My One Big Fat Digital Technology Prediction For 2022 – Forbes
It’s all hybrid these days.
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This time of year, there are all sorts of top-10 prediction lists highlighting the trends shaping the 12 months in front of us. As I have been doing every year since 2014, rather than come up with a list, I am making one single half-baked prediction for what will dominate the business tech scene.
For the year ahead, 2022, the key trend will be “hybrid.” And that means hybrid everything — cloud engagements, workplace arrangements, workforces, vehicles, databases, education, commerce, and conferences. The hybridization of our world has been bubbling through for years, but the Covid crisis suddenly shifted everything to the digital side of the column. But there is still plenty of energy in the analog or physical side of things as well, and we’ll see more of that as the Covid situation recedes.
Most importantly, we are seeing the emergence of the hybrid leader — seeing people and organizations through digital transformation, while also helping colleagues learn, grow, and thrive. The hybrid leader knows how to look inward as also outward — being almost obsessively focused on delivering superior customer experience. Technology professionals and leaders are learning and adapting to speak the language of business, while business professionals and leaders are learning and adapting to understand the power of technology.
We’re becoming a hybrid world, not only out of necessity, but as a reflection of the choices available to us as well. It’s about options, and it’s about expending one’s offerings — and horizons — to meet the needs of people and organizations in a polymorphic world. The key to moving forward in the year ahead is to be a hybrid leader — with knowledgeability in a professional or technical realm, as well as adept with broader skills such as teamwork and empathy.
Let’s break down just a few of the things being hybridized:
- Workplaces: Work from anywhere (not just home), at the time of one’s choosing.
- Workforces: Diversity will increase as global work becomes the norm. In addition, organizations will be running on hybrid teams of contractors, freelancers, and consultants.
- Partners: Companies will rely on confederations of entrepreneurs for services and supplies rendered, as well as innovators connected through platforms, adding value to products and services being brought to market.
- Work: With the rise of artificial intelligence and automation, there will be more sharing of tasks between humans and machines. AI, robots and machines will be handling the high-volume grunt work, while human work will increasingly be elevated to more as innovators and team .
- Customers: Customers will increasingly make use of multiple channels, and will be making product or services choices via more immersive experiences such as augmented reality. In addition, customers represent many different cultures and regions of the world.
- Systems: Cloud has been part of information technology for sometime now, this will only accelerate. At the same time, there are many “legacy” systems, loaded with well-through-out programming logic, that …….
