Today, we see many rapidly evolving, potentially transformative technologies on the horizon—spanning information technologies, biological sciences, material science, energy, and other fields. The McKinsey Global Institute set out to identify which of these technologies could have massive, economically disruptive impact between now and 2025. We also sought to understand how these technologies could change our world and how leaders of businesses and other institutions should respond. Our goal is not to predict the future, but rather to use a structured analysis to sort through the technologies with the potential to transform and disrupt in the next decade or two, and to assess potential impact based on what we can know today, and put these promising technologies in a useful perspective. We offer this work as a guide for leaders to anticipate the coming opportunities and changes.

IDENTIFYING THE TECHNOLOGIES THAT MATTER

The noise about the next big thing can make it difficult to identify which technologies truly matter. Here we attempt to sort through the many claims to identify the technologies that have the greatest potential to drive substantial economic impact and disruption by 2025 and to identify which potential impacts leaders should know about. Important technologies can come in any field or emerge from any scientific discipline, but they share four characteristics: high rate of technology change, broad potential scope of impact, large economic value that could be affected, and substantial potential for disruptive economic impact. Many technologies have the potential to meet these criteria eventually, but leaders need to focus on technologies with potential impact that is near enough at hand to be meaningfully anticipated and prepared for. Therefore, we focused on technologies that we believe have significant potential to drive economic impact and disruption by 2025.

David Fuller's view

Here is the report from McKinsey Global Institute.

This informative report was forwarded to me by David Brown, our guest speaker at Markets Now on 23^rd February.  Scroll down a short way until you reach several coloured slides under the heading: Connecting rate of improvement and reach today. They certainly grabbed my attention.

McKinsey’s report is an excellent primer for anyone interested in knowing more about technology. It is also a good introduction to David Brown’s presentation: The Third Industrial Revolution.  I have seen it and cannot wait to hear the discussion next Monday.