Business Science & Technology
There are now so many possible futures based on how we handle an array of scientific advances, social problems and economic opportunities that it's getting harder to see the way ahead. "It's all happening at once," says Vancouver-based Frank Ogden, the 84-year-old dean of Canadian futurists. "Everything is going to be disrupted. I don't think there's a future for futurists."
Yet you have to keep moving forward, making sure your firm keeps up with its customers and ahead of the competition. If the path ahead isn't perfectly clear, at least you can understand the forces that are driving us all and the directions in which they're heading. To help you and your business adapt to the unmapped future, here is PROFIT's list of seven key trends that could make or break your business between now and 2010.
The Sensor Society
Miniaturized electronics and the wireless revolution are combining to create brand new technology: tiny, automated sensors that stand on guard to transmit vital data about almost anything, from the location of your inventory to the state of your heart.
This trend's familiar face is RFID, or radio frequency identification. At its core are tiny electronic tags that transmit data via radio waves to nearby sensors that can be used to track inventory, laundry, library books or wandering pets.
RFID hit the news when Wal-Mart demanded its top 100 suppliers identify their inventory with radio-tag sensors by Jan. 1, 2005, to cut the retailer's inventory-management costs. In a report on wireless technology, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu predicts this will be a breakthrough year for RFID: "The impact is expected to be enormous, immediate and global, with literally billions of RFID tags being deployed in 2005."
But RFID doesn't just replace bar codes. These smart tags can be readily detected even when hidden from sight or embedded inside products (or poodles). The "reader" ? the little box that senses the tags and records the appropriate data ? can work from 30 feet away, or just a few inches. Deloitte calls RFID "a transformational technology that can help reduce waste, curtail theft, manage inventory, streamline logistics and even increase productivity."
As Calgary-based wireless consultant David Crowe notes, RFID tags are already being embedded in clothes to speed up processing at dry cleaners and in key fobs for automated purchases at Esso service stations. We will soon see them built into vehicles to register payments on toll roads or discourage car theft, and to open doors for qualified employees in high-security areas.
Savvy entrepreneurs will look for creative ways to use these devices to cut costs or generate new services, especially since RFID prices are expected to fall from a current low of 50¢ per tag to just a nickel by 2010. But you'll also have to figure out how and when to incorporate them into your supply chain, before customers make you do it their way.
The sensor society will extend far beyond smart tags. Toronto-based technology investor Ken Nickerson, former general manager of the Microsoft Network in Canada, sees RFID evolving into networks of sensors that will literally extend the human senses. "This is RFID squared," he says. "You can take anything you can sense ? chemicals, temperature, humidity, even your heart rate ? and capture and transmit it wirelessly."
In a few years, he says, tiny sensors will measure radiation in hazardous areas, watch for smoke in your home or intruders in your cottage, or monitor your health. "Your shoes could track your heart," says Nickerson. When there's an anomaly ? say, if your blood sugar drops or blood pressure rises ? the sensors will issue an alert to stop minor problems from becoming major ones.
Spurring on such applications could be the insurance industry. Nickerson says life insurers may promise lower rates to customers who wear sensor-equipped watches, while car insurers could offer discounts to policy-holders who install sensors in their cars to reveal the causes of accidents. "Anything that can be tracked will be tracked," Nickerson predicts. "This will be as big as the Internet."
NOTE: This article was written in 2005 by Rick Spence at Profitguide.com, a business information website that is no longer in service.