We may not be living on Mars or traveling to work using jet packs, but there’s no doubt the coming decade will bring many exciting technological advances. In this article, I want to outline the 25 key technology trends that I believe will shape the 2020s.
Continue reading… “25 technology trends will define the next decade”
Three predictions for what the future might look like
In march, tens of millions of American workers—mostly in white-collar industries such as tech, finance, and media—were thrust into a sudden, chaotic experiment in working from home. Four months later, the experiment isn’t close to ending. For many, the test run is looking more like the long run.
Google announced in July that its roughly 200,000 employees will continue to work from home until at least next summer. Mark Zuckerberg has said he expects half of Facebook’s workforce to be remote within the decade. Twitter has told staff they can stay home permanently.
With corporate giants welcoming far-flung workforces, real-estate markets in the superstar cities that combine high-paid work and high-cost housing are in turmoil. In the San Francisco Bay Area, rents are tumbling. In New York City, offices are still empty; so many well-heeled families with second homes have abandoned Manhattan that it’s causing headaches for the census.
You live where you work is a truism as ancient as grain farming; which means it’s as ancient as the city itself. But the internet specializes in disentangling the bundles of previous centuries, whether it’s cable TV, the local newspaper, or the department store. Now, with the pandemic shuttering the face-to-face economy, it seems poised to weaken the spatial relationship between work and home.
When the pandemic is over, one in six workers is projected to continue working from home or co-working at least two days a week, according to a recent survey by economists at Harvard Business School. Another survey of hiring managers by the global freelancing platform Upwork found that one-fifth of the workforce could be entirely remote after the pandemic.
Continue reading… “The workforce is about to change dramatically”
Since the pandemic began, the fashion industry has taken a hit. Retail giants have filed for bankruptcy, independent brands have closed, and brick-and-mortar stores, if they haven’t shut their doors, are still financially recovering from the months they were forced to stay closed during the lockdown. One of the few areas that has seen growth during this time, though, is the resale industry.
Online consignment platforms and secondhand retailers had already been seeing promising signs in the last few years. According to thredUP’s 2020 Resale Report, resale grew 25 times faster than retail in 2019, with 62M women buying secondhand products in 2019, compared to 56M in 2018 and 44M in 2017. The pandemic did not slow this growth.
Continue reading… “Resale is thriving in the pandemic”
The coronavirus pandemic has had a profound impact on the global jobs market, according to data compiled by LinkedIn, with the economic crisis forcing businesses to cut jobs and slow hiring in most areas.
A report from the United Nations’ International Labour Organization has estimated that the number of working hours lost in the second quarter of 2020 is expected to be the equivalent of 400 million full-time jobs.
It means seeking out positions that are in-demand from employers and re-training accordingly are among some of the potential solutions to gaining an edge in this competitive jobs climate.
In the U.K., for example, LinkedIn said that the jobs market is currently three times more competitive when compared to the same period last year.
Josh Graff, U.K. country manager at LinkedIn, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” that Britain is facing the “toughest labor market in a generation” as a result of the economic fallout from Covid-19.
The use of technology in education has become a lifeline during the COVID-19 pandemic. As students return to the classroom, school systems must carefully consider the longer-term role of technology.
The promise of technology in the classroom is great: enabling personalized, mastery-based learning; saving teacher time; and equipping students with the digital skills they will need for 21st-century careers. Indeed, controlled pilot studies have shown meaningful improvements in student outcomes through personalized blended learning.1 During this time of school shutdowns and remote learning, education technology has become a lifeline for the continuation of learning.
As school systems begin to prepare for a return to the classroom, many are asking whether education technology should play a greater role in student learning beyond the immediate crisis and what that might look like. To help inform the answer to that question, this article analyzes one important data set: the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), published in December 2019 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Continue reading… “New global data reveal education technology’s impact on learning”
Here’s some great news: one of America’s most broken industries is finally being exposed as a sham. And make no mistake, the end of college as we know it is a great thing.
It’s great for families, who’ll save money and take on less debt putting kids through school. It’s great for kids, who’ll no longer be lured into the socialist indoctrination centers that many American campuses have become. And as I’ll show you, it’s great for investors, who stand to make a killing on the companies that’ll disrupt college for good.
But Stephen, how can you be against education?! I love learning, but I hate what college has become. As recently as 1980, you could get a four-year bachelor’s degree at a public school for less than $10,000. These days, it’ll cost you $40,000 at a minimum, $140,000 for a private school, or well over $250,000 for a top school.
College costs have ballooned beyond all reason. They’ve risen even faster than healthcare costs, which is really saying something. Kids are burying themselves in debt—$1.6 trillion at last count—in order to attend college.
When I wrote about this last year, I had little hope things would change anytime soon. Why? It’s a tough sell to convince an 18-year-old kid not to attend the four-year party all his friends are going to, especially when the US government is financing it through student loans.
But a Lightning Bolt of Disruption Just Fried the Business Model of College.
Continue reading… “Why College is never coming back”
Visa released new data on Thursday that found contactless transactions for transit fares increased 187% through the end of June, up from an all-time global low in April. The company now works with more than 500 cities globally to implement or expand contactless payment solutions.
To further engage in this trend, Visa announced a new global partnership agreement with Cubic Transportation Systems to “enable the delivery of next generation fare payments and new mobility solutions to Cubic’s customers based on Visa’s global payment standards and frameworks,” according to a company press release.
Visa also announced a milestone of 150 total partners in its Visa Ready for Transit certification program, up from 100 partners in October 2019. The Visa Ready for Transit program fosters collaboration with fare system solutions providers and consultancies to simplify transit agencies’ implementation of contactless fare systems.
Tech companies will play a crucial role in making the next wave of progress a reality.
The COVID-19 crisis was the catalyst for rapid change and brought with it the opportunity to accelerate towards a brighter future;
A new era that is defined by insights and discoveries that benefit all of society has arrived;
Technology companies will play a crucial role in ensuring this transformation is sustainable, inclusive, and trustworthy.
COVID-19 introduced challenges that we as a society were not ready to address. We are converting to a digital-first world overnight. Becoming fully connected. Ensuring all of our personal data is protected. And taking steps to not leave anyone behind in this new digital economy.
Continue reading… “How COVID-19 ended the Information Era and ushered in the Age of Insight”
Walgreens signed a similar deal with Postmates in April
DoorDash announced that it’s introducing on-demand delivery services from Walgreens to provide “everyday essentials” to your doorstep. Customers in Atlanta, Chicago, and Denver can now order over 2,300 items from the pharmacy chain, including over-the-counter medication, groceries, snacks, and beauty products. DoorDash and Walgreens did not mention whether users can also have their prescription medication delivered, so you’ll probably still need to go to the store for that.
Many workers said they are more motivated to be employed at a company that values its staff during unpredictable times, Robert Half found.
More than half (57%) of workers said they have experienced a change in their sentiments toward work during the coronavirus pandemic, data from Robert Half found. During such unpredictable times, some 60% of that number said they want to be employed at an organization that values its staff.
COVID-19 has thrown a major wrench in both the enterprise and economy, resulting in millions of furloughs and layoffs. More than 44.2 million US employees have filed for unemployment claims since the start of coronavirus shutdowns, according to Fortune. Those lucky enough to still have jobs have still been impacted, reevaluating their current employment during such trying times.
“This has been a time of reflection and reprioritization for businesses and people,” said Paul McDonald, senior executive director of Robert Half, in a press release.
Continue reading… “57% of employees second-guessing careers during COVID-19 pandemic”
A ThredUp warehouse.
KEY POINTS
Despite the coronavirus pandemic upending much of the retail industry and putting a damper on apparel sales, the secondhand clothing market is expected to boom, according to one online resale marketplace.
The secondhand apparel market is valued at about $28 billion today and is forecast to reach $64 billion within five years, ThredUp said in its annual report, which is completed in a partnership with the third-party research firm GlobalData Retail.
It said the resale market grew 25 times faster than the overall retail market last year, with an estimated 64 million people buying secondhand products in 2019.
Striving for a frictionless experience for your customers, employees, suppliers, or other stakeholders isn’t just something that the digital era has enabled you to do. At this point, it’s a requirement.
The businesses that will survive after the pandemic are the ones who give us back our time.
FOR A MINUTE there, at the start of the global lockdown, it seemed to be an open question: Would we all be able to get everything we needed delivered? Three months in, while nobody’s getting two-day deliveries anymore, it does seem as if Amazon alone might be able to provide almost all of us with our commodity needs.
Way back before Jeff Bezos began delivering almost everything to everyone, there was another open question: Was ordering just a few things at a time from Amazon bad for the environment? The answer is a little surprising. While it’s obviously more wasteful and damaging to place several small orders as opposed to fewer larger ones, it’s also obvious that having Amazon deliver everything to everyone is a more sustainable option than going to the store ourselves.
Continue reading… “The future of commerce belongs to the frictionless”
