The year 2017 will be the year of the ‘unacknowledged’ and the ‘authentic’. With volumes of data and algorithms having taken control of our lives, the urge to step aside and do something fresh will be truly aspirational. Being slotted and judged as a particular type on the basis of numbers and analysis has ended up commoditising human beings and taking away the uniqueness and mysterious aura around individual lives.

In a world where everyone is naked, your identity is defined by you and not your clothes. The future will discover new ways of being beyond the superficial and that will have a huge impact not just on individuals but also brands and organisations.

‘Market prototyping’, as against ‘lab prototyping’ is the fastest route to proactive innovation. A rudimentary version that consumers can play around is the best functional test of your offering. Your idea can work perfectly well in theory and in a controlled lab environment, but the flaws in the design can only be exposed by the market. ‘Failing fast to succeed faster’ is the formula as, after all, each innovation is a new bet on the future with no precedence and benchmark to peg against.

Digital Transformation: Digital will shift from ‘data’ to ‘multi-sensory’ interaction and replicate human actions to an extent that in less than three years the gap between virtual and real will be almost nil.

Sensory interaction will replace physical interaction and give birth to ‘sense digital’. For this, we will need to re-envision our interactions with our devices today as they will start delivering touch-free interaction via vision, voice and gesture recognitions and more. Just like you can guess how someone feels from their facial expressions, machines, too, will be able to recognise eyes, voice and breath for sharper cues.

From ‘platform economy’ to ‘distributed value network’: Platforms make possible a form of total control to create value for the organisations and sustained growth. It follows the existing principles of economics to create wealth for the shareholders and valuations for the company.

The true power of platforms will be in the ‘mutual’ model where the value gets equally shared between all those who helped create it. Every stakeholder is an equal participant and the network is open in a state of constant fluidity but tightly governed by systems and protocols.

Blockchains have started this journey but the model will evolve further to make it more robust and transparent.

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