The Churchill Club is “Silicon Valley’s premier business and technology forum”, with some 6,500 members including many notable tech CEOs. Each year they host a discussion in which panelists attempt to predict the top tech trends for the next few years. This year’s event, apparently the 13th annual, included panelists:- Curt Carlson, President and CEO, SRI International
- Aneesh Chopra, Chief Technology Officer of the United States
- Steve Jurvetson, Managing Director, Draper Fisher Jurvetson
- Ajay Royan, Managing Director, Clarium Capital
- Paul Saffo, Managing Director of Foresight, Discern Analytics
This year SRI selected ten likely candidates for hot trends and then the panelists debated them. Votes were tallied and the resulting rankings were as follows in order by score (10 = agree, 1 = disagree):
- 8.0 Social, Really (True social networks and relationships)
- 7.1 Reverse Innovation (Innovation from developing countries)
- 6.9 Pay Me Now (Value through providing data)
- 6.0 Rose, At Last (Embedded robots)
- 5.8 Augmented Reality (Adding information to virtual displays)
- 5.1 Engineering by Biologists (Engineered machines based on biology)
- 4.6 Made for Me (mass customization)
- 4.4 Age Before Beauty (a focus on tools for older, not younger people)
- 4.0 The Doctor is In (medical care via internet)
- 2.9 Tis A Gift To Be Simple (Cyber defence via simple software)
So it appears approximately half of their audience believes mass customization will be a big trend. One way or the other, we’ll see what happens.
Via Forbes
