This is a talk for the Dubai Future Accelerator exploring key emerging shifts for business, especially with a digital focus. In links together insights from our global discussions on the future of the company, the future of data, the future of privacy as well as recent projects on the future value of data and the future of trust. More information on all of these are available on the main Future Agenda website www.futureagenda.org

1. The Future of Digital Business
Dubai Future Accelerator
29 April 2018 The world’s leading open foresight program

2. Prediction

3. Roadmaps

4. Alternate Paths

5. Obscurity

6. Future Agenda
Future Agenda runs the world’s largest open foresight program - accessing multiple
views of the next decade so we can all be better informed and stimulate innovation.

7. The Certainties

8. Imbalanced Population Growth
A growing population adds another billion people but it is also rapidly ageing:
a child born next year will live 6 months longer than one born today. While
migration helps to rebalance, increasing dependency ratios challenge many.

9. Key Resource Constraints
Economic, physical and political shortages of key resources increase and drive
increasing tension between and within countries. As we exceed the Earth’s
natural thresholds, food and water receive as much focus as oil and gas.

10. Shifting Power and Influence
The centre of gravity of economic power continues shifting eastwards, back to
where it was 200 years ago. Recent superpowers seek to moderate the pace of
change but the realities of population and resource locations are immoveable.

11. Everything Connected
Over 1 trillion sensors are connected to multiple networks: everything that can
benefit from a connection has one. We deliver 10,000x more data 100x more
effectively but are concerned about the security of the information that flows.

12. Changing Business

13. Speed to Scale
Greater global connectivity, growing consumer wealth and broader reach help
accelerate the time to 1bn customers and a $10bn valuation for start-ups.

14. Organisation 3.0
New forms of flatter, project-based, collaborative, virtual, informal
organisations dominate - enabled by technology and a mobile workforce.

15. Companies with Purpose
As trust in ‘business’ declines, the practices of corporations are under scrutiny.
Pressure grows to improve environmental, social and governance performance.

16. Full Cost
Increasing transparency of society’s reliance on nature intensify requirements for
business to pay the true cost of their activities and compensate for negative impact.

17. Deeper Collaboration
Partnerships shift to become more dynamic, long-term, democratised, multi-party
collaborations. We see new legal frameworks for open, empathetic collaboration.

18. Truth and Illusion
The Internet has democratised knowledge and changed the nature of
who we trust and why. What we believe is changing how we behave.

19. Trust Across Not Up
We used to seek guidance on a vertical axis and looked “up” to leaders and experts.
Tomorrow horizontal axes of “trust” are crucial: people look to peer groups for advice.

20. Rising Cyber Security Threats
In some areas, greater interconnectivity and the IoT create new opportunities
for the unscrupulous who seek to exploit weakness and destroy systems.

21. Working Longer
People are having to work for longer to support longer retirements.
Moe flexible working practices and policies are emerging in some regions.

22. Skills Concentrations
The need to build and access capabilities becomes increasingly challenging.
Those who benefit from the high-skill reward opportunities remain a select group.

23. Future of Digital Business

24. The Value of Data
The economic incentive to generate and collect data from multiple
sources is leading to a data “land grab” by many organisations.

25. Data Marketplaces
Ecosystems for trading data are emerging and soon both personal and
machine data are openly brought and sold in new data marketplaces.

26. Data Ownership
Traditional legal models of ownership and access to digital data cause debate.
The focus shifts to the question of who is actually benefitting from what data.

27. Digital Money
Cash is gradually replaced by digital money, providing consumers with more
convenience, organisations with lower costs and government with more transparency.

28. Digital Taxation
Governments increasingly seek to tax digitally-driven sectors and introduce
a number of approaches to link this to locations of data generation and use.

29. Data is the New Oil?
Vast hordes of data can make its owners very wealthy and powerful – but, unlike oil,
data is not a finite, exhaustible resource, nor are the costs of extraction high.

30. Open Data
In many contexts, data is increasingly openly shared for free.
The positive social benefit is seen to outweigh any economic loss.

31. Privatization of Data
In sectors, such as healthcare, the privatization of public knowledge tests
the view that most information should be a ‘public commons’ for all.

32. Global vs. Local
Data does not respect national boundaries. Nation states try to set rules.
Growing tensions drive design for global standards but with localised use.

33. The Rise of Machines
AI presents both a threat and an opportunity: Greater AI and automation
free up time, but also threaten jobs - both low skilled and administrative roles.

34. Machine Learning Driving Accuracy
As more people use apps as “AI” advisers, more data is collected and machine
learning improves significantly. Devices therefore deliver more accurate advice.

35. AI and Unstructured Data
As deep and self-learning develop, the ability to deal with unstructured
data delivers major opportunities for improvements across more sectors.

36. Fake Data
Poorly collected, deliberately contaminated or fabricated data drive weak
decision-making, inaccurate and biased AI, bad governance or societal unrest.

37. New Models
Key sectors will be reconfigured as new models come from unexpected places.
Big tech will reinvent some core elements and unify fragmented systems.

38. Digital Inequality
As advances roll out, there is growing concern for those left behind.
Some hope that inequality can be reduced. Others see a widening divide.

39. Digital Skills
Several major industries lack the skills for digital transformation.
Many see that we need to learn, unlearn and relearn new skills.

40. Data Ethics
As we approach technology singularity, autonomous robots and smarter algorithms
make judgments that impact all of our lives. Who is coding in the ethics?

41. Clear Data Value
Organisations have to be clearer about why they value specific types of data
and on what terms, or they risk losing public trust and their license to operate

42. Human Touch
As service provision becomes ever more automated and algorithmic, those brands that
offer more emotional engagement and human contact become increasingly attractive.

43. Future Agenda
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