2016….An Imperfect Year!

2016 like every year before it had its share of ups and downs. However, one thing that clearly stood out was the Universal Unacceptability of Status Quo. Be it the BREXIT vote, Election of Donald Trump to US Presidency, Russian influence on American elections, Referendums defeated across the board in every country that brought it forth, de-monetization drive in India, Tata group courting controversy, Philippines endorsing its President’s method of cleansing the system and many more. World over people expressed their displeasure of the status quo and rooted for change. Whether the change will be good for them or bad we will know only in the years to come, but one thing was clear that people are unafraid of change and are willing to risk the unknown with a hope of a better future.

What is also interesting is how the pollsters and predictors got it so all wrong in 2016. They availed all the new technologies at their disposal like big data and analytics to predict a perfect future, but every time they thought they had nailed it, they were made to realize how disconnected they were from people around them. Over reliance on technology to predict human behavioral outcomes proved how imperfect it is to do so. Yes, over time the algorithms would improve and technology will get more advanced, but one thing won’t change is the imperfectness of the human nature and its ability to think and act outside the norm. This imperfection is the beauty of being human and 2016 showed how much it matters to us as a human race.

2016 also proved to be a year where globalization is beginning to be eclipsed by localization. Societies have started moving away from openness to more guarded closeness. Borders are beginning to be tightened, immigration is becoming harder and governments have started focusing more inwards than outwards.

On the technology front, 2016 turned out to be an iconic year. The year saw an advent of technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, IoT, Machine Learning and Intelligent Automation that are likely to revolutionize industrial functions in the years to come.

So as we close on 2016 and prepare to usher in 2017, Lets get prepared to realize the impacts of the imperfect outcomes of 2016. Future needs to remain imperfect as a perfect world will be a boring place to be and lets hope 2017 turns out to be yet another imperfect year.