The "New Normal" for the next decade

With the onset of 2020, our life changed, and so did for many people worldwide. No one was spared of this change, be it a customer, company, government or Security establishments.

Suddenly for everyone the rules of the game changed, a game that we call life. Suddenly all of us were forced to work from home and no one went to work for the first few months. Lockdown started to gain momentum in some parts of the world, for many this was a joke!

All of a sudden it felt like being on a deathbed and having a realization of how much we could have achieved personally or professionally before the lockdown. But no one messes with time, it doesn't give you a second chance, only thing you get is a realization and a chance at getting better personally and professionally while surviving and adapting to the change and being flexible and agile towards the new normal a.k.a post-covid era.

WFH as a concept was once only for the elite set of people in any organization and commonly in Technology industry, but that as a concept suddenly changed. Almost most of the business which can run from anywhere has been able to operate with "WFH Model" albeit little slow, but things have started to catch up and many are surprised at this change. Once when the IT and Technology teams enforced this as a concept to other teams, there was a lot of resistance both from the users and organizational leaderships, but clearly everyone is now able to accept the reality. Earlier WFH was a mere a small percentage pre-covid-era and post covid this number was almost more than anyone can imagine. For many this was a new way of working, for many this was blurring the line between work and home, for some it was a time to be comfortable and be more productive and for some, this was just another excuse of lower productivity.

Many months into this pandemic, we see a lot of companies are taking it easy and not rushing into working from office. Asking their employees to work comfortably from home, offering many ways to make work from home more comfortable and also increase the productivity. There has been a good increase in the engagement with the employees remotely, once when this was too less with even physical engagements.

What does this mean for the next decade? How will things change for us?

Next decade will bring more such disruptive technologies and business models;

• 5G - This will change the way we consume data, more penetration in rural areas, new business models, more work from anywhere.
• Startups - The future will be all about startup ecosystem and how efficiently it will change the overall Consumer experience, be it food, healthcare or entertainment. We will see more investment in this area, more opportunities and more unicorns in coming years. More and more startup's will go the IPO route.
• eCommerce - In 2010, you had no options to buy food,groceries or medicines online. But today it's a reality, most of us order these things online. The next decade will be promising, you will be able to buy everything online.
• Space - More space exploration, more missions to Moon, Mars and further. Satellite broadband will be new reality in next 5 years, this will also give more coverage for remote areas. Let's keep an eye on Isro, SpaceX and Blue Origin.
• E-mobility - This will gain more adoption and in coming years, this will make more economical and environmental sense vs the traditional fuel based options. No competition to Tesla yet.
• Transport - Driverless cars, new ways of transport like Hyperloop, new ways of inter-connect highways made by Boring company.
• NeuroScience - We will see more and more devices being built which will be implanted to our brains and which will allow people with certain medical conditions to function like a normal person, use exoskeleton and move around freely. Something similar to Nuralink will be a reality.
• Edtech - This will change the overall education model. More and more people will prefer online mode of learning.
• FinTech - This will be a tough competition for traditional Financial models. A lots has changed in last 5 years, the next 10 years will be exciting and challenging for Financial Industry. Some of the known Financial brands will cease to exist. Zerodha and Kuvera will change the way we invest.
• BlockChain - This will be part of everything. Computing, Financials, Applications, everything will run on Blockchain. Not to mention cryptocurrency will become more mainstream and will be accepted by all businesses. Institutional Investment firms have already started to invest in Bitcoin. Bitcoin, Ripple, EOS and Etherium will rule the cryptocurrency markets.

What do you think the next decade will bring?