Reflections from CES 2017

While jetting to Las Vegas right after the holidays for CES can be exhausting, it can also be really invigorating. It sets the tone for innovation. It motivates you to think bigger for your 2017 plans. It showcases a future that seems dazzling with real implications that can take into effect sooner than you may realize.

With this in mind, here are a few trends that really caught my eye—and my imagination—from this year’s CES.

CES has become a full fledged Auto Show and Drones more sophisticated

Not a big surprise here that autonomous vehicles were huge this year, but it was still incredible to see how more and more automakers are jumping in.  

There was a laundry list of new announcements by major automotive players, some from those you would expect like Ford and Faraday, but also from others that are upping their game like Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai, and VW in what has become a connected car arms race.

Autonomous vehicles are quickly becoming less of a Flintstones-like quirky future trend, and much, much more like something that will become part of our mainstream society.  Luxury brands like Mercedes, Audi, Volvo and BMW are making great strides in joining the ranks of Tesla both in electrification and self-driving technology.

Connected vehicles dominated the floor and the event felt like an actual car show at times. Vehicles are transforming into entertainment systems that can do everything from read your vitals to make recommendations on music and routes based on the mood it thinks you are in.

Honda’s concept NeuV car, for example, “will learn from the driver by detecting the emotions behind the driver’s judgements and then, based on the driver’s past decisions, make new choices and recommendations.”

Fascinating implications abound. As cars are rethought of as entertainment vehicles, the car design will morph. As will the concept of the car itself. No longer will the car be thought of only as a vehicle to drive, but as an entertainment system, even as a way to generate money for the drivers, for example, by giving self-driving rides or selling energy during the 96% of time cars just sit in garages. Imagine the incredible implications for the consumer mindset as how people fundamentally imagine a car changes?

Drone technology gets better every year.  This year was no exception, from better battery life to newer designs.  What stood out was a human carrier drone (yes, resembling a vehicle that would transport George Jetson around) an underwater drone that can guarantee that you will catch fish (more effective than a connected fishing rod?) and of course, the selfie drone which is like having your own Go-Pro paparazzi follow you around.  Here are my snaps of these gadgets:

2. Everything is IoT

There is no such thing as IoT anymore. All of your things are connected, and soon so will be your clothes as the cost to imbed a smart sensor into your undergarments is approaching pennies.  

At CES, and in the future, everything will be connected. It’s no longer a separate industry. It is now omnipresent, from using your L’Oreal’s smart hairbrush in front of your connected mirror while wearing your smart sneakers.  Like me, you may be asking why these devices need to be connected, but solving a problem is no longer the driving factor -- the new reality is--it exists, therefore it is connected.  

3. Any Tech Lists Needs to Include VR and the strides being made by AR

No new news that VR in the gaming and entertainment industries make sense. Consumers buy this. In fact, 77% are willing to purchase VR equipment already. But the interesting ideas come in the industries that aren’t so obvious, where VR and AR can actually make huge impacts. Think about medicine and education, for example.

Right now advances in medtech are pretty incredible and VR/AR will continue to push this forward. Already VR is making real changes in the patient experience and how surgeons are optimizing how they practice and teach surgery, with life saving results.

What I began to think about at CES is how enterprises could use VR/AR for their own benefit to engage and train employees. For example, imagine an enterprise where employees could learn how to sell by putting them in different sales scenarios with VR/AR. Imagine how much better prepared they would be when they entered the “real world”?  Skills that may take a week of training can now be achieved in days as users can jump in and begin applying the learning by doing.    

Despite the false start with Google Glass several years ago, expect AR to make a very strong push over the coming years as both costs on hardware come down and users continue to complain of the nausea and claustrophobia of wearing VR headsets.  AR allows users to experience “mixed reality” which layers the virtual on top of the real world.  Having tried Hololens while visiting Microsoft HQ, I was really struck by how useful it could be in an enterprise environment and I’m really looking forward to the prospect of more mixed reality applications in our near future.

5. AI

Many called Alexa the CES winner. Artificial Intelligence was on top of every mind this year. The pace of AI development right now is increasingly exponential. Alexa stood out to the point, as Shelly Palmer noted, “‘and it works with Alexa’ was the running gag at CES.” Practically anything can be connected to Alexa, and because of this, it has the potential to “deliver on the concept of the ‘grand unified smart home universe.’”

Techcrunch summed it up well, “Amazon moved very early to make sure Alexa was open and available to all hardware and software makers who wanted to join in, and it helped make that an appealing proposition with a basic feature set and Echo hardware that endeared the assistant to users right from the start.  CES just showed the beginning of the maturation of those efforts, and 2017 will likely see a lot more progress in that regard.”

A few years back, Amazon was the butt of many jokes upon releasing Alexa, but it is now THE platform driving a fundamental shift in how we think about consumer engagement---who is laughing now?  Jeff Bezos.  For those of you sitting on the sidelines, waiting to see if voice powered assistants will become a thing, CES 2017 clearly showed it is time to get off the couch and into the game.     

The challenge? How to apply the explosion of new technologies and consumer trends to your business strategy.  

If your organization is engaging in new digital product development, you must at least dedicate a percentage of your budget to develop a sandbox to test these new concepts out.  Don’t expect such POC’s (proof of concepts) to monetize in the short term, but in the medium to long term, the knowledge gained will be an invaluable investment to position your company in the right place when these technologies get traction and eventual widespread adoption.  It is pretty clear that the connected car, drones and AI either alone or taken together are not a fad, but here to stay.  

Were you at CES 2017? What was the trend or technology you noticed that will have big implications for consumers?

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