2016 tech to watch: conclusions

This final part* in our series looks at the technologies to watch out for in 2016 summarising the disparate threads of innovation from antibiotics through blockchain to drones and autonomous vehicles. 

Looking at effectively “everything” is challenging so to make it easier I have crowdsourced ideas from the main venture bloggers (although few had handy predictions) and government innovation reports (sources for both are here) as well as the media.

A comprehensive view from our Global Corporate Venturing readers of their expectations for this year as well as all the data and analysis from 2015 will be in World of Corporate Venturing 2016, published at our sell-out GCVI Summit at the end of January.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, governments have tended to be a bit more macro than many investors that can go down to the level of talking about AppleTV.

Handily, many of the latest government policies are captured by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD’s) Reviews of Innovation Policy. Just taking a look at the Brazil, China, Russia, UK and US finds they are all developing national strategies looking at high-performance computing or information and communication technologies, clean energy, transport (aerospace and/or maritime and cars) and energy efficiency and healthcare through precision or biomedicine.

For the bloggers investing in the tech that will affect these macro areas, most attention (optimistic or skeptical) was on virtual reality and wearables then messaging, connected cars, drones, bitcoin/cryptocurrencies and enterprise software.

In addition, more general issues caught commentators’ attention, such as potential price falls, fewer big rounds, the bottleneck for seed-stage companies to get further funding, less self-promotion and national elections, as well as corporate venturing increasing and mergers and acquisitions. 

What has been fascinating in reviewing more than 1,000 companies and deals for this series has been how the same investors crop up in some of the most exciting or innovative companies captured through our GCV Analytics tool and our proprietary Power index.

These investors are supporting the entrepreneurs changing our world. The series started with a quote from Yuval Harari about the separation of intelligence from consciousness and the impact of grappling with what he feared could be people becoming superfluous.

He added: “The biggest question maybe in economics and politics of the coming decades will be what to do with all these useless people.”

Technology cannot (yet) answer this question.

But, as Ruud Vermeulen, director of business development for Europe at Lux Research, said in a LinkedIn forum comment on this series: “While I appreciate that Harari is trying to open a discussion, I strongly object to the phrasing ‘useless’, ‘extinct’ and ‘superfluous’ in relation to people….

“For an alternative paradigm that is more palatable (and plausible), read Jeremy Rifkin’s latest book, The Zero Marginal Cost Society – The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons and the Eclipse of Capitalism: ‘The powerful social forces unleashed by the coming zero marginal cost society are both disruptive and liberating. They are unlikely to be curtailed or reversed. The transition from the capitalist era to the collaborative age is gaining momentum in every region of the world – hopefully, in time to heal the biosphere and create more just, humane and sustainable global economy for every human being on earth.’”

Whether we are driving towards or away from extinction or a sustainability will be judged with hindsight but we are certainly travelling as fast as we can with few brakes on. 

Table: Tech to watch out for 2016

3D printing/additive manufacturing

Advanced materials

Advertising tech

Agritech

Antibiotics

Artificial Intelligence/machine learning/big data

Augmented/virtual reality

Blockchain/cryptocurrency

Boutique food/drink brand startups

Brain research

Crispr/genome editing/bio-precision medicine

Communication platforms

Crowdfunding/P2P lending platforms

Drones/autonomous vehicles

Education/Moocs

Energy & storage

Gaming experimentation

Internet connectivity/access

Internet of Things/sensors-RFID

Messaging

Mobile

Modularization

Robotics

Security (cyber/physical)

Sharing/on-demand economy

Analysis: James Mawson, Rob Lavine Global Corporate Venturing

*On Monday’s first part of this outlook in Global Corporate Venturing we covered genome-editing tools that could change life and their progeny and a possible future evolution of computing to support artificial intelligence through quantum computing. Tuesday’s second part looked at companies fuelling the mind and body through virtual reality and improved food production. Wednesday’s third part covered communications through emerging space and internet access providers and application platforms. Thursday’s fourth part looked at the energy space, with a focus on the niche startup area of nuclear and more critical area of batteries.