Saturday 9 June 2012

Rapid Future?

With Facebook going public recently it got me thinking what might be the 'next big thing' online. There seems to have been a flurry of social media and 'me too' versions of Facebook including business networking tools such as Linked In, Four Square, Pinterest and so on..  they all seem to me to be basically similar software and many of us are very comfortable with them. Nothing really new seems to have emerged in the last couple of years - perhaps it's due to the economic climate; the ideas-generators in silicon valley are cashing-in their past ideas or then again there is something currently under development that will leap-frog all of the more recent stuff and move on to the next level.

At IMEX Frankfurt I came across an interesting seminar by Rohit Talwar on this very subject - the future. It was a very well attended event and Rohit, a global futurist and the founder of Fast Future Research, (www.fastfuture.com) provided a comprehensive range (and some seemingly far-fetched) ideas of what the meetings industry might be like in the future.

Some of his suggestions are already taking shape and included items such as genetic apps that will identify the status of your health through samples of your saliva; new super-smart materials such as an algie that can be applied to glass surfaces so that cracks will self heal; the internet of the future that will provide more experiential options such as taste and smell; vertical farming which triples the output of crops using less land...

There were many more interesting items, too numerous to mention here, but very thought-provoking. The main message of the continuing future journey and that we are now in a new turbulant era bringing even greater changes and multiple business models that will happen rapidly.
Whatever is next, we can be certain that Facebook's rapid growth will probably be surpassed. Keeping up may be the biggest challenge....
(this blog also recently posted on 'The Bottom Line', Great Potential's online e-zine: http://bit.ly/KhARMq)