My Optimistic Predictions for 2022

Like so many during the pandemic, I’ve had to change my habits – from the way I shop, how I keep active outside of a gym, and even how I meet with my doctor.?We’ve all had to adopt, what were once emerging apps like Uber Eats or Instacart are now part of our everyday. The pandemic has simply accelerated digitalization and the onset of industry 5.0. It’s also highlighted gaps in our supply chain, the rise in cybercrime, and a wave of resignations amid burnouts.

While the year ahead may be filled with uncertainty, with the arrival of the metaverse, more flexible supply chains and blockchain-based non-fungible tokens for digital transactions, it's also filled with possibility and opportunity.

Here are my top 10 predictions for 2022:

Prediction #1 - The “digital-first”, work-from-anywhere office model will accelerate, driven by fast-evolving collaboration tools.

Many organizations have delayed their back-to-office plans (again) due to the Omicron variant, solidifying the need for business agility, distributed workforces, and hybrid workplaces. With the promise of competitive advantage now augmented by a new appreciation of the risks posed by crises, executives will prioritize enterprise agility over the next two years, particularly with IoT, cloud and mobility investments, to weather any future storms.

We’ve seen rapid development in collaboration tools that have allowed us to increase productivity. Many of the tools we started using at the start of the pandemic like Microsoft Teams and Zoom will continue to evolve incorporating more AI-enabled features to monitor our mental health and fun experiences forcing us to take breaks and help us move towards a hybrid work environment this year.

Hybrid work advancements will happen outside of the conference room, too. Companies will also need to consider their investments in intangible infrastructure such as cloud-based storage, productivity monitoring solutions and tangible infrastructure such as collaboration locations to support employees in the absence of primary physical location. ?The extended reality workspace—which could include augmented reality, virtual reality, or mixed reality—will gain traction, allowing one to seamlessly bring teams into one's workspace, sharing the same view of multiple applications at once. ??We'll also start to see a shift from central decision-making to peer-to-peer, network-based decisions.

Prediction #2 - The YOLO economy will take us from the Great Resignation to the Great Retention.

If you don’t know what YOLO means, just ask any Millennial or Gen Z’er.??People of all ages are reconsidering what matters most in life, ultimately causing the workforce to shift. But rather than merely a 'Great Resignation' in which people quit and walk away, the current disruption is seeing a large number of employees move around the job market. Workers aren't just leaving the workforce; they're reconfiguring their careers. In 2022, the great reshuffle will force companies to align purpose with the values of their employees to retain talent.?A digital-first work will break the 9-to-5 model, with more companies rethinking when, not just where, work happens. We can expect to see more holistic changes in how people live and the emergence of the YOLO (You Only Live Once) economy.

A recent Ipsos?survey?conducted for Randstad reveals that 43% of workers are likely to look for a new job in the upcoming year. Some will leverage the current hiring crisis to find a better position; others will work for themselves. Many more, however, will shift into new industries and careers that offer higher wages or align more with their values. Organizations that give employees what they most want — flexibility, autonomy, and choice about where they work, when they work and how they work — will be the most effective at attracting and retaining top talent.

Prediction #3 - Getting to Net Zero emissions will require innovation to help us shift from sustainability to re-generation.??

The phrase ‘you should leave a place better than how you found it’, is something I heard often growing but sadly we are doing the exact opposite.?Our plant is 4.6 billion years old. Let’s scale that to 46 years. We have been here for 4 hours. Our industrial revolution began one minute ago, and, in that time, we have destroyed 50% of the world’s forests. This is not only not sustainable, but we also need to start executing towards regeneration now before it’s too late.?

This year we'll see increased investment in technologies to accelerate the transition to net-zero, as well as the development of greener products. Software vendors will build solutions to help enterprises understand their carbon footprint and sustainability efforts better. As new players enter into this space there will be increased demand for sustainability-related services powered by edge computing and the Internet of Things (IoT) for energy efficiency and resource management.

Social factors have gained greater attention over the past year as COVID-19 forced working and living practices to change, highlighting the social issues that were already there. It may be an indication that the "S" will follow in the path of the "E" in ESG, garnering more attention in the future from investors and governments alike. In 2022, organizations will place their social-innovation focus into products, services, programs, employee initiatives, and partnerships.

With challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, water pollution, and others, we need to do our best to replenish and rejuvenate the planet to make up for our past transgressions, if we want a healthy and prosperous environment to inhabit for generations to come. We cannot simply sustain, we must regenerate. It’s a step further than sustainability, striving not only to prevent harm, but to restore and regenerate what has been lost.

Prediction #4 - Ed-Tech will help us future-proof our careers, moving from traditional job crafting to upskilling and on to micro-credentialing.

Micro-credentials are growing in popularity worldwide. Countries are already investing in micro-credentials within the education sector. This will become increasingly important as people look to upskill or reskill to address gaps in their learning and future-proof their careers for industry 5.0 where humans and machines work together. “Job crafting” will allow individuals to reshape their current jobs into the roles they want and will allow employees to enhance their skills and can serve as a path to purpose.?

We'll continue to see a shift away from the formal degree and diploma credentials as employers look instead at skills, competencies, and a commitment to lifelong learning. Post-secondary institutions will increasingly offer micro-credentials to address gaps in transferrable and technical skills, and many will partner with industry or community organizations to do so. Ed-Tech will drive a transformation in learning at all levels and ages.

Prediction #5 - Advanced cyber threats using deepfake technology and automation will compromise cloud, crypto, autonomous devices, and supply chains - driving ransomware-as-a-service.

?As companies sort out back-to-office and hybrid work arrangements, supply chain re-routing, digitalization of apps, and pandemic staff shortages, they have created “configuration drift” – a window for error exposing security gaps and an opportunity for bad actors to access our company data vaults but what is next is far more insidious – it will be our space, cloud, and even autonomous vehicles.?Similarly, the recent surge in downloads of chat and video-conferencing platforms is prompting cyber attackers to channel their energies into identifying vulnerabilities that will enable cyber espionage.

In 2022, there will be an increase in the number and size of data breaches.?After a dip in recent years, ransomware attacks have come roaring back.?These breaches have the potential to cost companies and governments more to recover ransom demands. Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) will continue to be a high-impact high-frequency event in 2022.

This year, appointing a chief trust officer will become a necessity. As cybersecurity becomes (and remains) top of mind for boards, expect to see board-level cybersecurity committees and stricter oversight and scrutiny—which will require a new approach to board reporting. Companies will also adopt cross-technology platforms and ecosystems to unify security capabilities for enhanced threat detection and incident response.

Prediction #6?- Health-Tech and bio-hacking tools will shift our wellness mindset from reactive to proactive.?

With retirement coming up and COVID-induced inflation seeping in, boomers have a lot to deal with during their golden years. But a desire to age at home is a key emerging trend—and undoubtedly a driver behind the launch of new technologies and subscription services designed to help caregivers and loved ones keep seniors active and reachable at home. Wellness technologies will grow exponentially as people focus on the longevity of their health with age tech solutions. New technologies such as Camino Robotics?who is creating “e-rollators,” or smart walkers to help people walk over slopes, automatically brake when going downhill and fold into “compact mode” for navigating tight spaces or the Oura ring that monitors our sleep trends to help optimize sleep quality or the Calm app that helps with mediation and mental resilience these technologies will all help shift us to from being reactive with our healthcare to proactive. Wellness has become measurable, opening the door to an entirely new scenario of Wellbeing-as-a-Service (WaaS).

The arrival of Age Tech will emerge as a potential solution to support the anticipated longevity economy. As this movement coalesces and gathers force over the coming year, Big Tech and a constellation of other companies will align to provide aging-in-place and life-change solutions.

Prediction #7 - With the rise of Ethics as a Service (EaaS), companies will invest in AI ethicists to accelerate automation adoption.

Last year, there were a range of new AI regulations proposed worldwide. These regulations covered several start-ups offering AI governance products and Ethics as a Service (EaaS) providers. Companies that are developing AI will increasingly spin-up their own EaaS offerings within their professional service organizations.

We will see a race to hire AI ethicists to become compliant with the new regulations, to ensure the algorithms we’re developing don’t carry unwanted bias and are producing intended outcomes which will make AI ethicists in even greater demand than AI developers. The digital divide that excludes many developing nations from online micro-credentialing to wealth creation with online bitcoin investing will shrink.?As technology and internet access expand globally, the gap will shrink. ?

Artificial intelligence will continue to change the way we work and live in 2022 as enterprises move beyond pilots and start using AI in their enterprise applications. Automation technologies will mature as developers merge and standardize engineering approaches and as technologies like AI and machine vision intersect to unlock a new wave of capability and efficiency. We'll also see more creativity and innovation emerge from the industrial robotics space in the coming year.

Prediction #8 - The supply chain crisis will worsen, but digital twins will save the day.

Companies struggling with the collapse of just-in-time shipping are finding it hard to maintain balance between efficiency and resilience and supply chain disruptions will continue to wreak havoc in 2022—causing shipping delays and abrupt price increases. Resilience will be a major priority this year.?Brexit, the U.S.-China trade war, a general geopolitical trend toward nationalization and the COVID-19 pandemic have changed the priorities of many supply chain leaders, who now need to balance cost and operational efficiency with greater supply chain resilience.

The supply chain is on the verge of a revolution, with businesses placing less emphasis on cutting costs and more on building the capacity and resilience to weather disruption. This will likely mean companies bringing their operations closer to home. We’re also going to see more companies investing in ‘smart factories,’ with an emphasis on automation, cloud platforms and other enabling technologies – it’s globalization in reverse.

Though the supply chain crisis will worsen this year, many companies will turn to a new generation of AI-powered simulations called digital twins that predict disruptions and provide recommendations for getting around those issues. The transformation via digital twins —will emerge as a viable solution. According to?Gartner, 50% of supply chain organizations will invest in applications that support AI and advanced analytics through 2024 to help them understand what's happening now—and what's likely to happen in the future.

Prediction #9 - Web 3.0 will start to bring digital ownership and payments to the forefront on our path to the Metaverse.?

While the futuristic vision of the metaverse may seem far-fetched, the transformation taking shape is just as exciting. The internet is in the midst of an evolution from Web 2.0 (sharing economy) with firmly established “leaders” to Web 3.0 (creator economy). In framing the next wave of computing (Web 3.0), we see the potential for dramatic shifts decentralizing industry structure.?The metaverse sits at the intersection of the web 3.0, augmented reality and the blockchain and appears to be de-centralized.

We already live in a 'phygital' world that merges our physical and virtual environments, such as hybrid workplaces. This year we'll see progress made on the metaverse—a convergence of our physical and digital lives brought on by advancements in internet connectivity, blockchain and AR/VR—that will further blur these boundaries.?Globally, companies will start to develop use-cases of Metaverse / 3.0 which will lead to “digital first" experiences where digital is for everyone, where physical becomes a "premium product".

Prediction #10 - NFT (non-fungible tokens) will give birth to a 'creator economy' accelerating the transition from scarcity to abundance.

Last year the artist Beeple sold an electronic piece of art for over $69 million and Jack Dorsey (founder of Twitter and Square sold his first tweet ever as an NFT for over $3 million.

The emergence of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) a —unique blockchain-based digital assets—changing the way we understand digital transactions and stores of value. While the demand for NFTs has exploded over the past two years, it shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon.

We are now seeing the distribution of individual creativity at unprecedented scale. Under this new model, no single entity holds absolute control. Creators are looking into ways of utilizing NFTs to share unique, paid experiences and to engage. In the crypto economy NFT will give the largest brands to smallest creator.?

NFTs will provide creators with security and ownership rights. It will give birth to a ‘creator economy’ an escape from centralized corporations where creators will be able to monetize their passions and grow their brands, just imagine a person from a village in Africa being able to accelerate their passions into fortunes and so much more.

In 2022, the NFT market will see large investments from companies, funds, exchanges, and traditional venture capital firms, from both crypto and the tech sector, as well as launches of new NFT platforms. But the industry will also have to deal with roadblocks, such as lack of regulation that makes NFTs vulnerable to copyright theft, unauthorized replication, and fraud, as well as protocol and platform risks.?

Looking ahead

While many anticipated a return to the office—and a return to some normalcy—in 2022, Omicron has thrown us another curveball. But despite the challenges and uncertainties that lie ahead, there's hope on the horizon. We're coming up with new technologies and innovative solutions to address these issues and become a more sustainable, inclusive, and purpose-driven society.

I look forward to what 2022 has in store and how these predictions play out over the coming year.

Armughan Ahmad