend #7: Cell Phones look more and more like PDAs and vice versa David H. Deans, Managing Director, GeoActive Group USA
“Mobile phones and PDAs continue to inherit each other's features and capabilities, and they become more and more personalized sources of information about the world around us.”
Ralph Marx, CEO, Soiree
“Wireless companies will see big growth. We will see a significant change in how people use their phones (cell phone). The perception of a phone as a simple device with one purpose willbe severely reduced by the end of the year. There will be many industries that take advantage of this from the entertainment industry to marketing perspectives.”
Trend #8: Blogging and Social Networking Become Accepted Business Tools Bill Liao, COO, http://openbc.com
“Blogging will become a mainstream business tool.”
Jack Yan, CEO, Jack Yan & Associates
“The Internet braces itself for the next wave as bloggers band together to force changes, both good and bad. The largest collaborative blog becomes an exercise in human rights' advocacy.”
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Dave Asprey, Strategy & Startup Consultant
“The combination of social networking sites and Google will finally make real the cyberpunk concept of reputation servers. We will all get used to checking Google and LinkedIn before doing a business deal or going on a date. To do otherwise, will be unthinkable.”
Trend #9: Continued Confidence inUsingtheInternet Rand Schulman, Chief Marketing Officer, WebSideStory, Inc.
“Internet commerce will continue to grow.”
Dan Shafer, President, Shafer Media
“Consumer confidence in and usage of the Internet will increase dramatically throughout 2005 as one or more start-up companies provide unique, outside-the-box solutions to the problems of spam and phishing. As Internet communications become more secure, banks, financial institutions, and other organizations who are now largely prevented from e-mail communication with their customers will open floodgates of useful information flow, to the mutual benefit of the companies and their customers.”
David H. Deans, Managing Director, GeoActive Group USA
“Internet-oriented marketing matures to the point where search engines, e-mail, instant messaging, and Weblogs all morph together to create compelling, always-on, and potentially fully mobile online interactions with savvy marketers.”
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Jared Spool, Founding Principal, User Interface Engineering
“In the world of Web sites, we'll see a major movement from first generation sites (where the enterprise focuses on making the technology just work) to next generation sites (where the enterprise focuses on making the site provide value to the audience). It's already starting with some of the leaders in key indicator industries, such as insurance, healthcare, government, and higher education. The leading organizations now focus on designs that enhance the audiences' experience and are reaping tremendous benefits.”
Trend #10: The World Keeps Changing Karen Orton, VP marketing, Encentuate
“Boomers will become the focus of new products and services. Someone turns 50 every 7 seconds. Marketeers will turn their attention to this group and realize that they are different that previous generations that traditionally did not adopt new brands and were extremely cost conscious.”
Cynthia Holladay, President, UpRight Marketing
“There's never been a better time or greater need for marketing innovation. (It can no longer be 'build it and they will come' technology looking for a place to happen, or big spending on mass marketing. We're moving from paying 1-to-1 marketing lip service to radical change-your-business shifts that focuses on specific customer values.)”
Amy Wohl, President, Wohl Associates
“We are about to enter the age of the ASP where software -- nearly any kind of software -- is available as a service. Not a service you buy and
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pay for by the enterprise, by the year, but rather a pay for usage model, where a user can buy as little as a single picture or the one-time use of a special font -- or budget software for his 20-person company for the next three months, extendable at will.” Bahar Gidwani, CEO, Index Stock Imagery,Inc.
“The curve will tilt further towards wireless and cell communication. Hordes of people will drop their “land line” home phones. Businesses will stop wiring their premises for phone and computer use, and will instead rely on wireless interfaces. There will be a lot of spectrum crowding (value of spectrum will go up) and equipment churn/turnover (good for hardware and software folks).”
Dave Asprey, Strategy & Startup Consultant
“2005 will be the year of Wi-Fi. Numerous cities (on top of San Francisco and Long Beach) will realize that cities with ubiquitous 802.11 (or faster) signals are simply better places to live, and will use city coffers to fund free wireless access. People who live in those cities will soon find it impossible to remember how they used to live without always-on, anytime access.”
Chris Heuer, ChiefIdeaGuy, Conversal
“The sales of smart phones will exceed the sales of handhelds for the first time.”
John Kwan, President, VeriPic
“Digital cameras sales will completely crush film camera sales. Traditional film based companies will continue to struggle to find a place in a digital world.”
Gary Feldman, VP of Marketing and Business Strategy, Amedia Networks
“The telecommunications industry will begin a move from basic bundles of services (basic cable, 2Mbps data, and voice) to high margin add-ons and premium levels of service.”
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Barry J. Weinbaum, President & CEO, NanoOpto Corp.
“Nanotechnology engineered products will become embedded in mainstreamed consumer product and communications devices that transmit, distribute or network information.”
Vamsee Tirukkala, Co-Founder & EVP, Zinnov
“More companies will implement Open Source solutions.”
Glenn Glow, President & CEO, Crimson Consulting Group, Inc.
“Companies that invest in technology solutions will increasingly order ala carte and/or on an as-needed basis. The technology vendors that create pricing models that meet these requirements will win business from the competitors who do not.” BONUS Trends:
Most Interesting Predictions this Year Vamsee Tirukkala, Co-Founder & EVP, Zinnov
“Gas price at $3 and Google stock at $300.”
Ravi Thatte, Executive Director, Dixtinct Services Pte Ltd
“Several Free Trade Agreements will be signed, particularly in Asia creating large trading zones. National borders will become irrelevant; opportunities as well as competition would come from totally unexpected quarters.”
Phil Hood, Partner, Transcend Strategy Group
“The Beginning of the End of the PC: Despite good initial sales it will become clear that the PC is a failure as a mass market home media center and will be eclipsed by easier-to-use offerings from telcos, cable firms, game companies.”
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Julie Sautter, President & Founder, BodyLines Inc.
“New energy companies will see record growth as people continue to care about the environment and are tired of relying upon traditional resources of energy and foreign oil.”
S. Sundararajan, Head of Operations, Real Soft
“Microsoft will continue to be the company every body loves to hate. It will only improve its monopoly.”
Shanes Hedges, Chief of Staff, Envision EMI
“The US and Britain will seize the opportunity to push the Middle East peace plan and major progress will be made by the end of 2005."
Suzette Cavanaugh, VP Marketing, Saratoga Systems Inc.
“Private savings accounts to replace part of Social Security will be established, which will lead to growth in the financial services markets.”
Cameron Kane, President, Strategic Design Group LLC
“Spam filters begin to get supplemented with human eyes. Too many legitimate messages don't get delivered because of these things.”
Jeffrey Paul Hayward, Finance Director, Deejay Accident Repair Centres Ltd
“In response to strong demand from China, steel-making capacity in the UK will increase for the first time in many years.”
Bob Cormia, Faculty, Computer Technology and Information Systems, Foothill De Anza Colleges
“The growth of China's economy, and in particular the energy demands of the manufacturing economy, will largely go unnoticed.”
Luc Schoups, Americas Region, Assistant General Manager, Anritsu Company
“Profitability will still be a tall order. Even in this hesitant economy employees will expect salary increases and other benefits that were put on hold during the previous downturn. In general
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profitability will need to be secured by the very traditional balance of cautious investment and continuous scrutiny on costs.” David Cruickshank, Joint Managing Director, Farrellsoft Limited
“The number of UK start-up companies in 2005 (measured by new VAT registrations in that year) will be greater than at any time in the last 10 years and will exceed 200,000.”
Marc E. Faerber, CPA, Owner
“The venture community returns to ventures and not fully packaged deals.”
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C h a p t e r
7
2004 Predictions
Many prominent individuals have contributed to CEOnetworking's top 10 2004 trends. Eighty industry experts contributed over 225 predictions. Unfortunately, we couldn't include them all. Contributors of note include: • • • • •
Tony Scott, CTO of General Motors Patrick Lo, Chairman and CEO, NETGEAR Dan Tapscott, Co-author of “The Naked Corporation” Geoffrey Ramsey, CEO and Co-founder, eMarketer John C. Dvorak, Kevin Maney, and Mark Jones, columnists
Overall, the business environment is getting better, however, there are a number of obstacles that need to be tackled (viruses, spam, offshore outsourcing backlash, and IT security). While doing this, the Internet continues to force business to evolve to the next level (Internet telephony, Wi-Fi, business consolidation, social networking, e-commerce, the software ASP model and marketing). With this in mind, let's get ready for a very interesting ride in 2004.
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Top 10 Trends for 2004 NOTE The italics represent the accuracy of the predictions as of 12/31/04. 1. Viruses and spam get worse, not better (correct). 2. Continued global economic dependency and a backlash against offshore outsourcing (correct). 3. Internet telephony continues disrupting the existing players (correct). 4. For survival, companies continue to consolidate (correct). 5. Wi-Fi gets bigger (correct). 6. Business continues to evolve to the next level (partial). 7. Some positive IT, economic, and stock market movement (partial). 8. Security is still the #1 IT concern (correct). 9. Social networking takes off (partial). 10. The term “e-commerce” comes back into vogue (partial). Bonus Trends
1. Software continues to change forever especially via the ASP model. 2. Marketing becomes important again.
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Trend #1: Viruses and Spam get Worse, not Better Thomas E. Noonan, Chairman, President and CEO, Internet Security Systems, Inc.
“The window of opportunity for corporations to apply patches to protect against computer vulnerabilities will continue to shrink as corporations will have to battle more than 3,500 new worms and viruses. The major worms of 2004 will blow right past traditional standalone anti-virus and firewall products and continue to ravage corporate networks.”
Tony Scott, Chief Technology Officer, IS&S, General Motors Corporation
“Sadly, in 2004 we will have a so-called “zero-day” event - a case where a previously unknown exploit in the form of a virus or worm is unleashed broadly. Prior to this, all exploits have been based upon a previously disclosed vulnerability.”
John C. Dvorak, Columnist
“Massive virus. This is the year where a serious virus/tojan/worm program with a destructive payload wrecks computers and sinks a few ill-prepared businesses. The result is that the government gets involved with computer security.”
Alan Wallace, CEO, Reward Marketing, Inc
“Security and viruses will only get worse - many average users will be the source of most of the trouble as they won't know what they need and won't even pay attention to run the updates alerted by Microsoft. While corporations may be very secure, it will be home users that affect the usability of the Internet until solutions are implemented for flash attacks and OS fixes are deployed.”
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Tom Henderson, Managing Director, ExtremeLabs, Inc.
“Congress will try to stop spam, and fail. Domain blocking will become the last resort to undesirable mail, and most of the blocking will occur in the USA.”
Edward Segal, Author, “Getting Your 15 Minutes of Fame”
“'Do not spam' lists will become more popular than “do not call lists”, thus posing new challenges for all companies on how to use the Internet to reach and communicate with potential customers without offending them.”
Trend #2: Continued Global Economic Dependency and a Backlash Against Offshore Outsourcing John Bartold, Contributing Editor, www.Colloguy.co m
“There will be no boundaries. Forget governments, borders, taxing authorities and the like. People will seek providers of solutions and value regardless of where they are. Shipping goods around the world is as simple as shipping it across the US. Shipping ideas are even easier. It happens with the click of a mouse. By the time nexus issues are resolved in the US, it will be too late.”
Atul Vashistha, President & CEO, neoIT
“Companies will become increasingly dependent upon the global market to achieve best-in-class services and minimize costs. The backlash against offshoring will increase as it becomes a political focus area as unions, politicians, and anti-globalists voice their concerns. As the U.S. presidential campaign heats up and the labor impact of recent large transactions are realized this will cause more outcry against offshoring.”
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Nicole Kidd, Journalist, Author, TheJournalists.co m
“Increased IT offshoring will backfire, especially in the healthcare and financial services verticals, when hidden costs (and bugs) come home to roost.”
John C. Dvorak, Columnist
“Beginning of the End. Outsourcing mania backfires for one too many companies as outsource companies are spread too thin. The companies using poor quality outsource firms get bad marks for customer service as their business declines.”
Susan Mulcahy, VP of Research, Reed Research Group/Reed Business Information
“The largest growth will be in China for electronics and high tech. Not only will European and North American companies continue to move into China. China's own businesses will begin to catch up and be real forces there.”
Thomas Wong, Sr. Consultant, Intesync
“China will become a major e-commerce player. They already have the world's second largest Internet community in 2003. One of the enablers is state-sponsored smart cash card development, which will become more popular than credit cards.”
Patrick LeGranche, Chairman & CEO, Qarbon
“The shift of Silicon Valley based employees to India or China based ones is only beginning. The 21st Century will be Asian.”
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Trend #3: Internet Telephony Continues Disrupting the Existing Players Mark H Goldstein, CEO, Retail Presents
“Internet telephony takes off, creating a huge disruptive event for any organization selling communications services by the drop.”
Leland Harden, Vice Chancellor of Institutional Advancement, New Canoe University
“Skype and peer-to-peer telephony will set telephone companies and long distance companies on their ear. VOIP is ready for prime time and adding the p2p 'free' element is a tinderbox.”
Mark Resch, CEO, Onomy Labs, Inc.
“Increased cellphone functionality including still images and video will lead to at least one Telco to begin experimenting with opening its network to application developers. This will be the starting gun for a race to open telecommunication networks, and will transform telecommunication in a winner-take-all frenzy to capture market share for these new open networks.”
Craig J. Mathias, Principal, Farpoint Group
“Public-access WLANs are going to be a huge success because cellular carriers are going to dominate this business. Far from being a threat to 3G, PWLANs are essential to the carriers who need them to augment their data (and even voice) capacity. Look for combined WLAN/cellular handsets in 2004.”
Carol Erickson, Chief Technology Officer, YellowPepper Inc.
“Bill to phone solutions will provide significant profit areas for wireless carriers as well as third party providers when coupled with the present affordable hybrid devices capable of utilizing premium content such as mp3s, games, and more.”
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Trend #4: For Survival, Companies Continue to Consolidate Steve Weissman, President, Kinetic Information LLC
“Expect a continuation and even acceleration of the vendor consolidation we've seen over the past few months (Open Text/IXOS, EMC/Documentum, PeopleSoft/JD Edwards, etc.). This will be especially true in the BPM/workflow, Web Services, and capture spaces, in which there are too many players to serve too few customers. Look for the following companies to be involved either as acquirers, “acquirees,” or parties to a merger: EMC (they're not done yet!), Cardiff, Dell, Ultimus, and one or more of Bowstreet, Cape Clear, SeeBeyond, and webMethods.”
Jeff Karan, Managing Partner, Woodside Capital Partners
“Companies will merge to survive. Independent companies with small product footprints, marketing budgets, and shallow customer support will fail. Marketing strategy and financial strength will again become causative factors of success.”
Bruce R. Mancinelli, President and CEO, WebSurveyor Corporation
“Look for consolidation in the industry. Companies will continue to merge and/or sell as a means of equity conversion. IPOs will only happen infrequently.”
Atul Vashistha, President & CEO, neoIT
“Supplier consolidation will continue to occur, especially as the number of new companies trying to enter the BPO market are not able to realize client wins soon enough to capitalize on their efforts”
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Karen Howe, CEO, Singingfish
“There will be continued consolidation in the Search space; however this consolidation will generate acquisition opportunities for specialty search engines and search-related technologies.”
Trend #5: Wi-Fi Gets Bigger Patrick Lo, Chairman and CEO, NETGEAR
“Wi-Fi will become widespread worldwide in 2004. We expect homes to reach up to 20% penetration for wireless networking. In the office we will see new, rapid adoption now that standards, speeds, and security have advanced sufficiently enough for business-class deployment. For those on the road, we predict over half a million hotspots worldwide by the end of 2004."
Richard Brenner, CEO, The Brenner Group, Inc.
“A number of technology companies are developing methods of extending 802.11(a) or (b) or (g) from hundreds of feet to thousands of feet. As they continue to figure out ways to eliminate the interference caused by such things as walls and 2.4 GHz phones, which are in the same frequency range as 802.11, look for even greater adoption of 802.11 networks in homes because it solves the last mile problem, in corporations, and in large public areas.”
Dave Anderson, CEO, Sendmail Inc.
“IM and e-mail by wireless device will cause growth of message volume in the US to accelerate. Wireline growth rates will not go down. This will be added growth.”
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Daniel Anthony, Director, National Youth Leadership Forum on Technology
“Free wireless hotspots will increase substantially. This is a no-brainer. Anyone who's blown hours in a Panera or Starbucks will tell you that a cool social ambiance plus free Internet connection is a successful recipe.”
William Grosso, VP, Technical Services and Support, Hipbone Incorporated
“Nationwide, wireless Internet access points will be free. Wireless access points are cheap, easy to run, and a nice source of competitive advantage (or disadvantage, if you don't have one). Coffee shops and hotels won't be able to charge for them in most parts of the country past mid 2004.”
Trend #6: Business Continues to Evolve to the Next Level Don Tapscott, Co-author, “The Naked Corporation: How the Age of Transparency Will Revolutionize Business”
“Transparency will continue its ascendancy to being the over-arching guiding principle for corporate behavior. Every corporate boardroom should have a goldfish bowl sitting in the middle of the table, to remind the Directors of the increasing scrutiny under which they operate.”
William Ryan, Founding Partner, Portola Strategies
“The needs of enterprise computing are quickly evolving from 'Functional Competency' of the 1990s (how can we make our business more efficient?) to 'Integration Competency' (how can we best manage the end-to-end business?). This will lay the foundation for the next big technology trend: 'Collaboration Competency' where business systems around the world seamlessly interact with each other over the semantic Web.”
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Geoffrey Ramsey, CEO and Co-founder, eMarketer
“As a result of continued media fragmentation, the advent of new media platforms and accelerated global competition, marketing and advertising functions will come under greater scrutiny to prove their ROI. The Internet, which is arguably the most measurable of all media, will set a new standard for media accountability in 2004. This trend is not a fad, it will continue ad infinitum.”
Patrick J. Yam, CEO and Managing Member, Sensei Partners LLC
“Venture Capital will continue on an evolutionary path. Not unlike other industries, as the Venture Capital industry evolves market segmentation of the constituent firms becomes more prominent and distinction on a value add basis gains prominence. Spurred by the aggregation of capital between 1996-2001 (which far exceeded the amount raised since the modern advent of Venture Capital investing since the 1950's) the Venture Capital industry will now highlight the interdependent need between early stage real “Company Builder” VCs from later stage more passive investors.”
Kevin Maney, Technology Columnist
“A return to long-term thinking. In the wake of corporate scandals and a general disgust with greed, the best CEOs will increasingly revolt against the quarterly-earnings, make-that-number game, which frees them to focus on longer-term, deeper issues.”
Molly E. Holzschlag, Consultant, Molly.Com, Inc.
“Intellectual property law will undergo a major overhaul, with more and more alternatives and extensions to traditional IP protection emerging (such as Creative Commons).”
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Trend #7: Some Positive IT, Economic, and Stock Market Movement Bill Widmer, Managing Partner, Diamond Hawk Ventures
“The market downturn has pushed companies to become lean and agile. As the upturn begins unprecedented growth in margins and new corporate agility will make mid-sized and larger companies provide greater returns to shareholders while they find they can enter new market places and adequately complete with their smaller companies and start-ups.”
David J. Blumberg, Managing Partner, Blumberg Capital
“The general economy, and IT spending in particular, will continue to advance as inflation stays low and the business cycle catches up with ongoing, strong gains in productivity.”
Philip Lay, Managing Director, TCG Advisors, LLC
“… the IT buying climate - not the entire economy - improves, and healthy growth (though not necessarily hyper-growth) will return to large parts of the e-business sector, both in consumer and business markets.”
Bill Murphy, CEO and Chairman, Clos LaChance Wines. Inc.
“Strong Economic Recovery in 2004, 3.5- 4% GDP growth, Unemployment 4.5-5%.”
Amy D. Wohl, President, Wohl Associates
“The IT Slump is over -- but there won't be a return to the Good Old Days of unlimited spending.”
Peter Ostrow, President & CEO, TestMart/ NAVICPmart
“The stock market will see at least four new e-business IPOs in the next year creating at least $1 billion of new, incremental market cap.”
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Kevin Maney, Technology Columnist
“Return of the tech IPO. It won't be anything like the bubble days, but the long-dorman tech IPO will bust out of its shackles with a few big ones in early-2004, among them Google and Salesforce.com.”
Rod Diridon, SR., Executive Director, Mineta Transportation Institute
“Silicon Valley will begin adding jobs to the as-yet jobless recovery, much to the relief of the under and unemployed... and the shrunken classified advertising pages of local media.”
Trend #8: Security is Still the #1 IT Concern Lawrence D. Dietz, Director, North American Enterprise Marketing, Symantec
“Security Finally Reaches The Boardroom Boards of Directors and Top Management will be held accountable for business stoppages as a result of information security issues. CIOs will be replaced in the event critical systems are brought down by foreseeable security problems such as failed patch management and worms.”
James E. Biorge, Chairman and CEO, 1steTech
“Governments and private sector businesses will be driven by the need for greater security to take authentication beyond the device to authenticating the user as well. The $50 billion identity theft problem last year will meet its match when PDA's, cellphones and smartcards standardize on self contained biometric solutions and cryptography.”
Greg Bolcer, CTO and Founder, Endeavors Technology, Inc.
“Security will get grounded in reality which includes destroying the myth that everything inside the firewall is safe (and everything outside isn't). Security vendors will uproll their products
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so that intrusion detection, anti-spam, anti-virus, and personal firewall policy and management will have to be included on every desktop.” Mark Jones, Executive Editor, News, InfoWorld Media Group
“Security will remain the most important, largely unresolved, problem for IT.”
Stephen Ibaraki, Teacher/Educator, Writer, Analyst, Chairman and Chief Architect, CIPS, StephenIbaraki.co m, Igeninc.com
“Beware of the next acronym: X-HI (XML-HI). Expect a major XML-based Hacker Intrusion or attack due to insufficient preventative measures. With all the XML document sharing, many companies are not sufficiently protected against embedded security threats.”
Trend #9: Social Networking Takes Off Don Tapscott, Co-author, “The Naked Corporation: How the Age of Transparency Will Revolutionize Business”
“Social Computing. The shift from the solitary experience of reading a Web page to the social experience of human interaction, collaborative information sharing and entertainment online. Blogs, meet chat rooms, meet interactive games, meet MUDs, meet computer conferencing.”
Mark Resch, CEO, Onomy Labs, Inc.
“We will see the first IPO of social network technology companies like LinkedIn, Ryze, match.com, and Friendster. This is the *second* generation of online virtual community. This new wave takes advantage of the Internet to build a new social infrastructure. Rather than an egalitarian free-for-all, this is a technology that supports the formation of social networks based upon the premise that you will share contacts and make introductions with people you trust.
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Knowledgeable VC's are making their bets in this space, and Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google will make big acquisitions this year.” Andy Snider, Founder, Advanced Thinkers Forum
“The cutting edge software of the next generation will look more like a dating service that links people ---rather than what we are used to as software.”
Stephen Ibaraki, Teacher/Educator, Writer, Analyst, Chairman and Chief Architect, CIPS, StephenIbaraki.co m, Igeninc.com
“Forget boundaries, cohorts are the future. Organizational, cultural, regional, and national boundaries will disappear, replaced by on-line cohorts based upon attitudes and interests being the glue that binds people into future marketplaces. Ads will increasingly be targeted to these future virtual groups making on-line targeted marketing as the most effective mechanism. The explosive growth of Weblogs are the tip of what is to come.”
Mitchell Levy, Partner, CEOnetworking
“A couple of large corporations will deploy one of the social business networking software (e.g. Ryze or Ecademy) within the firewall as a productivity tool.”
Trend #10: The Term “E-Commerce” comes back into Vogue Jeff Drust, VP E-Business, Autodesk, Inc.
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“E-Commerce will continue to grow based on wider acceptance, reliability and security and that growth will accelerate on a multiplier to economic recovery. That is to say that e-commerce as a route to market will gain disproportionately from economic recovery.”
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Jim Sterne, President, Target Marketing
“Online sales will continue to rise. Convenience and familiarity are at work here. Those who have not bought will and those who have will buy more.”
Philippe Lavie, President, KeyRoad Enterprises, a CustomerCentric Selling affiliate
“Like with railroad industry in the early 20th century, Web-based businesses will emerge again from the ashes of their founding parents to significantly contribute as a channel of distribution to the 21st century economy.”
Alex Osadzinski, Venture Partner, Trinity Ventures
“Some of the e-commerce survivors from the bubble will emerge as exciting, viable, profitable, newly-public companies. This will drive a new wave of new investment in consumer e-commerce, although rather more tempered than the last time around.”
Sheridan Tatsuno, Principal, Dreamscape Global
“Online auctions. Entrepreneurs will use cellphones with digital cameras to buy and sell items via eBay and other online auctions. Carriers, credit card companies, banks, and other infrastructure players will enter the “mobile eBay” market, which will explode worldwide during the next decade.”
William Raduchel, Independent Strategic Advisor
“The dreams of the dot.com boom continue their march to reality but with very different returns.”
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Bonus Trend #1: Software Continues to Change Forever Especially via the ASP Model Peter Harrison, VP Consulting, GetThere, A Sabre Company
“All enterprise software companies will have delivered a solution that hosts their software services on the Web that companies can pay for as they use. This software model has proven viable in several industries including travel, procurement, expense reporting, human resources, customer management, and more.”
Michael Maziarka, Director, CAP Ventures, Inc.
“Hosted services will grow as businesses look for ways to quickly obtain results with minimal up-front monetary and human resource investment.”
Greg Bolcer, CTO and Founder, Endeavors Technology, Inc.
“Businesses discover app subscriptions and app rentals really are cost effective as delivery barriers drop. Many major ISVs will include bundle pricing, ISPs will drop prices on pipes to stay competitive, enterprise site licenses will be cheap compared to end user licensing, and new rich client streaming technologies will all but eliminate deployment and IT costs.”
Chuck DeVita, President, Growth Process Group
“ASPs/hosted solutions are not a business model. This is a delivery mechanism and will become a viable alternative to software licensing as the infrastructure becomes more reliable and robust.”
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Tony Scott, Chief Technology Officer, IS&S, General Motors Corporation
“Technology providers will be forced to offer their corporate customers something similar to an automobile's 5 year/50,000 mile bumper-to-bumper warranty on their products. The first major technology company to offer this will be rewarded with a large gain in market share and will set the pace for all other companies to follow. Maintenance fees will be called “extended warranty” or “insurance” after the initial period.”
Bonus Trend #2: Marketing Becomes Important Again Philippe Lavie, President, KeyRoad Enterprises, a CustomerCentric Selling affiliate
“For the past 7 years, marketing had become obsolete and a necessary evil. 2004 will see marketing re-birth as an enabler and service provider to sales by helping craft customer messages (how products can be used to achieve prospect's goals) and no longer long list of feature descriptions.”
William Ryan, Founding Partner, Portola Strategies
“Forget traditional positioning and brand-centric approaches to marketing. We're now in the 'Age of the Narrative' where the biggest challenge facing companies is how to tell communicate their story in the most compelling, consistent and credible way possible -- both internally and externally.”
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Glenn Gow, President & CEO, Crimson Consulting Group, Inc.
“Technology partnerships and Go-To-Market partnerships will gain in importance as technology vendors formulate a clearer understanding of a customer's 'whole solution requirement'.”
Karen Orton, Principal, Internet Strategies Group
“Marketing will stay focused on blocking and tackling, great positioning and execution are essential. The two 3's will be the focus: revenue and references (reference customers).”
Karen Howe, CEO, Singingfish
“Search advertising will continue to build significant revenue for portals and will help revitalize the online advertising industry.”
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C h a p t e r
8
2003 Predictions
In the first prolonged economic downturn in a decade, Americans are trying to come to grips with an environment they haven't had to deal with for many decades, probably never in their lifetimes. This uncertainty, coupled with the prolonged change to business brought about by the continued proliferation of the Internet into all aspects of work and play, accounts for all the 10 trends highlighted for this year. [Of special note are trends #9 and #10. Although I'm not 100% certain these trends will be fully realized in 2003, I certainly wish we would make significant progress in these areas.]
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Top 10 Trends for the Year 2003: NOTE The italics represent the accuracy of the predictions as of 12/31/03. 1. The American Psychological Association announces its best year ever (correct). 2. Quiet, yet continued strong growth in e-commerce (correct). 3. The economy waffles while folks look for “the breakout event” and to overcome the dot.bomb malaise (mostly correct). 4. Operational efficiency continues to be a key corporate driver (correct). 5. Specialist are in, generalists are out (correct). 6. The software industry has changed forever (correct). 7. Web Services show demonstrated ROI (somewhat, not really yet). 8. Marketing has changed forever (correct). 9. Significant inroads made on eliminating spam (slight at best). 10. Users will get more of what they want (wishful thinking).
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Bonus Trend: 1. Key areas to keep an eye on include: security, wireless, real-time business intelligence, broadband.
Trend #1: The American Psychological Association Announces its Best Year Ever Mitchell Levy, Author, E-Volve-or-Die.co m
“After 10 years of sustained economic growth, a 4-year bubble where salaries, expectations, and retirement dreams increased dramatically, and a number of decades of relative “safety,” a number of Americans are trying to find the meaning of life.”
Scott Adams, Dilbert Cartoonist
“Employees will become increasingly disgruntled because the sluggish economy reduces their employment options. Managers will have more power and will become more overtly evil.”
Susan Papageorgio, Owner, Inspired Learning, a training and learning resource
“Health and emotional balance… with the challenges on Wall Street, the 401k mess, and the socio-economic challenges of the probable war with Iraq, companies are turning to a more holistic approach to employee productivity. Focusing on coping skills, building a sense of well-being, and helping their teams build the emotional tools to develop positive thinking, learning, and communication skills.”
Mark X. Addison, President, Rocket Science
“Ethics will become a required course in most MBA programs.”
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Trend #2: Quiet, Yet Continued Strong Growth in E-Commerce Tom Popek, VP, Finance & Operations, Resilence
“The use of e-commerce will continue to increase, despite the economic climate, with a more efficient, disciplined, orderly, and user friendly manner that will increase not only the usage rate, but also participation.”
Lisa Ann Strand, Director and Chief Analyst, eCommerce, NetRatings Inc.
“eBay will continue to move from its stronghold in online auctions to being a major player in shopping online in general - both in the C2C and B2C space.”
James Roche, Co-President and CEO, Fort Point Partners Inc.
“Amazon (or EBay) is once again accepted as the most likely future 'Wall*Mart killer.'”
Lisa Ann Strand, Director and Chief Analyst, eCommerce, NetRatings Inc.
“Sites that focus on industries transformed by an online presence will continue to be most successful in taking away offline share of sales – most salient examples include Travel, Photo Processing, and Flowers & Gifts.”
Leland Harden, Vice Chancellor of Institutional Advancement, New Canoe University
“Profits will become the norm for dotcoms that whose demise had previously been grossly exaggerated.”
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Trend #3: The Economy Waffles While Folks Look for “the Breakout Event” and to Overcome the dot.bomb Malaise Richard M. Brenner, CEO, The Brenner Group, Inc.
“The technology sector will hold steady in 2003, without any significant increase. The consumer confidence index needs to remain relatively constant for this prediction to hold true. If the consumer confidence index drops during this holiday season, the technology sector could be negatively impacted and the impact would have a longer duration.”
Damon Danielson, CEO, nForceNet
“This will be an unspectacular year in every sense of the word, other than on the political stage. As corporate earnings grow somewhat and are gauged to be more predictable by investors, the stock market will have an average year, as in the old gauge of average.”
Mark Resch, CEO, Onomy Labs, Inc.
“Many e-commerce entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley continue walking around like members of a cargo cult after World War II, just hoping the planes come back. But VCs will not increase investment in the e-commerce sector.”
Barbara Shaw, President & CEO, Breveon
“Jobs come from small business but the dot.com bomb killed investment in entrepreneurs who actually have solid products. Tracking reinvestment in businesses is critical because it will fuel the drivers of the next boom.”
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Robert Labatt, Entrepreneur in Residence, Saint's Ventures
“IT projects will continue to advance at budget pace, not fear pace for at least the first half of the year.”
Punita Pandey, CEO, netCustomer
“The pendulum will start to stabilize in the middle.”
Scott Andrews, Founder, AspireNow
“… unprecedented corporate bankruptcies and losses.”
Trend #4: Operational Efficiency Continues to be a Key Corporate Driver Tony Scott, CTO, IS&S (Information Systems and Services), General Motors
“Increased focus on software and systems quality…this is a high-cost item for most IT organizations and continued cost pressures will force a stronger look at this. Additionally, offshore sourcing will emerge as a significant factor in the outsourcing model for most corporations. Companies that were dabbling with this in 2002 will morph their exploratory activity into significant (greater than 50% growth) activity in 2003.”
John Jordano, Sr. Member Technical Staff, Salesforce.com
“Zero Impact Payback Time - Companies are conserving cash at all costs. The days of 12-month implementation efforts and nebulous ROI after 2 years are dead. Companies will only purchase technologies that have a clear, immediate benefit to the bottom line. Suppliers that have the shortest payback times will benefit.”
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Don Tapscott, President, New Paradigm Learning Corporation
“Transparency, its implications for business and how to manage it will become a central issue for executives, driving profound changes in corporate values and behavior, for the better, as firms rethink how to build trusting relationships.”
Amy D. Wohl, President, Wohl Associates
“Many firms, large and small, will decide to do some of their computing in a hosted or on-demand environment, avoiding new or additional capital expenditures and the need to hire skilled support staff.”
Nicole Kidd, Author, TheJournalists.co m
“Continued focus on integration and data quality that enables increased automation of business processes.”
Parag Patel, VP, International, Bowstreet Inc.
“…consolidation of internal systems.”
Keith Borman, President & CEO, Qarbon
“Employees are a vastly unused resource when it comes to information transferal- strange but true...with staffing cutbacks happening at many companies, it's essential to spread internal knowledge.”
Trend #5: Specialist are In, Generalists are Out Andrea Reynolds, Founder/Agent, ExpertsWhoSpeak.org
“Businesses will hire greater numbers of experts who have single, narrow niches - very specialized areas of expertise -- as problem
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solvers. Generalists with multiple unrelated niches (jack-of-all-trades) and coaches will be less desirable.” Andy Sernovitz, CEO, GasPedal
“Whatever happens to the economy, smart marketers will continue to do well, wanna-be's will keep losing their jobs.”
Robert Middleton, Owner, Action Plan Marketing
“The future for e-business is not the mega-corporation, but the small business, often home-based business. This area is already exploding… these businesses are small, they are flexible, they have no inventory and they can turn on a dime.”
Trend #6: The Software Industry has Changed Forever James Roche, Co-President and CEO, Fort Point Partners Inc.
“Enterprise software never recovers from its slump. $100mm mega projects based on Siebel, SAP, and others have produced such a legacy of pain and failure that CIOs suggesting their implementation are viewed with skepticism.”
Hank Barnes, SVP of Software Marketing and Strategy, divine, Inc.
“Less investment in major back office system implementations, but increased investment in wrappers that expose information and capabilities in those systems to external parties, particularly customers.”
Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst, ZapThink LLC
“Enterprise architecture committees/teams inside large companies will recommend that their organizations move toward loosely coupled
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service-oriented architectures. Many companies will have “ROI battles,” as people who understand the substantial long-term cost benefits of service oriented architectures (SOAs) battle the bean counters, who will still be focused on short-term cost savings.” Howard Smith, CTO EMEA, co-chair BPMI.org, Computer Sciences Corporation
“The technology planning horizon for Global 5000 companies is now a synthesis of software engineering (Web Services) and process engineering (BPMS). With the wildfire adoption of application servers, component-based development and Web Services, the field is ripe for the wildfire spread of process management... The balance of power will shift, away from the need to squeeze business processes into the prepackaged fashions of the IT industry, and toward the ability to creative, improve and transform business processes. 2003 will be the first year some providers of individual applications make the switch to process manufacturing.”
Chris Beall, CEO, Transparent Business Corporation
“One-size-fits-all packages will give way to incremental, custom automation of each company's unique business processes.”
Michael Ker, President & CEO, Webplan, Inc.
“Best of Breed software vendors must continually reinvent themselves or get rolled over.”
Philippe Lavie, President, KeyRoad Enterprises, a CustomerCentric Selling Affiliate
“More consolidation in healthcare, transportation, and technology software companies with additional short-term staff shrinkage. Point solutions for mission critical challenges will receive more buyers' attention than large, somewhat integrated, and expensive solutions.”
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Ted Henson, Chief Learning Strategist, Global Knowledge, Knowledge Products
“Users will use standard desktop applications to interface with complex enterprise applications. This will reduce reluctances to adopting new systems, reduce training needs, and increase productivity.”
William Grosso, Member, Board of Directors, Software Development Forum
“Microsoft will become a leading player in the CRM space faster than anyone expected… One of the leading companies will fail...”
Trend #7: Web Services Show Demonstrated ROI Don Tapscott, President, New Paradigm Learning Corporation
“Web Services, despite the hype, will become integrated into enterprise IT architectures. IT strategy will be based in “Services Based Architectures.”
Kaj Van de Loo, Director, Product Strategy, GBU Commerce, SAP Labs, Inc.
“Web Services will start to seriously take off...the first packaged applications that offer some Web Services out-of-the-box will hit the market…”
Richard Petersen, VP Product Marketing, Infravio, Inc.
“Web Services will be used for real application integration, however, to most employees and customers, Web Services will remain an invisible, back-end technology, so the press will proclaim that Web Services are failing to live up to vendor hype.”
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Jnan R. Dash, Executive Consultant & former Group VP at Oracle
“Integration across disparate islands of applications remains the number 1 issue with Enterprises. Web Services picks up steam to address this area with lower connection cost.”
Dave Asprey, Director, Strategy, Cable & Wireless
“Systems and network management players will embrace Web Services as a common integration technology, enabling enterprises to “roll their own” management packages that combine the best of monolithic traditional SNM frameworks (HP, BMC, Tivoli, etc.) with strong niche offerings from smaller SNM vendors. (NetIQ, Wyle, Collation, DigitalFuel, etc.)”
Trend #8: Marketing has Changed Forever Brad Peppard, President, CinemaScore Online Inc.
“As the online medium delivers more reliable, projectable, results at a reasonable cost, big agencies and their fortune 500 clients are going to continue to increase the share of marketing dollars that are allocated in this direction.”
Cia Romano, CEO and Founder, Interface Guru (tm)
“In the face of consumer backlash against conventional Web advertising, companies are turning to permission-based, interactive branding such as contextual cross-selling, newsletters, and polling.”
Aaron Heinrich, SVP, Manning Selvage & Lee
“… proliferation of product placements in video and online games.”
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Trend #9: Significant Inroads Made on Eliminating Spam Brad Peppard, President, CinemaScore Online Inc.
Andy Sernovitz, CEO, GasPedal Mitchell Levy, President & CEO, ECnow.com
“Tools for handling spam are going to take a quantum leap next year as they become a normal part of e-mail client software. Automated filters built on a combination of collaborative filtering shared across the Internet, customized filtering such as pattern recognition (e-mail from anyone in my address book is ok), and layered filtering (direct to trash vs. red flag vs. yellow flag vs. unknown vs. advertising) will cut the spam you have to deal with by 99%.” “Spammers will get sued right out of business.”
“I get 1,000 spam e-mails a day and would be happy to test-drive any proposed solution. Please don't spam me.”
Trend #10: Users Will Get More of What They Want Hank Barnes, SVP of Software Marketing and Strategy, divine, Inc.
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“Increased focus on designing business and processes from the outside-in, that is, the way your customers want it, not the way you have executed traditionally.”
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Cia Romano, CEO and Founder, Interface Guru (tm)
“User expectations of Web sites will continue to rise, fueled by lean and mean models such as Google. Companies failing to embrace current best-of-breed solutions such as content management systems, intelligent search, and usability testing will face two concurrent challenges: dropping audience numbers and increasing production costs.”
Chris Consorte, Marketing Consultant / Partner, Integrated Direct
“Back to the basics on (online) customer service. Companies doing business online will finally realize that the customer really is king. It's the customer that's empowered, they have a choice, and companies are finally going to realize that the power of the Web truly lies in customer service and in doing better (and more efficient) business with the end-user. This will include better use of e-mail with the customer, fulfillment, order-taking, and general inquiries.”
Jack Powers, Director, IN3.ORG, the International Informatics Institute
“Increasingly intelligent ECRM software will analyze customers' price expectations and dynamically re-price items upward to avoid ''leaving money on the table” in electronic transactions.”
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BONUS Trend: Key Areas to Keep an Eye On Include: Security, Wireless, Real-time Business Intelligence, Broadband Security Kaj Pedersen, CEO, Urbana Software
“The demand for more tools to analyze and derive meaningful information from a diverse and distributed number of sources will become critical as the “war on terrorism” gains momentum in the global political landscape.”
Randy Haykin, Managing Partner, Outlook Ventures
“Holistic security: 9/11/01 has made enterprises and governments more safety-conscious. Security spans from the individual (such as identity checking) to the enterprise (such as business continuity planning or BCP) and in the future beyond to collaboration partners.”
Alan Karp, Principal Scientist, Hewlett-Packard
“People will continue to say that security is critical to making e-commerce viable, but they still won't be willing to pay extra for it.” RTE
Mike Turner, CEO, Waveset Technology
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“The Real Time Enterprise (RTE) is about people looking at fresh information and making different decisions based on that data. Today, most organizations are looking in the rear view mirror and making forward moving decisions based on what they see behind them. The RTE allows people to look out the side windows to predict where to go next.”
Chapter 8: 2003 Predictions
Randy Haykin, Managing Partner, Outlook Ventures
“Real-time proactive systems - If information is available almost everywhere, systems can leverage that information to be more proactive in real-time. Today, C-level managers are demanding real-time information on their companies in order to stay proactive and competitive.”
Jnan R. Dash, Executive Consultant & former Group VP at Oracle
“Real-time Business Intelligence becomes hot in 2003. Near real-time access to the right information by the right user becomes crucial for staying ahead in the game.”
Wireless Gloria Gery, Principal, Gery Associates
“Wireless. Nothing more needs to be said. We're burdened by connectivity issues. Lots of work is performed away from the office context. It needs to be supported.”
Thomas Wong, Author and Consultant, Intesync
“Mobile/PDA applications that integrate with the Internet will become easier to use and provide more business transactions for the masses.”
Steve Weissman, President, Kinetic Information LLC
“Wireless computing will come into its own as security and management issues begin to be successfully addressed.”
Broadband Russell Levine, CEO, Zoomedia, Inc.
“Look for the Internet and broadband TV content to converge in style and impact.”
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C h a p t e r
9
2002 Predictions
The top 2002 predictions are heavily influenced by two key events in 2001: the September 11 terrorist attack and the dot.com bust. Even with these two negative events, the predictions are still primarily positive as society continues to make the transition from the industrial age to the Internet age, creating plenty of opportunity for continued growth and e-volution.
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Top 10 Trends for 2002 NOTE The italics represent the accuracy of the predictions as of 12/31/02. 1. Increased (correct).
security
and
safety
focus
2. Revenue (not at the expense of margin) will be the primary driver (partial). 3. Companies will start dropping the “E” (partial). 4. Late 2002 recovery (no). 5. Major industry consolidation (correct). 6. Customer experience will become vogue (no). 7. Functions vs. features (correct). 8. Collaborative commerce grows and meets P2P (no). 9. “Blended solutions” is the major new buzzphrase (no). 10. “Transparent commerce” is another new buzzphrase (no). Bonus Trends 1. Prediction of key technology/classes of applications that will experience growth. 2. The Value succeed.
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Chapter 9: 2002 Predictions
Trend #1: Increased Security and Safety Focus Security through smart chips and retinal identification will find increased acceptance. Additionally, the call for a national (and ultimately a worldwide) Smart Card based identification system will gain significant momentum. Mark Resch, CEO, CommerceNet
“September 11, 2001 affects everything.”
James Biorge, Chairman/CEO, 1steTech
“Increased attacks by hackers will require new security standards through Smart Cards that will make the virtual world more secure than the physical world in which we live.”
Raymond A. Kowalski, Director of Technology Policy, United States Chamber of Commerce
“There will be legislation to prevent certain anonymous purchases, such as airline tickets, for cash. Cash will still be accepted as payment, but not without verification of identity.”
Dave Asprey, Director, Strategic Planning, Exodus Communications
“Web and e-mail traffic will continue to flourish, especially as the US public realizes that “snail mail” can be used by terrorists.”
Ed Moed, Managing Partner, Peppercom
“There will be greater spending in security software and data storage, as well as other e-commerce/technologies that can help companies operate in various areas efficiently, but are very cost-effective.”
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Trend #2: Revenue (not at the Expense of Margin) will be the Primary Driver In addition to traditional and Internet-based revenue, the metrics of Web-assisted and Web-shifted revenue will come into vogue. Darlene K. Mann, General Partner, ONSET Ventures
“Without a focus on “e-profit”, there will be very little interest in e-business.”
Chuck DeVita, President, Growth process Group
“e-commerce/e-business will be a major force in corporations returning to profitable growth.”
Jim Sterne, President, Target Marketing
“I'm seeing a shift from personalization and one-to-one marketing and Web analytics over to e-metrics. The fascination with the possible is wearing off and the need to focus on actual ROI is growing.”
Kevin Tate, Vice President, Global Markets - Fort Point Partners
“Big companies will further specialize by outsourcing to partners and third-parties as Toys R Us and Circuit City have recently done with Amazon. Companies will take a hard look at their core values and capabilities, and throw many other operations over the wall to a third party. Logistics/Fulfillment outsourcing is old news, but now it's moving to the demand side, with e-commerce and direct marketing leading the way for some companies.”
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Trend #3: Companies will Start Dropping the“E” The holistic corporation will realize that business is business, regardless of the medium used to conduct it. E-Commerce implementations will focus on delivering the total end-to-end solution. Mark Hogan, Group Vice President, GM, President, e-GM, General Motors Mark Resch, CEO, CommerceNet
Punita Pandey, President & CEO, netCustomer Brandon Hall, Lead Researcher, brandon-hall.com
“e-business will become better integrated with core business.”
“We don't talk enable-economy.”
about
the
telephone
“business = business”
“Global and enterprise-wide: Solutions will become not just a division or departmentalselection, but organizations will be challenged to take the solution and goglobal withit, extending it beyond employeesand vendors.This will accelerate as you gain more momentum within your organization.”
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Trend #4: Late 2002 Recovery After the overall corporate purge of excess and obsolete inventory in mid-to-late 2001, companies will start reinvesting in the goods and services it needs to survive and create profitable entities. This, coupled with the money spent on the US war efforts, will bring a slight US recovery in late Q3, 2002. Jim Sterne, President, Target Marketing
“The economy will pick up, and it's all about consumer confidence. After the debacle of the dot.com belly-ups, we were wallowing in the hangover. After September 11, we've realized that there are more important things in life than stock options and we're getting tired of sitting on our duffs moaning about how slow everything is. As a nation, our attitude is changing into: 'If it's to be, it's up to me'.”
Mark Grossman, Attorney and Chair of the Technology Law Department, Becker & Poliakoff, P.A.
“In 2002, every tech company is a potential defense contractor. They just need to figure out a way to apply their technology to security or the war effort.”
Peter M. Ostrow, President and CEO, TestMart
“There will be a recovery in the financial markets in 2002 that will reopen the IPO market. At least 10 B2B organizations will file and go public. Those that are at (or closest to profitability) will be the first.”
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Trend #5: Major Industry Consolidation With the capital markets remaining difficult to raise money, there'll be a continued consolidation in the business world as both traditional and dot.com companies continue to be acquired or run out of money and go out of business. Sheridan Tatsuno, Principal, Dreamscape Global
“There will be a major market shakeout and consolidation of e-commerce vendors.”
Bill Lipsin, President & CEO, Ironside Technologies, Inc.
“There will be fewer players in the market through either consolidation, lack of cash to sustain their business, or their inability to manage through these tough economic times.”
Brandon Hall, Lead Researcher, brandon-hall.com
“More vendor consolidations: In the coming year, we will see more vendor consolidations, which is a good thing. Some companies may disappear altogether, while other companies will merge, which we've already seen happening. Using the learning management system category as an example, with over 120 different products on the market, the industry does not need, and cannot support, this many products. More consolidations will be an advantage for overall growth in this category.”
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Trend #6: Customer Experience will Become Vogue Although companies have talked about the customer being king, this philosophy is paid only lip service in a majority of companies. In 2002, we'll see the position of CCEO “Chief Customer Experience Officer” starts to proliferate among companies. The lifetime value of the customer will be a key focus of the CCEO. Paul Robinson, Co-Founder and President, NetByTel
“Customer Relationship Management (CRM) will emerge as THE single most important key strategic initiative for e-business and e-commerce companies in 2002. As the market becomes more and more commoditized, the only way for these companies to differentiate themselves will be through superior customer service. The e-commerce/e-business companies that truly know and understand their customers and offer the ability to order and get information anytime, from anywhere, using any device will ultimately win the battle for customers and profits.”
Tom Rearick, VP of Product Strategy, eGain Communications, Inc.
“I see the emergence of Experience as a service differentiator. The way that commodity markets differentiate their products predicts how economies evolve in the future. Commodity manufactured goods (e.g., IBM mainframes) are differentiated by service. The US Gross Domestic Product is no longer dominated by raw materials or manufacturing, it is now a service economy. IBM gets most of its revenue from service. But how do you differentiate service when it becomes a commodity? The answer is to deliver a superior customer experience.”
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Punita Pandey, President & CEO, netCustomer
“Customers will take center stage.”
Trend #7: Functions vs. Features The user community will pay more attention to the functions that products deliver as opposed to the features (bells and whistles) they have. Web Services are well positioned to help make this trend a reality. Gloria Gery, Principal, Gery Associates
“Simplification. It's just too damn difficult to perform even the simplest procedural, process, and cognitive tasks. Too many variables. Too much interpretation and transformation required. We'll focus on stripping out irrelevant features, functions, content, and tools and filter them to provide just what's needed at the moment of need.”
Andrew J. Birol, Business Development Expert and President, PACER Associates, Inc.
“If the technology enhances human understanding it will be valuable; otherwise new functionality will be likely to go unvalued.”
Tom Rearick, VP of Product Strategy, eGain Communications, Inc.
“A Web site (or other Internet communications channel) either offers greater convenience over existing forms of media, including picking up the phone, or it has no reason to exist.”
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Trend #8: Collaborative Commerce Grows and Meets P2P Companies will continue to grow their value Web relationships and strive to increase efficiency among the participants. Peer to peer technology and processes find their way in the B2B space helping improve the efficiency of many collaborative efforts. Additionally, there will be an increased focus on sharing useful “confidential” data among participants of the value Web. Marty Gruhn, Vice President and Practice Director, Summit Strategies
“P2P will emerge as the power platform for group collaboration applications and early entrants will be the darlings of the VC and IPO crowds.”
Bill Lipsin, President & CEO, Ironside Technologies, Inc.
“Trading partners on both sides of the transaction (i.e. buyers and sellers) will begin to REALLY connect so that it is a win-win for all involved.”
Steve Rabin, CTO, eB2B, Commerce, Inc.
“A focus on collaboration for operational excellence.Higher returns for all trading partners come from collaborating across the operational order management life cycle. This includes everything from requisition through payments and all of the business documents that must be exchanged to complete a trade.”
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Trend #9: “Blended Solutions” is the Major New Buzzphrase Making the transition from the on-line learning space, blended solutions become vogue as product and service companies deliver blended (integrated on-line and on-ground) solutions to their customers. Paul Robinson, Co-Founder and President, NetByTel
“The number of pure-play e-commerce companies will rapidly decline in 2002, making their numbers almost extinct, as they realize the need to implement a multi-channel sales strategy and to offer customers telephone ordering capability and other outlets to increase sales.”
Ted Henson, Chief Learning Strategist, Global Knowledge
“Meta applications, that permit end users to control the interaction between elements from different sources' will gain a foothold in businesses.”
Trend #10: “Transparent Commerce” is Another New Buzzphrase Also being bantered around as u-commerce (Ubiquitous Commerce), this is where commerce occurs automatically without getting in the way of our lives. Automatic bridge tolls and stop light violations, as well as product recommendations from trusted sources that automatically turn into sales, are good examples of what we'll see.
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Sheridan Tatsuno, Principal, Dreamscape Global
“… beginning of location-based wireless business services (sales, logistics, fleet management, taxis, etc.”
Brad Peppard, President, CinemaScore Online, Inc.
“… dawn of the usable PDA phone. Fear is a great driver of innovation. The phone/PDA mix is still floundering, but the benefits are there to drive the PDA market to the next level. Look for the breakthrough product to hit late in 2002.”
Leland Harden, President, Web-Runner Networks
“Currency barriers will come crashing down. Right now it continues to be difficult for consumers to shop internationally and for e-tailers to accept payment from international consumers, but companies like Promisant, FEDS, E4X and Fexco, will begin to get recognition and critical mass. This will enable e-tailers to have a 'Pick Your Currency' option at their checkout.”
Bonus Trend #1: Prediction of key technology/classes of applications that will experience growth
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•
The Killer Apps: blended customer service solutions, P2P for both consumers and businesses (collaborative commerce), self-service for both consumers and businesses
•
Other Areas of Growth: security, instant messaging video conferencing, smart card identification, IP telephony location-based commerce, mobile applications, collaborative commerce, 1x1 marketing tied to metrics, pay-per-view content
Chapter 9: 2002 Predictions
Kevin Tate, Vice President, Global Markets - Fort Point Partners
“Peer-to-peer will emerge as 'the next killer app'. Only e-mail has enjoyed the adoption rate and sense of inevitability that instant messaging and file-swapping are showing now in business and social communities. It's only going to get bigger.”
Chris Pirillo, Chief Executive Ding-Dong, Lockergnome.com
“E-Commerce integration in instant messaging will occur.”
Peter Harrison, VP Adoption Consulting, GetThere, A Sabre Company
“Economic pressures will be the catalyst for every leading company to mandate employee use of self-service intranets for booking business trips, filing expense reports, etc.”
Leland Harden, President, Web-Runner Networks
“IP telephony will get a solid foothold. AT&T has already said that long distance is not a viable business model. They see the handwriting on the wall. More and more companies will begin implementing IP telephony in earnest in '02, thus making PBX's obsolete.”
Craig J. Mathias, Principal, Farpoint Group
“M-commerce will gain in importance and value, but 2002 is not the breakout year. M-commerce does, however, remain the 'killer app' for wireless data.”
Craig J. Mathias, Principal, Farpoint Group
“Location-based services likewise will gain interest and some subscribers, but real traction won't occur before 2004.
Raymond A. Kowalski, Director of Technology Policy, United States Chamber of Commerce
“The e-commerce business model will quickly shift from the 'broadcasting' model of free content supported by site advertising, to a 'pay-per-view' model, where the customer pays for content in the form of subscriptions.”
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Dave Asprey, Director, Strategic Planning, Exodus Communications
“Web Services will take off but hit some of the hurdles that EDI originally ran into; namely, differing standards.”
Ken Campbell, Entrepreneur
“The e-business application will be I-conferencing (Internet-based video). The cost, hassles and nervousness of travel will bring back this long promised communications medium to reality.”
Michael Abbott, Founder, Code Metamorphosis
“J2ME will become the dominant development environment for wireless handheld devices (RIM Blackberrys, Phones, PDAs), and the 'killer application' will still be messaging (SMS, e-mail)”
Bonus Trend #2: The Value Equation HelpsCompanies Succeed Companies will start using the Value Equation to ensure they are creating value today and will continue to do so well into the future (okay, this one is self-promotion). Guy Kawasaki, CEO, Garage Technology Ventures
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“Entrepreneurship won't die.”
Chapter 9: 2002 Predictions
C h a p t e r
10
2001 Predictions
NOTE The italics represent the accuracy of the predictions as of 12/31/01.
Trend #1: The More Things Change, the MoreThey Stay the Same The tried and true basics of business will be back – to remind us of the old-fashioned principles that still seem to work, even in this new Internet-enabled world. Profitability, revenues, and proven processes will be key. (Correct)
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Trend #2: The New Economic Environment Although we are already mired in the New Economy, we are just at the beginning of the changes, as brick and mortar companies race to be successful online, and dot.coms try to dethrone established companies’ brands. There will be more consolidation, hybrids, partnering, and new business models that will shift the mix and balance of power. (Correct)
Trend #3: A New Internet-enabled World In the not too distant future, the use of the Internet will be routine, rather like electricity, as the comfort level with the technology and this method of doing business evolves. Not only will more of our work and personal lives be connected because of the evolving technology infrastructure, but more integrated as well. Processes and functions that we use in the workplace will make their way into our homes. A total Internet-enabled world where every IP appliance can coordinate an exchange transaction with or without a human guide, is right around the corner. (Partially correct)
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Trend #4: Customers Rule With the Internet, customers have gained considerable power to choose with whom they will do business, where and when. The need for intense customer focus and exemplary customer service will continue into the future, as customers remain central to the growth of e-commerce. (Partially correct)
Trend #5: Better, Faster, and Maybe Cheaper With continued learning and experimentation, companies will build better products and services by using the multiple capabilities of their own companies and also their partners. Price may still be a determinant in customers’ buying decisions, but value received is becoming more important than price by itself. New ways to conduct business enabled by technology will lead to many new opportunities for companies, with improved choices for customers and more efficient payment mechanisms for the exchange of value between parties. (Correct)
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Trend #6: Business Models and Value Webs Just when you thought things were settling down with business models, be prepared for more changes. Improvements in efficiency of the supply chain and logistics, disintermediation and continuing complex are part of the future. (Correct)
Trend #7: New Standards and Rules Create Opportunity There has been much controversy and discussion about privacy and security and how it affects e-commerce. Quite often, new regulations and laws can be perceived as just more bureaucracy that gets in the way of doing business. However, as security issues are mitigated and standards are commonly deployed for security and privacy, new opportunities will actually be created for business. (Correct)
Trend #8: Evolving Infrastructure and Tools Many advances have been made in integrating front office and back office systems both in a company and via the ASP/BSP model.
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Technologies that improve speed, collaboration or integration of processes will be a requirement for survival and growth in the future. (Correct)
Trend #9: The New Face of Marketing As companies continue to wrestle with issues about online and offline branding, we are entering a new era of personalization. Marketing will be faced with implementing new approaches in the Internet-enabled world. (Correct)
Trend #10: New Dimensions for Growth and Evolution As today’s leaders make decisions about tomorrow’s growth, many factors are at work in this new environment that will make a huge impact. Technologies such as wireless and portable computing will provide more ways to access the Internet and require companies to provide content accordingly. The world marketplace means greater demand for products and services, and companies need to figure out how to build businesses across geographic boundaries. We are faced with much growth in the next few years. Whether it happens slowly or quickly, we all need to be armed with the lessons we have learned so far to be better prepared to meet all the challenges of the brave new world. (Correct)
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Bonus Trend: Peer-to-Peer Commerce Takes Off eBay is remarkably successful and first coined the concept of C-C commerce. Regardless of whether Napster actually survives, it's existence will have resulted in the morphing of the music industry. Napster also helped demonstrate that peer-to-peer commerce may be the most widely participated business model on the Internet. Having passed legislation of digital signatures, with SET (Secure Electronic Transactions) individuals can swap digital files, and create an encrypted transaction contract; non-repudiation of the event between the buyer and seller. Individuals will begin to conduct peer-to-peer commerce using digital cash, with new and existing players trying to be the financial intermediary. (Correct - with a vengence)
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C h a p t e r
11
2000 Predictions
NOTE The italics represent the accuracy of the predictions as of 12/31/00.
Trend #1: B2B Growth Continues its Dramatic Pace B2B growth will continue at its dramatic 1999 pace, leading to more liquidity in the B2B exchanges and inter-organizational virtual enterprises. Part of this growth will stem from the B2B practitioners borrowing successful techniques already proven in the B2C marketplace. (Correct)
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Trend #2: M&A Activity Escalates Private, public, traditional and newly created corporate Venture Capital funds will increase the pace of mergers and acquisitions. We will continue to see the “dot.com's” snapping up physical real estate. In addition to technology and market share as reasons for acquisition, companies will be acquired for their employee base (technical and managerial). (Correct)
Trend #3: Privacy Concerns Increase Privacy concerns will increase in the U.S. as the public becomes more aware of how their Web site activity can be tracked, profiled, and merged with data collected from multiple off-line sources to reveal very “personal” information about themselves. (Correct - with a vengence)
Trend #4: Dynamic Pricing Reaches MostIndustries Dynamic pricing will extend into numerous industries via the name-your-own-price model (such as Priceline) and the Auction (such as eBay) model. (Didn't significantly materialize)
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Chapter 11: 2000 Predictions
Trend #5: ASP's Capabilities Expand ASPs (Application Service Providers) will continue to increase the quantity and quality of their customers and the robustness of their service offerings. The ASP model, as it becomes more pervasive, will lead to a dramatic change in how the software industry produces and distributes software. (Correct)
Trend #6: Wireless Applications Become MoreCommon Wireless Internet access will have rapid adoption in the U.S., possibly catching up to Europe. Wireless technology will be incorporated into standard business operations, will be used to deliver in-store competitive pricing, and remote e-mail anywhere, contributing to a steep rise in online usage. (First part, silly prediction, second part happened)
Trend #7: Free Extends into B2B Space “Free” continues as a B2C (business-to-consumer) e-commerce model and extends into the B2B (business-to-business) world. (Didn't significantly materialize)
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Trend #8: Customer-Centric Corporate Restructuring For the global 2000 companies that adapt and integrate the Internet into their businesses, a customer-centric view will start reshaping their culture and infrastructure. (Only partially correct)
Trend #9: Executive Inability to Morph The majority of global 2000 corporations will recognize that e-commerce is a reality they must embrace, but the majority of top executives will be unable to “morph” their corporations into holistic Internet-enabled entities. (Correct - few exceptions)
Trend #10: Expanded ECM Deployment Brick-and-mortar companies will continue to deploy e-commerce efforts that integrate with their core business. After Y2K preparation and cleanup, e-commerce will hit the business world like a tidal wave. Year 2000 will see a significant increase in the number of traditional companies that extend their brands onto the Web and meld on and off-line marketing activities. (Correct)
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C h a p t e r
12
1999 Predictions
NOTE The italics represent the accuracy of the predictions as of 12/31/99. Trend #1: While consumer-based security concerns continue to decrease, privacy concerns will increase leading companies for focus on the non-monetary forms of currency (time, attention. and trust). (Partial, security concerns decreased while privacy concerns increased, however not enough attention was placed on the non-monetary forms of currency) Trend #2: Companies will begin to recognize that the value-added activity begins after the customer hits 'submit order' and that customer service will become the point of differentiation. (Correct) Trend #3: Movement of EC to a service industry rather than purely product or technology driven...outsourcing EC functions becomes very popular. (Correct)
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Trend #4: More top-level executives will focus on and be responsible for EC. (Not yet, where some companies are talking the talk only a small percent are walking the walk) Trend #5: Dramatic increase and appliances (mobile home/office appliances, etc.) Web and integrated into (Correct)
in access speeds devices, ATMs, connecting to the EC applications.
Trend #6: Continue growth of affinity groups (e.g. Chemdex, Metalsite, Rosettanet, etc.). (Correct - with a vengence) Trend #7: Continued price transparency with auctions and other real-time pricing vehicles...will see prices for scarce items increase and prices for commodities decrease. (Correct) Trend #8: Shopping: a) Wallets and “impulse buying” will take root, b) Price-driven buying: looking for the best deals will be a big play and c) Special EC function keys will appear on key boards. (Partial: While price-driven buy occurred, wallets didn't stick and special EC functions didn't appear on key boards) Trend #9: Will see a non US-based player dominating some EC space. (Didn't materialize yet) Trend #10: 1999 and 2000 will be the years of “show me the money,” essentially companies will continue to demonstrate success with EC while small to medium enterprises (SMEs) flock to the net. (Correct)
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Chapter 12: 1999 Predictions
C h a p t e r
13
1998 Predictions
NOTE The italics represent the accuracy of the predictions as of 12/31/98. Trend #1: Other forms of currency take focus (time, attention, and trust). (Wrong, not as much focus in '98 as expected) Trend #2: Consumer acceptance of SSL security. (Correct) Trend #3: Login/password authentication will start going away. (Wrong, not yet) Trend #4: XML will start to replace HTML. (Partially, most vendors have XML implementations, slower than expected) Trend #5: Too many solutions, particularly point solutions, will be consolidation, but... (Correct) Trend #6: (Correct)
Continued
price
transparency.
Trend #7: “True” e-commerce implementations will be driven from the top-down. (Correct)
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Trend #8: E-Commerce implementations will focus on meeting business needs. (Mostly, still a ways to go) Trend #9: E-Commerce implementations will be more than pretty pages. (Correct) Trend #10: The definition of e-commerce will expand. (Mostly, still a ways to go)
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Chapter 13: 1998 Predictions
A u t h o r
About the Authors
Mitchell Levy is CEO and publisher of Happy About (http://happyabout.info), a quick2publish book publisher you should know about if you're an author or are responsible for marketing for your firm. His overarching goal in life has been to put tools in the hands of corporations and individuals to help them be successful. Author of eight business books, he is also a partner in CXOnetworking and sits on the Board of Directors of Rainmaker Systems (NASDAQ: RMKR). He was the former Chair of four conferences at Comdex; creator of the world-renown E-Commerce Management Program at San Jose State University; and managed the e-commerce component of Sun Microsystem's $3.5 billion supply chain during his nine years there.
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Vasu Shastry, a software professional with over 15 years of global work experience in the software industry; held various responsible roles at different capacities. She has built organizations from ground up and helped them grow. Her diverse work experience from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, enabled her establish unique development approaches, resulting in with quality and timely enterprise software solutions. During her tenure at Sun Microsystems she built support engineering organizations in APAC, EMEA and improved Sun's customer experience through exceptional production support. Her key areas of expertise include Organizational development, Enterprise Services, Outsourcing/Off-shore development, Project / Program / Development Engineering management.
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