A brief summary giving a global idea of expected tendencies and innovations,

1. Agent of
Change
The Future of Technology
disruption in business
Outcome of Survey amongst +500
Senior Executives worldwide
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2. What impact will technology have on
business between now and 2020 ?
A report of the Economist
Intelligence unit, sponsored by
Ricoh
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3. Expectations in General
 Technology innovation will apace
 Pace of efficiency improvement accelerates
 More disruptive technologies in shorter time frames
 40% expects that their organisation will not be able to keep up and lose
competitive edge
 3rd most powerful macro trend (after rebalancing economy to emerging
markets and instability of financial markets)
 Expanding flow of innovative technology ideas from India and China
 Giant influence on business model, for this decade:
– Abundance of computing power, storage,… at decreasing cost (Cloud)
– Cloud will impact at most in combination with mobile connectivity
– ‘Big Data’ or increasing volumes of data (impact smart devices)
– Increasing demand towards smart data analytics
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4. Technology and business models
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5. Business Model is ‘key’
 Combination of changing technology AND business model is crucial to
become/stay leading
 The change will be about the business model, caused by innovation in
processes and methods (and empowered by technologies, allowing a
smartened communication with customers)
 60% believes that in 2020 their business model will be completely changed
 10% see their organisation disappear at that time
 Media, entertainment, banking and telecom will be impacted most
 Recession accelerates shift to the web and affects retail
 Services Organisations will be challenged by smaller virtual companies
(shorter time to market for tackling challenges)
 Big Data within fims, will become a product on their own
 New kind of analytics services will emerge (customer behavior)
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6. Business model is ‘key’
 Some ‘capital intensive’ branches will remain a barrier for new
challengers (with new business models)
– Impact on manufacturers will be visible by enabling new offerings (personalisation, 3D printing,…)
 The strength of the idea will become very crucial in ‘low barrier’
industries (micro-companies launching own business)
 52% expects that legal compliancy, respecting privacy, security and
data quality will be most important ‘show stopper’
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7. Rethinking the organisation
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8. Organisation
 Classic hierarchical organisational structure comes to an end
 Collaboration via video interaction and corporate social networking tools
(amplification effect); reducing the role of e-mail
 Cultural challenge to manage flatter organisations in right way
 Better collaboration tools results in smaller firms, dealing with external
partners for non-core functions. Mid sized companies disapear.
 86% expects linking up between company and specialists (‘virtual firms’)
becoming more common for dealing with specific projects
 Back office (marketing, finance, HR, IT,…) will become more automated and
outsourced to specialists  ‘lean and mean business models’. Also middle
managers will dissapear (flatter organisation)
 Knowledge sharing and documenting will be important ‘show stoppers’, just
like compliance (>< global approach)
 Management models must deal with loss of staff engagement (virtualisation)
OR poor time-to-market
 Uncertainty will become common, just as ‘meritocracy’
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9. Jobs in 2020
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10. Jobs
 Economic growth is decoupled from job growth (standardisation)
 Jobs will be displaced at a growing speed (automisation), also ‘supporting’
high end jobs
 On the other hand new kind of roles / jobs will appear at high pace
 We will work longer (in age and in labor time), caused by digitisation and
fast and on going changing tasks and healthier human race
 More flexible working, decentralisation and more ‘free lance contractors’
(cost and space saving), amongst marketing professionals, working on a
more global scale
 But also a 24/7 culture (unable to disconnect)
 Negative impact : data overload (new products will appear to solve this),
security issues and more stress on the job (other social norms)
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11. The workplace of tomorrow
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12. Workplace
 In production environments : huge impact on physical environment by robotics
and artificial intelligence
 In business services companies: automation of processes, but consultative
services will be kept on being delivered in ‘physical’ offices (looking more like
a high-end coffee shop)…although centralisation in urban hotspots is
expected (video conference will become more common here also)
 Same for consumer-facing branches: automated self service with the role of
the staff directed towards (complex) advice
 80% thinks that home working will become more common; office becomes a
‘hybird meeting point’ to exchange ideas (in combination with 3D holo-graphic
video conferencing). Dedicated desks at offices disappear (cost saving)
 Fixed phone, desktop and servers will disappear
 Management models will cope with challenge to insure productivity
collaborators (‘scope of control’)
 Small scale ‘work hubs’ appear at peripheries for local workers of (different)
companies …again the coffee shop-idea as environment !
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13. The personalisation decade
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14. The personalisation decade
 Technology enables the way how companies interact with customers, and
new ways will keep on appearing (at faste pace)
 Deepening trends towards personalisation : self service will grow, combined
with powerful individualised services
 ‘Big Data’ will enable a much better view on customer habits …resulting in
more and more individualised communication (at lowering cost)
 Highest impact is expected on ‘time to market’ (41%), global market
approach and simplification of business processes (each 24%) and deeper
knowledge of customers (23%) and… wholly new business models (22%)
 Impact will be also highly relevant in B2B (use of smart sensors for highly
personalised advice);
 Pitfall will be complexity (further personalisation still manageable ?)
 Co creation for products and services becomes common in companies
 Collaborative online customer platforms for customer feedback, used for
revising offerings…and replacing R&D as major source for innovation (but
limits will be reached as it is difficult to manage)
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15. The personalisation decade
 Privacy will become an issue, disserving on going attention and… may
result in overly extensive compliance requirements…. discouraging
development of new technologies
 Transparancy for the customer can compensate this. By a better access to
data price comparison and service rating tools, more pressure will be put on
suppliers and increase competition (and lower profit)…as customers can
find this out in an easy and quick way. In B2B social media and online
forums will be used for this, to identify poor performing suppliers.
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