A view of

The future is easier to envisage by referencing updates to things that already exist. For instance, internet connections will become far faster, more affordable and wider spread, mobile usage will continue to increase, the internet of things will become far more embedded into our lives and so on. When the future involves exploring things that have not yet been invented, it becomes considerably more difficult to understand the impact of them. This is the case with many of the things that I believe are going to create the biggest impact in our lives by 2020. Many of these things are tricky to reference in the context of our daily lives today. However some of the roots from which these changes will grow have however already begun to form. For instance, the awareness of the value of our digital information, the issues around the security of data, the ever-increasing hunger for things becoming easier, faster, more relevant, more available. All these things and more are beginning to link together in the general awareness of the people that use the digital world. There are however, a number of other elements that will potentially have a very significant impact that are less formed and therefore more conceptual right now. This does not mean that they will have less impact though. One of these elements in my opinion is the

What it will Mean to be Understood in 2020by Alex Willcock, Founder and CEO, VisualDNA

concept of better understanding. In itself, it may seem like a very plain idea, after all it has no obvious requirement for improvement, nor does it appear to involve any technology to create a shift. Yet my view of the future sees better understanding as having the potential to create global impact on a scale that will change almost everything that we know about the way things are currently done. History, of course, is a useful reference point, one doesn’t need to look back very far to find a time when you had to visit a local library to reference some specific information rather than simply typing in keywords to a search engine. Yet children of 18 and younger have little or no reference of anything other than this. So too, I believe, will be the experience of children in the future about understanding. Being properly understood for who you are, wherever you go, in whatever way you want to be, will become so engrained into the fabric of our lives that it will become almost impossible to imagine what it would have been like to have existed without it. Let’s look in a bit more detail at how we are understood right now. There are many different facets to this, including; how we understand ourselves, how we are understood by our partners, our family, friends and colleagues, how we are understood by the people

that don’t know us, by the businesses we interact with both digitally and otherwise and by governments as well. The number of people and businesses we are exposed to each year is significant and in almost all cases, most of them attempt to interact with us with little or no knowledge of what we are really like, who we are, what we need, what we want, what our hopes, aspirations and fears are and so on. So what would it be like if all these interactions were fundamentally different? What would it be like if we were understood by everyone that we choose to be and in the way that we determined to be? How might this new world of better understanding change the way we live? Well for me, the implications of these changes are far-reaching and almost infinite. Here are some of the things that I believe we will begin to see happen.

To begin, I would like to reference a well-known model of understanding, ‘people like you’. Businesses like Amazon have been the trailblazers in the world of recommendation, with complex algorithms often delivering very relevant results based on the things that we have bought. What’s interesting of course is that these recommendations are based largely on what we have bought as opposed to who we are. In future, we will be able to transmit the attributes of who we are to who ever we chose and businesses that make recommendations will therefore be able to do so with increasing relevance and accuracy. The implications for this go far beyond recommendation widgets, a whole new way of finding things will emerge and this can be framed by considering the ‘Tribe of People Like You’. Out there, somewhere in the world, are people that share many similar things with you. They may share the same values, the same personality types, the same life experiences, the same life stage, the same interests, the same purpose, the same goals. Whatever the similarities that matter to you, these people exist. It’s just that right now, the way of finding them is quite limited. By 2020, the concept of ‘tribes of people like you’ will be already quite well embedded into many people’s lives and the changes this will bring are significant not only to the way we find things, but to the way businesses model their product development and services. Brands of the future will no longer be modeling themselves around internally created ‘segments’, they will respond to the multitude of ‘tribes’ of like-mindedness that the new models of understanding bring.

Right now, segmentation is the fodder of business, of product people and marketing and advertising executives all scrambling to decipher the attitudes, motivations, aspirations, needs and wants of their ‘target’ audiences. However, this will become the stuff of the past, relegated to the museum of misunderstanding. In future, we will all become far more aware of the way in which we are understood to the point that understanding will become crowd-sourced. We will create the crowds, the ‘tribes of us’. We will each be able to be who we are in the way we want to be and people that are like us will be able to form virtually around us. These ‘tribes of people like you’ will be forever changing in shape and size and moulding around us to fit the contours of the way we want to be. We will be members of multiple tribes; music tribes, current affairs tribes, style tribes - the list will be limited by nothing but our own interests and way of life. The impact that this breadth of better understanding will have on our daily lives is of course vast and any attempt to cover this here will be small in comparison. I’d like to finish this look into 2020 by exploring the impact on the way that we journey through life itself. The journey of our lives is a well known phrase, but when you think about it, where is the map and where are we on it right now? In future, I believe that all of us will become the cartographers for the map of life. We will all constantly contribute to a massive map of understanding that will enable others like us to find their way more easily and to see the context of their current and

past experiences in a much more balanced way. Shared experiences, shared knowledge, shared understanding, will all come together to create a world where each of us understands ourselves better by understanding those around us in a more complete way. Who knows what may eventually become of this new understanding, but for sure, in my view of things, we will look back at now and marvel at how we ever managed without it.

On the 27th June 2014 The Economist ran an article1 on ‘Who Owns Your Personal Data? The Incorporated Woman’. The article describes how Jennifer Lyn Morone is taking on the corporations that make a living from harvesting personal data. To regain some ownership and control of her Identity, she has become JLM Inc in an experiment to establish the value of an individual in a data-driven economy.

The concept of consumers’ controlling their identity is not new and the first real attempt in the UK at enabling consumers to control their data was back in 2000. Following the eSignature directive from the European Commission the UK government implemented a policy stating that consumers and businesses could prove their identity and data to accredited private sector organisations, which would in turn issue digital certificates for use for secure access to online public and private sector services. Digital certificates were successful in many ways as they were highly secure, but the policy ultimately failed with no more than 10,000 issued.

There was much discussion of the reasons for failure such as the costs and liability, but the overriding factor came down to human behaviour and the need for convenience. It was understood, back in 2000 that this natural human desire would mean that people would

Consumers in Control in 2020by Jim Purves, Chief Operating Officer, VisualDNA

give away their security, privacy, identity and data in order to access online services in the most convenient way possible. To this day, this has been the bedrock of the data driven economy that has propelled the powerhouses of Facebook, Twitter, Google etc.

Over the last 14 years there have been many attempts at solving the identity problem on the internet and there is an overwhelming recognition that there is a problem that needs to be solved, but an ingrained inertia exists due to the value of the status quo to large data centric corporations. A brief history of the core identity activities are as follows:

In 1999, Microsoft delivered Passport which was the first attempt at an identity infrastructure. This failed as consumers did not like Microsoft being in the middle of all their online transactions.

In 2001, the Liberty Alliance was formed by approximately 30 organizations to establish open standards, guidelines and best practices for identity management as a reaction to Microsoft Passport.

In 2005 Kim Cameron, ‘The Father of Identity’, created the ‘Laws of Identity’ through collaboration in the blogosphere and achieved global recognition. The Internet Identity Workshop was started and has

been finding, probing and solving identity problems twice every year since. OpenID, a simple standard for federated identity, was launched.

In 2006 Microsoft released the Information Cards standards and their product CardSpace to align with the Laws of Identity.

In 2008 the Information Card Foundation (ICF) and The OpenID Foundation (OIDF) were formed.

In 2010 Sir James Crosby issued a report for the UK Treasury, ‘Identity is the New Money’ which contributed to the demise of the UK National ID Card.

In 2011 The Obama Administration signed the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in CyberSpace (NSTIC) to improve the privacy, security and convenience of sensitive online transactions through collaborative efforts with the private sector. Also in this year the Open Identity Exchange (OIX) was formed from the ICF and the OIDF to address the increasing challenges of building trust in online identity. Board members include Google, Microsoft, Verizon, Paypal and Experian

In 2012 the UK Government Cabinet Office set up the Government Digital Service and the Identity Assurance program to enable trust in identity and data provided by private sector organisations. The Cabinet Office joined the OIX as a board member. The European Commission published a new draft of data protection regulation placing privacy, transparency and consumer control as core objectives.

In 2014 the European Commision is planning to approve the new data protection regulation, enshrining it in law. The lobbying has been significant since the draft publication was issued in 2012 and many compromises have been made. However, the area where it is believed that there will be no compromise is in the consumer control of data and the transparency required. Companies that operate anywhere on the planet, that have data associated with EU citizens or businesses, will be governed by this law by Dec 2016. In May of 2014 the US Federal Trade Commission published a report2 on ‘Data Brokers - A call for Transparency and Accountability’ based on a fundamental lack of transparency about data broker industry practices. The report states that ‘The Commission unanimously renews its call for Congress to consider enacting legislation that would enable consumers to learn of the existence and activities of data brokers and provide consumers with reasonable access to information about them held by these entities.’ Also in 2014, Microsoft will be bring to market their 3rd attempt to create an identity infrastructure for the internet, 15 years after they introduced Microsoft Passport. The key premise of their system is that the user will be in control and be able to select their identity provider and claims providers in a transparent and privacy-preserving way. This is being delivered at internet scale, using widely accepted open standards, and will be rolled out across the Microsoft cloud computing platform worldwide. The business rules and legal agreements will be governed by Trust Frameworks managed by the OIX.

All the work that has been done over the last decade and more has consistently pointed towards building

1. http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2014/06/who-owns-your-personal-data

2. http://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/reports/data-brokers-call-transparency-accountability-report-federal-trade-commission-may-2014/140527databrokerreport.pdf

an identity ecosystem for the internet, which includes the legal frameworks and core infrastructure, that enables the ‘User’ to be in control of their identity and their data. Security models are changing from being highly obtrusive to the user to risk based models which operate in the background and reduce the friction of using online services.

The identity ecosystem for the internet will transform the data driven economy from one where the dominant principle has been to conceal the value of information from its users to a sustainable model that has fair value exchange between all parties.

JLM Inc, an interesting experiment in 2014, will continue to contribute to the ongoing groundswell of consumer awareness of the value of their data. By 2020, the understanding of this value will be mainstream and consumers will be benefiting from control in ways we cannot yet imagine and also be amazed at their naivety of the past.

Predicting the future is by definition bound with uncertainty. People look for past trends and try to linearly extrapolate these trends into the future. Technology, however, has been on an exponential growth path over the last five decades and has brought with it disruptive innovation faster and in more areas than anyone - bar some technology futurists - could predict. Technology is also subject to black swans - fundamental and difficult to predict paradigm shifts that enable emergence of new types of businesses and products and fundamentally alter the world of technology. With these caveats in mind, let’s look at the core technology drivers over the next six years.

First is Moore’s law, which has held true for almost 50 years. Simply put, it states that as a result of innovation in low-level chip technology, computational power doubles every 18 months. This means we have faster computers, but as a corollary, hardware can be manufactured cheaper, made more energy efficient and can store more data in a smaller physical space. Over the next six years we expect a 16-fold increase in computational power - and that’s discounting disruptive technologies such as quantum computing, which can have an even more significant impact. All of this means that storing and processing very large data sets will become cheaper and the

value of Big Data will be fully utilised, leading to more intelligent computer interactions with humans and the emergence of Artificial Intelligence.

The second driver is innovation in battery technology that enables new devices, wearables, implants, sensors and robotics. We can expect fundamental shifts in battery technology, energy transfer and storage that will enable unexpected devices and device use cases.

Thirdly, the open source movement and PaaS (Platform as a Service) providers are decreasing the cost of infrastructure required to process vast amounts of data to the point where it becomes affordable for small startups or even individuals. What cost tens of millions of dollars and took years to build a decade ago, will cost a few dollars to launch and run on Amazon Web Services right now - and is available to anyone, anywhere, without any upfront investment.

Next we have the core business drivers online, which is eCommerce (in its broad sense) and its auxiliary industries, such as advertising and others. These are likely to continue being the main drivers of money into the online ecosystem, with an increasing proportion of business and consumer budgets being transacted online.

2020: The state of the Internetby Tomas Cervenka, Chief Technical Officer, VisualDNA

Lastly, we have government regulation and strategic moves by key players (Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) that add uncertainty and can radically influence the state of the ecosystem.

These drivers will shape the technology landscape and online ecosystem and with a varying level of confidence we can predict their impact over the next six years. To start with, close-to-perfect penetration of internet and omni-presence of internet connection will bring the absolute majority of the world’s population online. It won’t just be the humans though - all the sensors are joining the internet, leading to massively increased data volumes and value being extractable from this linked data asset. The combination of Big Data analytics, improved Human-Computer interaction, Artificial Intelligence, constant internet connectivity and new devices will create a seamless experience for end users. All user data will be stored in the cloud, accessible from any device, anywhere, always in sync. Devices will start to use more intuitive interfaces, including retinal displays and massively improved voice control - and potentially go as far as thought controlled interfaces.

As a result of this explosion of data and data mining, even mainstream consumers will start getting increasingly aware and concerned about data control and privacy. They will call for better safeguarding, privacy and will claim their online digital personas. As the internet joins the core of our lives, identity management and control becomes a big issue and will be solved by collaboration between businesses and governments. This makes the internet more trustworthy, but makes everyone online personally

identifiable and with perfect tracking and unlimited storage, which creates opportunities for abuse by governments or large corporations. Governments, in an attempt to increase control over the internet economy, could pass legislation that fragments the internet on a national level, or even causes an emergence of an underground, anonymous internet based on strong cryptography. In fact, this is already happening.

As a business driver, eCommerce continues to be the dominant force, but the relationship will change from ‘push’ to ‘pull’. Consumers will no longer be blasted with advertising and offers, but will dominate the relationship with businesses and will choose who gets to talk to them, how and when. They will also be able to broadcast their intent to their trusted businesses and expect a tailored offer to fulfil their intent. We will see a significant growth in the sharing economy as consumers lose interest in ownership of things and sharing becomes a trusted and convenient alternative to ownership. This trend can be seen in car sharing schemes, hotel / apartment booking and will include many more activities and physical items.

The role of VisualDNA in this ever-changing ecosystem is going to be significant. VisualDNA will power and enable valuable and actionable analytics for online businesses - with its unique data. We will provide businesses with tools and data to facilitate deeper understanding of their customer base (and their prospective customers), which will help businesses optimise their interaction with their customers and build seamless, intelligent and ongoing customer experiences. We will help

businesses understand the value of each individual customer or prospective customer.

VisualDNA is also going to have a trusted relationship with the end users, to help them understand their online data footprint, secure it and control who they share it with. This will enable VisualDNA to power the intention economy, enabling users to broadcast their intent and for trusted businesses to bid on the intent with personalised offerings. On top of this, users will be able to understand their affinity to other users and their experiences, helping them with making purchase decisions and adding trust to the sharing economy.

To conclude, many predictions are based on existing and emerging trends and rational expectations of market movements. While there are some predictable trends (such as internet penetration), there are a lot of key inflection points, the timings of which is unpredictable and open to anyone’s guess. At VisualDNA we want to be positioned at the forefront of the industry, such that when the inflection points do occur, we are in the right spot and can capitalise on the opportunity. We believe that we are making big and bold steps towards this future.

VisualDNA will develop its opportunity as a result of key trends that have their foundations in the existing digital environment and will grow and increase their impact leading to a significantly different digital environment in 6 years time.

Think back 6 years to 2008, smartphones were just accelerating whilst Facebook and Twitter were early adopter applications rather than the mass market applications they have become. A lot has changed, and the pace of change continues to accelerate so over the next 6 years huge innovation and disruption are also likely.

For consumers and marketers this offers great potential as well as significant threat.

4 key drivers for change are likely to be:

1. Digital everywhere

The increased digitization of our lives will lead to the increased impact of our digital selves in the physical world. Some of the most powerful retailers are already digital businesses, such as Amazon and eBay, others are digital savvy eg Tesco. Whether watches, glasses, other wearables or the internet of things becomes the most popular and impactful

next generation digital adoption there is going to be a battle for consumer spend in the increasingly integrated retail world. This will be based on increased digital understanding of where you are and what you are doing.

Recently we’ve seen retail and other spaces change with Amazon lockers and eBay delivery to Argos stores. The era of digital convenience at point of order mutating to digital inconvenience for delivery will reduce and the consumers’ choice will win. This will be possible thanks to greater consumer understanding.

2. Digital Guardian

Currently people have no one to trust. Consumer brands have not developed positioning enabling them to gain consumer confidence. The banks who we may trust to store our sensitive financial information are a good example of this. They are developing sophisticated dashboards and personal digital offers, whilst regularly appearing in the news for mis-selling products, making poor decisions on small business credit lines and rewarding their own executives lavishly.

So who can people trust to understand them, to look

2020: How Brands and Consumers will Interact with Databy Jim Hodgkins, Managing Director Marketing Services, VisualDNA

after their data and provide them with highly relevant best offers that appeal to them and give them a sense of their own value based on sophisticated data analyses?

Current retargeted offers (ads that follow people around) can be seen as spooky. These and other recommendations are based on prior behavior, translating hindsight into a probability of future action.

That will get more sophisticated, through analyzing the ‘Tribe of People Like You’ and increasingly analyzing your actions across multiple dimensions. This will provide consumer benefit and stress. Imagine setting out to drive to the supermarket to buy £150 of weekly groceries.

Today you may have receive offers to return for a discount, but soon a personal data guardian could proactively find you the best offer for shopping in the next hour or your actions may indicate that is your next activity and you may receive offers automatically.

By 2020 your digital butler may have written your shopping list based on taste preferences, calendar, weather and remaining stock in your fridge, and conducted an auction for supply of that basket for you to approve or amend, enabling delivery at your preferred time.

In many ways consumers will become more empowered as the trends that led to price comparison for services, dynamically priced flights and auctions of items lead to further evolutions in

determining price by value to the buyer and seller at a specific point in time.

The battle will not just be between retail brands, it will be between consumer focused or demand side services, intermediaries and retailers on the supply side. If you add to this increasing consumer appetite for specialty brands such as Nespresso and local deli suppliers that deal direct, the requirement for some intermediation and aggregation becomes compelling.

One key dynamic in this equation is ‘who pays’. Currently, most consumers prefer not to fund the intermediaries like MoneySupermarket, Expedia etc which are all funded by suppliers, that may change as consumers need a service clearly on their side. This may also lead to change in the world of free services such as email, calendars, social networks and apps as existing suppliers of these services overstep privacy, commercialization, tax citizenship and other thresholds or expectations. People may be prepared to pay to opt out of a world of intermediaries with conflicts.

3. Spam vs. trust vs. value trade off

These trends will lead to the likelihood of a proliferation of spam and a concern that as the offers become more precise too many people will know too much about me. A tipping point is likely to occur where forces lead to a change in permissions.

Increased value of well targeted offers due to added advantages for both buyer and seller.

Proliferation of offers indicating detailed knowledge of behavior and preferences leading to stress for consumers.

Discomfort at the volume and range of these offers and the paradox of choice making decision making difficult. Shall I drive 5 miles to get £10 off my shopping or 3 miles to get £5 off ? Is £5 off at Waitrose better value than £15 off at Morrisons?

4. Privacy catastrophes

As more data is pumped around the digital ecosystem there is an increased likelihood of digital catastrophe for consumers. Whilst privacy and data breach violations to date from phone hacking to eBay and Linkedin passwords has been high profile, breaches have not occurred where large volumes of people have lost their wealth, health or another critical asset through data abuse.

Data guardianship, low standards of permission thresholds and the abuse of other privileges which could broadly be termed good citizenship to encompass local laws and payment of taxes, will come under greater examination and the relatively free market for permissions, data transfer and accounting may not persist. Additionally some businesses may get so large as to be subject to much more significant data privacy, anti trust, and monopoly restrictions.

Emerging opportunity

From these developments consumers are likely to choose freely or be forced to change in a way that

empowers them greatly.

An opportunity is likely to emerge to be a consumer friendly voice in the world of big business and VisualDNA believes this will arise from better understanding of people. This will differentiate our services from early stage functional but not appeal to digital data lockers and personal asset stores.

We believe a significant volume of consumers will say ‘enough is enough’ and demand better value in terms of security, time and economic value and opt out of the current ecosystem.

VisualDNA intends to be there offering its services and aggregating those of partners into a secure, relevant, and personalized service which values people for who they are and delivers this value to them as a significant enhancement to their life.

“Generally, disruptive innovations were technologically straightforward, consisting of off-the-shelf components put together in a product architecture that was often simpler than prior approaches. They offered less of what customers in established markets wanted and so could rarely be initially employed there. They offered a different package of attributes valued only in emerging markets remote from, and unimportant to, the mainstream.” Clayton M. Christensen, The innovator’s dilemma: when new technologies cause great firms to fail

“True innovation is coming up with a product that the customer didn’t even know they needed.” J. P. Getty

According to Clayton M Christensen, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, disruptive innovations are characterised by their ability to create entirely new markets, rather than merely update existing markets with new products. They are black swans, rare events where new thinking and changing markets combine to create radical developments.

A common example is the light bulb and Pearl Street Station - a major gamble by Thomas Edison, within years of its development the kerosene lighting

industry was all but non-existent, and the world was a brighter place. (The kerosene industry had similarly put an end to the whaling industry - thankfully - a few decades earlier).

Disruptive innovations also tend to involve making things simpler and cheaper than the alternatives, with unexpected results in multiple sectors. The motor car in the late 1800s was too expensive to be disruptive, but Henry Ford’s innovations in the 20th century made it cheap enough to replace the horse-drawn carriage (and suddenly there were no more street dung collectors providing manure for farmer’s crops…)

VisualDNA sits at the intersection of (at least) four disruptive innovations that have arisen over the last five years and that are already making their impact on global society.

I believe that as these four innovations continue to evolve over the second half of this decade, they will create the perfect conditions for VisualDNA’s unique approach to understanding people to create disruptive change on a global scale, across all industry sectors.

What Makes aDisruptive Technologyby Jake Ronay, Director of Planning, VisualDNA

online, and through our partnerships and research we will continue to be at the forefront of these developments.

3. Digital identity:

We spend more and more time online, and even when not online our mobile devices give continuous information about our location and actions. We have created a new version of our self, a digital extension of our physical and emotional being that is becoming increasingly real and important - and increasingly valuable.

Our digital identity is now a major issue for consumers, pressure groups and governments. An unexpected side-effect of the growth of the internet has seen the data brokerage industry expand enormously. Major scandals about privacy, snooping and data leakage are an almost weekly event. Both the EU and the US are moving towards regulating the data market. For different reasons, and using different methods, Russia and China are also seeking to limit the free flow of data and take ownership of consumers’ digital identity.

By 2020 I believe a major shift will have taken place in the way consumers own and control their online and offline data. A combination of regulation, consumer pressure and new technology will have created a new relationship between consumers and their online identity. Consumers will demand, and governments will enforce, their rights to their digital footprint. With this as a key part of our vision, VisualDNA is already developing the tools to allow consumers to do this and by 2020 we will aim to be the world’s most trusted place for consumers to store, protect and manage their online self.

4. Internet of things:

Another buzzword that has gone from almost unknown to being hugely over-used in under five years. The expansion of measurement and automation across the physical space is becoming

increasingly personal. Wired houses and multiple sensors tracking every car on the road, for instance, are vitally important to the future of our resource consumption. It is human data that will really be significant over the next few years.

68% of data is produced by consumers (according to IDC, 2012). VisualDNA’s ability to understand people will be central to helping businesses and consumers cope with this volume of data, and make sense of it.

By linking personality to personal data such as health, performance or mood, we will be able to show people more about who they are, why they are the way they are and who else is like them, and show businesses how to relate to consumers as individuals rather than as vague macro-level segments.

Big data + psychology + digital identity + internet of things = better understanding ( = a huge opportunity)

VisualDNA’s disruptive potential comes from two main points:

The first is our unique position at the centre of these four areas, and the way that trends in those areas will create the opportunity for our unique technology to be a solution across all these areas.

Our position at this intersection is, I believe, quite unique and represents a huge opportunity to create a new segment not only within the big data market but across any sector where understanding people is important. Think what a better understanding of people’s personality could do in healthcare, or in media, or in retail.

Our second advantage comes from being under the radar. Trend-spotters and investors are busy looking at and investing in all four of these major innovation areas.

But how disruptive are these technologies right now? Each one of them is hugely game-changing in its way,

1. Big data:

Five years ago this term almost didn’t exist but it is now one of the fastest growing ‘most searched for’ terms on the internet (according to Google Data Trends). Analysts at Wikibon predict this new sector will grow from almost nothing in 2010 to $50bn dollars by 2017. A report by PAC predicts big data will impact on every aspect of the global economy during the same period.

PAC also found that the fastest growing area of all will be in services to understand big data. Most big data is historical and transactional. Understanding personality, psychology and motivation are the missing ingredients that will enable deep understanding of intent and truly predictive analytics. VisualDNA’s unique ability to engage users and turn their personality into digital form will be at the forefront of providing this vital information to power conventional big data.

2. Psychology:

Psychology is undergoing a number of dramatic changes as new technology allows us to understand how the brain and personality are linked. Neuroimaging allows us to visually track the workings of the brain and identify how different responses and our emotions work at a chemical and neuron-level. Daniel Kahneman’s work on decision-making and behavioural economics is just starting to make itself felt in the mainstream and will become increasingly influential as real-time big data allows us to understand and model human responses at a macro level. Computer scientists are developing ever more sophisticated simulations and models of the brain allowing experiments and analysis to be performed, changing the way we see the brain and raising the possibility of truly understanding ‘what makes us tick’.

As this understanding develops, it will have a major impact on our understanding of people and how they behave. VisualDNA is already leading the way in understanding how individuals behave

but the disruption has already been factored in to most companies business plans and projections. They are heavily signposted, with so many entrepreneurs and investors looking for the next big thing, a consensus has grown up about these technologies. Perhaps they are no longer as disruptive as they were?

True disruptive innovation comes from combining existing or new technologies that are better than existing methods. To use psychology as an example, there are plenty of areas where psychology has been used for a long while - HR for instance. However, VisualDNA’s ability to combine new advances in psychological understanding with big data and multiple data sources such as wearable technology will create huge opportunities in the field of workplace culture and understanding, opening up new ways to monitor and predict performance and fit within an organisational culture.

Finally, one further point from Christensen about disruptive innovation: truly disruptive innovation tends to come from unexpected sources and is developed by new players - existing market leaders are too trapped by what works now to think of something that will replace it in the future.

These four innovations could be said to be evolutions of technology that already exists. All are important breakthroughs, and will have a huge impact in their way. For me, the most disruptive and exciting technologies are not on any investor’s radar, and are not incremental evolutions of something that already exists. They come from combining well-understood and existing trends and technologies in a way that makes the world different. They come from small companies with big visions and a hunger to create change.

Big data + psychology + digital identity + the internet of things is one of those rare situations where radically disruptive innovation can occur - a black swan just swam into view.

The pace of change is fast in some ways, slow in others. A time traveller from 2008 would find many aspects of life today fairly unsurprising. Same cars, same jobs, same brands. What would stick out would probably be the phones. Not because the technology would amaze our time traveller, but because of the sheer amount of time people spend on them. So in thinking about ordinary life in 2020 we can expect a lot of the same, but perhaps to an unexpected degree. In looking forward, it helps to look back.

In 2014 compared to 2008, people in developed economies are:

More likely to be freelance, part-time or self-employed

4lbs heavier

Spending 60 minutes more consuming media

Twice as likely to drink craft beer

This shows us that the last 6 years have been shaped by a mixed bag of long-term trends that have been with us for decades (increased consumption of media, rising obesity) and new phenomena (decreasing labour market participation, increasing

self-employment; turning away from big brands).

We’re seeing the end of an old cycle and the start of a new cycle. The cycle we are seeing the end of is the cycle of longer hours in the office, increased material consumption, increased media consumption and declining health. The mixture of ageing populations, slowing economies, increasing automation of knowledge and work and rising healthcare costs will exert greater and greater pressure on people to change their habits and lifestyles.

In short, a lot of people will be trying to get healthy and improve themselves. When it comes to changing behavior, it’s critical to understand yourself and your personality. We see a huge role for personalized services that help people live better, and a huge role for our techniques in helping to deliver those services.

The new cycle comes from the new generation. As millenials age into their mid-30s and have children, their values and choices will begin to dominate society as a whole. Many indicators are that those choices will increasingly be to work freelance or part-time, to learn skills rather than buy goods, to spend time and effort on their health, and to have technology enable their lives rather than be the focus of their lives.

Ordinary People in 2020By Jacob Wright, Head of Strategy, VisualDNA

E-learning is showing incredibly rapid growth - already a $60Bn market, it’s forecast to double by the end of 2015. A generation who stayed in education longer during a weak job market, who display status increasingly through their accomplishments rather than their possessions, and who need to stay abreast of ever-changing technology to remain in work are likely to be lifelong consumers of it. In this field, the ability to tailor courses to the needs and personality of the individual is likely to grow in significance.

Millenials have often been categorized as technology-obsessed. This may be a mistake but technology is intimately woven into the lives of anyone born after 1985, but that doesn’t necessarily make it the focus of their lives. Indeed many studies show that younger people are less interested in tech than older groups – precisely because it’s so much a part of normality for them. So as we move into the world of 2020, people are likely to want their devices to fade into the background, to quietly help them live richer offline lives, rather than to live online.

So, for example, to be able to walk into a shop and have the staff know your preferences, rather than to spend hours online comparing deals, is more likely to be what people want. We imagine a world of small smart gadgets that predict what someone wants, when they want it, leaving them free to focus their time on other people and on their environment, rather than on the technology.

And then there’s the craft beer.

Beer, and food in general, has seen an explosion of

small craft producers capture big segments of the market, and fashion is not far behind. Buyers who value craft, and stories behind products, due to their own desire to make and create, are creating an equation that says that small producers are innately more desirable than large ones.

As this trend accelerates and gathers force it creates two needs for businesses. Big businesses will increasingly need to display the same intimate connection with customers that small ones innately have. Small businesses will want access to the same tools that large companies have.

Our vision is that by allowing consumers to digitally store their preferences, values and ambitions, businesses large and small will be able to tap into this data, provided they can justify their request to the consumer. So we set up a free market in data exchange between consumers and businesses, where value accrues to both.

So what might be unexpected in degrees? Well, perhaps it’s the backlash against inequality and monopoly. It’s possible the next six years will see either regulatory or grassroots action against monopolies in products, services and data. It’s possible we’ll see a wealth tax or a Tobin tax, and it’s possible we’ll see that the trend towards globalization and centralization peaks, and smaller businesses start to take share from bigger ones.

In such circumstances, data and personalization needs to be delivered for the benefit of ordinary people, with ordinary people in control, and in a way

that can benefit businesses of all sizes. We’re ready for that future.

Finally there’s virtual reality. Talked about for decades, finally here. If Oculus Rift takes off the way many think it will, and people have the ability to interact virtually with each other, with content and with businesses, what will be the basis of their identity? We think it’s personality. Studies repeatedly show that people in games and in anonymous forums tend to display the same personality characteristics as in real life. So although your avatar may be better looking and carry a chainsaw, it will still have your personality. Otherwise where’s the fun?

Overall, people had personalities at the dawn of our species. They kept them through the industrial revolution, the green revolution and the IT revolution and we’re 100% confident they’ll still have them in 2020. We’re excited about helping them fulfill their full potential and build a better future for everyone.

Something extraordinary is happening. Humankind’s increasing interconnectedness is causing a global transformation of values and expectations, at both the individual and societal level. The shift is reaching a tipping point that will transform business forever.

You don’t have to be an economic detective or business futurist to see myriad signs of the unstoppable rise of a new set of economic perogatives that prioritise proactive positive impact on people and planet. Consider this short list: the emergence of universally available virtual education, the mainstreaming of environmental consciousness on the political and business agenda, the accelerating growth of the organic and Fairtrade foods industry, the growth of impact investing as a sector, the innovation in biosensor-enabled mobile healthcare solutions - these phenomena and more herald a mass movement for good that’s great for humanity. And for business.

In fact, it’s business innovation (and not government or other institutional directives) that’s likely to make our world healthier, happier and more sustainably vibrant than ever before. That’s because doing right by people and planet is particularly pragmatic for business, which relies entirely on human and natural capital to generate profit. Arguably, we are hurtling

into a new era when new forms of wealth creation could potentially empower billions of people to raise themselves out of poverty, to participate in the broader economy, and to thrive. The catalyst will be an increasingly widely-shared notion: that it’s in all of our best interest to do what’s best for one another, for the environment, for our health and our collective well-being. In other words, new values will explode into exponential economic value.

Dubious? It’s happened before. Economic historian and author Deirdre McCloskey has attributed the exponential explosion of wealth in the 19th century (she calls it the Great Enrichment) to ideological innovation. The new idea then: human equality over feudalism, and the belief that liberty and the dignity of human potential should be available to all. This was as commercially motivated as it was ethically inspired. It makes sense that this ideological shift began in the late 1600s, as the world became even more closely connected through trade, and can be attributed to the rise of a bourgeois merchant class first in Holland, and then Britain, from whence it spread to the British Colonies in North America, where it ultimately found its way into one of history’s most famous documents, the Declaration of Independence.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men

Welcome to the Conscience Economyby Steven Overman, Author, The Conscience Economy: How A Mass Movement For Good Is Great For Business, Bibliomotion, Oct 2014

are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Although these iconic words were proclaimed in Philadelphia, this was not a uniquely American ideology - it was a broadly Northern European idea. It’s easy to forget just how dangerously radical this new idea once seemed. That is, until you consider the bloodshed it caused on both sides of the Atlantic as the old aristocracies and their economic dominance (and arguably, ossification) were overthrown. This wave of liberty was driven by a class of people who were in effect entrepreneurs. It underpinned whole new systems of thinking and governance, which ultimately gave rise not only to revolutions, but also to discoveries and innovations that drove unprecedented efficiencies of manufacturing and distribution, and in short order increased the wealth of nations like the UK and the USA - and their citizens - exponentially. The average daily wage in these countries swiftly shot up from 3 dollars to 30 dollars and beyond. New ideas about freedom liberated not only those who weren’t members of the ruling classes - they liberated technological innovation, which in turn unleashed wealth and its after-effects: increased literacy, life span, leisure, infrastructure and quality of life.

Culture creates economics, not vice versa. Technology is the means, not the catalyst. Still, beliefs and technology work together in a virtuous circle. Actually, it’s more like an upward spiral. Perhaps the most profound belief-technology upward spiral today is the drive for total connectedness.

Connectedness, like democracy, can be controversial. As I write these words, there’s discussion and debate at the United Nations as a coalition of NGOs, philanthropists and nation-states are updating the Millennium Development Goals into a broader call to action for improving life on earth. A key question: whether or not connectedness is a fundamental human right, like the right to clean air and healthy food. There’s discussion because it seems self-evident, and debate because some governments aren’t so keen to open the floodgates of information connectivity to their citizens. But whether enshrined in a universal document on behalf of humanity, or promoted by the seemingly obvious profit motive of global technology corporations, the increasing real-time connection of more of us to each other and to the world around us is set to continue. Because once again, ideology is in the driver’s seat.

It’s intriguing to observe that humanity’s most potent technological means of connectivity - the mobile device - and the social imperative of personal empowerment - including the civil rights, gay rights and women’s liberation movements, environmental consciousness, and modern CSR - emerged almost simultaneously about four decades ago. This is not mere hindsight coincidence. The radically progressive values that exploded across university campuses during the 1960’s fuelled ideas about self-empowerment and kicked a nascent hippy do-it-yourself movement up a notch, which led not only to Northern California’s Whole Earth Catalogue publishing instructions for home-brewed beer and home-baked bread but also instructions for home-built computers. Indeed, personal computing was

led onto the world stage by an ideology of personal empowerment and self-sufficiency. The invention of mobile technology was adjacent to this phenomenon, and over subsequent decades has proven to be the most powerful agent of rich, multidimensional connectivity at nearly all strata of civilization.

It’s been observed that throughout modern history, it has consistently taken about forty years for an idea or an innovation to move from the margin to the mainstream. The pace of innovation may accelerate, but the pace of mainstreaming is constant. Thus, forty years later, even the most financially disadvantaged people in emerging markets can pool limited resources and access the Internet on a low-cost mobile phone. For over a billion people, the mobile device provided the first and often the only online connection. For those of us who inhabit global cities like London or Los Angeles, it can be startling to remember that there are still billions more people who have not yet gotten online, but the momentum toward ubiquitous and universal connectivity is clear.

What began with connecting people (is your brain playing the Nokia tune?) through words and voice soon morphed into connected information, multimedia, and commerce as core features of the mobile experience. Then, through integrated sensors, satellites and algorithms, mobiles could connect via context, including location, time, season, behavioral history. Next on the connecting agenda: our biometrics, our feelings, emotions, and ultimately our intentions. Soon, the mobiles that connect us most deeply and broadly will be those we wear on (or in) our bodies and those we drive on our roads,

further reshaping our relationship with each other, our transport, and even our biology. Here’s the rub: no matter how we might feel about the tradeoffs between utility and privacy, it will be increasingly challenging to opt out of connectedness.

So what are the implications of this more fully and deeply connected life? How does this transform our assumptions about ourselves and each other, our sense of who we are, what we value, and how we exchange it? More specifically, what does this coming shift in values and expectations mean for economics and business?

As we humans become more closely interconnected and simultaneously have the means for broadcasting self-expression to others, we become a community. I begin to understand how my actions positively or negatively impact you because you’re able to express those consequences back to me, and over time I internalize what’s good or bad for us both. I also internalize a sense of reciprocity, and so do you. Because it’s in both of our self interests to do so. This sense of reciprocity used to be constrained by geography and culture. However, as our understanding of each other – as our emotional proximity increases, something else grows within us. An inner and shared sense of right and wrong. This inner sense of right and wrong is our conscience.

We’re not born with a conscience. It feels like a fundamental part of us, but like language, we learn it through experience and connection. As feel-good as the word may be, conscience is not borne to us on moral or spiritual wings; it’s the logical outcome

of human interdependence and continuous self-expression. To put it even more bluntly, according to Darwin, it’s a human survival strategy. As civilization heads into an unmapped wilderness of potentially destructive climate change, potential broad social upheavals in the face of widening wealth disparity, resource scarcity, overpopulation, the unscripted future of genetic engineering and Artificial Intelligence and more - a survival strategy could come in handy right now.

Connectedness is making us all more interdependent, while giving us ever richer and more persistent means of self-expression. These are two key preconditions for the emergence of conscience. Thus, the most dramatic consequence of ubiquitous connectedness may well be the emergence of a global conscience, which in turn will give rise to a conscientious economic paradigm. Welcome to the Conscience Economy.

This phenomenon is not, in case you are wondering, about upping the CSR budget or organizing more volunteering away days for staff, as well intentioned as these initiatives are. Indeed, smart businesses will do away with CSR as a distinct (read: marginalised) function altogether, and instead distribute social, ethical and environmental competency and capability across their enterprise. Because when good purpose is baked-in to the business model and operating procedure itself, the business is poised to thrive in a market ecosystem that places a measurable premium on trustworthiness and positive social and environmental impact.

Here’s an amazing and uncomfortable truth: in an

interdependent, totally connected world, the old rules of economics - and as a consequence the rules of business - no longer hold. Those rules were based on separation and distance. They were based on not-knowing. Profit was all too often based on what you could get away with. Which usually required at best manipulation and at worst exploitation of the truth.

The assumptions upon which neoclassical economic theory are based are crumbling, because we all know more about each other and our world than ever before.

For example, we now understand that natural resources like air and water are not infinite nor free - they are limited, and they need protection. We now understand that political conflict means market instability, and market instability means it’s harder to predict sustainable, thrivable growth - the very forecasts that both long- and short-term investors demand.

Meanwhile, in an ever more intimate and connected ecosystem, externalities become material. In other words, factors that influence business outcomes, which we once assumed were out of our control, are increasingly revealing themselves to be part of a cycle of causality. Industry impacts our climate, which impacts natural resources, which impacts prices. Industry impacts human well being and health, which impacts productivity and growth.

Consumer utility becomes meaning. It’s not just the usefulness of a thing - people now value what a product or service stands for, how it was made, who made it, and the quality of life that surrounds its manufacture. This meaning - driven less and less by advertising’s

emotional bait-and-switch, and more and more by our understanding of business truth - is where profit margin is born.

Perhaps the biggest disruption to business-as-used-to-be-usual is this: transparency trumps opacity. If there are things about a business operation that it doesn’t want people to know, well, there’s going to be nowhere to hide. Information is increasingly available, increasingly free, and freely and exponentially shared. The good news about the coming transparency is this: those businesses who authentically operate in synch with Conscience Economy values - delivering positive social, environmental and personal impact - will be considered heroes, and enjoy greater loyalty, and the easier cross-selling and upselling that accompany high levels of trust.

Transparency and the concurrent evaporation of privacy is a two-way phenomenon, simultaneously empowering and exposing all players. Government, business, institutions, and individuals can and will all know more about each other. Whether this levels the playing field or tips the balance of power in a new direction is something about which we can only speculate. One thing is certain: the playing field will be changed forever.

Those businesses that are fastest to adapt to the coming Conscience Economy, those enterprises that build “goodness” into their total operations - are poised to benefit from the coming disruption. After all, that which is valuable should be profitable, and what could be more valuable than making life better for everyone, everywhere?

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