Ten Trends For 2010

A new decade is right around the corner. I expect we’ll start to see a lot of prognostication soon, so I will attempt to get out ahead of the crowd. At Catalyst we research growth industries and invest in businesses that have recurring, advertising or subscription-based revenue. Growth industries ride the big product adoption trends. Here are 10 big industry trends we intend to capitalize on:

1. Applications move to the “cloud”–An obvious prediction, but its importance cannot be overstated. Software and content will continue to migrate to the Internet, or the “cloud.” Devices on the edge will therefore be able to simplify and specialize, like net books for Web surfing, iPods for listening to music, BlackBerrys for accessing corporate information, Kindles for reading. Business applications will rapidly move to the Internet, where they are cheaper to deliver, more frequently upgraded and will allow access to more real-time information.

2. The tribal Internet–Social networking and Internet content will evolve into networks of sites and information streams focused around common interests. Whether it’s for work, hobbies or issue advocacy, interest groups will form virtual “tribes” online, sharing content, ideas, opinions, advice and information among themselves. Magazines, blogs, e-mail newsletters and video content are already interlinked and shared and promoted via RSS feeds and social networks like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Because these tribes are built around natural affinities, in many ways they will have a more powerful hold on us than our existing groups based on schools and location. Marketers will not be successful with old-fashioned advertising that interrupts this flow of content. Successful marketers will be those that are able to join and gain the trust of the tribes, where people WANT to receive the marketing message.

3. The Internet is all around you–As applications, content and communities move to the Web, we become increasingly dependent on the it and will demand access everywhere and at all times. The functionality of smart phones and other wireless access devices will keep increasing, so that we can wirelessly do most of what we currently do on the computer. Wireless networks will dramatically increase the amount of data capacity and will at least rival the speeds of today’s DSL lines. We will get to the point that we’re connected to the Internet 24/7, both for work and for fun.

4. The web gets smart, really smart–As more information flows through the Internet, parallel processing technology will enable an Internet that understands the relevance of information as it appears in real time. The confluence of all of this data and these technologies will necessitate sophisticated algorithmic models to aid interpretation and decision making. Many of the great advances will be in what is today called business intelligence or business analytics. The speed in which managers and marketers can react to changes in the business environment will accelerate dramatically.

5. Sensors, sensors everywhere–With a Smart Web analyzing data and ubiquitous wireless network access, Internet-connected sensors will be measuring all sorts of data. Our vital signs, energy usage, soil moisture, traffic patterns, manufacturing efficiency … it will all be tracked remotely and analyzed in real time and fed into the Smart Web, increasing business productivity. Some have called this the “Internet of Machines,” “machine-to-machine communications” or “M2M”. Asset productivity and utilization will soar immensely, reducing the relative demand for business investment overall. The combination of Web-based software, the Smart Web and M2M will create one of the fastest leaps in worker productivity in human history over the next 10-20 years.

6. The decentralization of medicine–The current hospital-centric health care system is an inefficient amalgam of disparate systems that do not communicate with each other. Networked medicine, information record standards and focus on prevention and wellness could break it all apart. Data tracking can revolutionize disease management, nutrition, exercise, home health care and remote medicine. The centralized delivery model is more of an industrial-age organization form relative to the networked-based economy of today. The use of hospitals will decline in favor of doctor house calls, “video visits” and visits to (or visits from) specialists loaded with high-tech equipment and software.

7. The decentralization of education–The current one-size-fits-all educational system seems even more industrial age than our health care system. People learn in different ways and follow different life paths. Parents will want more choice in programs for kids. Adults will want more access to programs that help advance their careers. More learning will be done online and outside of a “school.” Apprenticeships will make a comeback. More charter schools and private schools will be built. More will be invested in early childhood education. A much larger percentage of colleges and universities will be specialized and “for profit,” while many nonprofit universities will leverage their brands to broaden their revenue streams to include some for-profit activities. Americans will have more opportunity to invest in themselves and to make themselves more productive.

8. Building the “electricity superhighway”–The shift away from fossil fuels will increase our reliance on electricity, particularly in transportation. The smart grid initiatives pursued today are equivalent to the Telecom Act of 1996–a catalyst that will lead to the transformation of the utility industry as the electricity superhighway gets built out. The implementation of a smart grid will allow for more efficient and balanced use of the electrical grid. Energy storage systems will take energy from intermittent sources like sun and wind or from traditional power plants during off-peak times for use during peak times. Power will continue to be sold from utility to consumer, but it will also flow from small-scale power sources like rooftop solar panels back to the utility when not being consumed. Small-scale energy storage systems like reversible fuel cells or batteries could do away with the whole concept of peak/off-peak pricing altogether. The move to electric or hybrid cars, combined with investments in more electrical generation capacity (from nuclear, alternatives and natural gas) and a smart electrical grid will dramatically reduce the largest cause of the U.S. trade deficit: our reliance on foreign oil.

9. The integration of transportation–If the last 50 years in U.S. urban development were about the buildout of the suburbs and the last 20 years were about the buildout of the outer suburbs, or “exurbs,” then the next 10-20 years will be about lashing together our far-flung metropolises with an integrated transportation network. There will be a great deal of investment in rail, both commuter rail and inter-city rail (within 300 miles). Rail will also be more integrated with our other transportation hubs. Rather than a trend of suburbanites moving to the cities (a “trend” not supported by any data), the city will likely move to the suburbs as density increases and transportation patterns evolve. Very light jets, or “VLJs” will get rolled out, allowing for more direct flights between non-hub destinations. There will be a movement in favor of time-shifting commutes and increased adoption of telecommuting. A more integrated and efficient transportation network will benefit both the environment and the productivity of the American workforce, which currently wastes $87 billion per year in fuel and lost productivity by sitting in traffic jams, according to a 2009 report by the Texas Transportation Institute.

10. Workers of the world, connect!–Tom Hayes wrote an interesting new book called Jump Point: How Network Culture is Revolutionizing Business, that hypothesizes how the world will change when the 3 billionth person (~50% of the world’s population) becomes connected to the Internet in 2011. Change will accelerate and volatility will increase. New companies and ideas will arise seemingly out of nowhere and spread around the world in no time (see Twitter) and old, steady industries will appear to collapse in the blink of an eye (see magazines). These ideas and companies can come from anywhere in the world. Since young people are often the most creative inventors of new ideas, and the vast bulk of young people reside in the emerging world, many of the great new ideas of the decade will flow from the emerging world. Governments and companies that rely on hierarchy and control will struggle to adapt to a world of decentralization and volatility. While individuals will be empowered for good (blogging) and for ill (terrorism), they will also be more connected as a global community (see Facebook). Brace yourselves for a wild and interesting ride.

At Catalyst we intend to capitalize on these trends. That means we will continue to invest in software-as-a-service, managed hosting, data centers, vertical ad networks, online marketing, smart phone applications, wireless infrastructure, machine-to-machine communications services, for-profit education, education software and potentially remote medical services, medical software, smart grid services, energy efficiency services and next-gen transportation services and infrastructure.

Addapted from Tyler Newton, is head of research at Catalyst Investors.

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How Tech Will Change Our Future

It is that time of year for columns that look back on the past year, or the past decade. They hope to make sense of what we just went through, from the Twin Towers to the death of Michael Jackson. Reading them is fun, and for the most part futile; writings just after the fact rarely see things the same way they appear in history. As Chinese diplomat and political survivor Zhou Enlai noted when asked to comment on the significance of the French Revolution of 1789, “Too early to say.”

Many other markers of our time, from the crisis in newspapers to the birth of social media, from the global mourning of Michael Jackson to the pervasiveness of Google, clearly owe everything to the revolution of the Internet.

The most exciting part of this phenomenon is that it is just starting. Broadband is beginning to become pervasive in the developed world. Moore’s Law will keep crushing the price of computation, communication, transmission and storage. And cheap sensors are about to be thrown on to everything. If it seemed like this already changed much of the world as we know it, get ready for what is coming.

With that in mind, I humbly file a few predictions for the first column of 2020, which looks back on what changes were wrought over the 10 years beginning in 2010. It won’t be 100% accurate, but it’s food for thought. To the extent it has contradictions, it is true to the times we inhabit. Besides, in a Twitter-driven news world, isn’t it better to be first than to be accurate?

Nations: They will still be around, but they will not own their national population the way they once did. Al-Qaida was just an early, pernicious and failed effort to create an extra-national political force. It was somewhat like international crime, except with an agenda to change government policies. Thanks to social networks, other kinds of transnational political organizations evolved by 2020. Iran fell as a result, and the U.S. had to hide its military presence in many countries.

Sovereignty: National control of language, currency and communications was undermined by Google’s simultaneous translation systems, ubiquitous cross-border mobile payment consortia and readily accessed public encryption. Open societies struggled to adapt to this loss of control. Closed societies failed outright.

Privacy: By 2020, you will have to go to a museum to understand what it meant. Privacy eroded, due to cameras everywhere and increasing sophistication of data analysis. Most people, considering themselves good at heart, traded it away for the sake of better search results.

Work: Probably for life, probably not for one company, particularly as most companies have an increasingly short lifespan. This has been true for some time, but will be increasingly clear as the pace of change dictates that few outfits adapt in time to the changing needs of the market.

Wealth: Thanks to sensors, the discovery of so-called “hidden databases” at the sub-atomic level, in the oceans, the human body and global society gave capitalists a wealth of new patterns of organization to exploit, resulting in an explosion of wealth and creativity. Ironically, by learning age-old complexities of the natural world, the pace of change moved even faster.

Say goodbye to nations, sovereignty and privacy.

Six Rules For Social Networks

Just a few years ago, when companies like Friendster were emerging and outfits like Twitter still did not exist, social networking was a little-understood phenomenon. Experience has taught us a lot, however, and practices are starting to standardize. That is not to say that something new will not pop up, or that no new business will be created; this is still capitalism, with plenty of room to surprise. Whatever does happen next, however, the emerging rules will likely play a role, either in system construction or creative destruction.

Here are six points everyone seems to agree on, presented for easy memorization and with apologies to Johnnie “If it does not fit, you must acquit” Cochran.

1. When you have scale, it’s good to fail.

Google knows this: When you have millions of users, you can, and should, experiment with some small percentage of them all the time. The field is so new that there are no set rules, and failure is tolerable for the sake of a decent feedback loop. “Things change so fast, you are best off just doing things by trial and error,” says Gina Bianchini, founder and chief executive of Ning, a service that provides a template of design tools for people to build their own social networks. About 5,000 networks are created every day on Ning, and 80% of them are short-lived or fail. That still gives Ning 250,000 networks on which it can place ads, watch behavior or charge for premium services.

2. Seek the unique.

There are too many social networks, too many styles of discovery, commenting, sharing and all the other aspects of participation. People are fatigued by choice. All is made worthwhile by finding a group that is as passionate about some specific area of your life as you are. That may be work, a la LinkedIn, but don’t expect most people to socialize there. That may be family, like with Facebook, but you tend not to see such a broad range of behaviors. The third aspect of most lives–hobbies and interests–is where you encounter the greatest variety. If there is room to grow a new social network, it will have to center on a passion, something people feel is particularly true of their own personalities.

3. The default position is rampant suspicion.

Trust is possibly the most valuable currency on a social network. At its best, people are giving up important parts of their identity. Doing so successfully, so that fans, friends, and like-minded strangers respect them, binds users closely to the network. That loyalty is perpetually at risk, however, and network designers say users’ worries are manifest when they don’t understand something about the social network.

“In the absence of information, there is an assumption of conspiracy,” says Jay Adelson, one of the founders of Digg, a social news site. That may be simply because social networks are so new, or that the medium of computer networks lends itself to fears of anonymous control. The solution, from a provider’s viewpoint, is to be as clear as possible about why you are doing something, even when it seems obvious to you.

4. Trust is at stake, so make things opaque.

Paradoxically, being open also involves refusing to disclose certain things, particularly things about how ranking and filtering systems work. “All algorithms get hacked by somebody,” says Kevin Laws, a former executive with Epinions, a social rating site that was purchased by Shopping.com. “You have to remove the transparency around how your algorithms actually work.” The audience can only trust the system if they know that the system cannot be gamed, and that means they can’t know everything.

5. Esteem is how you gather value.

French playwright Moliere compared writing to prostitution: You start off doing it for love, then for a few friends and finally for money. The history of the social Web is basically the opposite. Sites like Epinions and Digg began by paying people money to comment on things, and found nothing but problems–some people gamed the system, while others did not trust the results. As in open source software, a lot of the positive motivation to participate comes from the recognition you receive from other participants for doing a good job. Money just confuses things.

6. Secret names were made for flames.

When Digg started, Adelson recalls, “anonymity was key; there was a sense people needed privacy. Now people are used to living in public.” Part of that may be an effect of Facebook, a wildly successful site with very little anonymity. One-third of Digg’s new users come from the Facebook Connect service, and these folks are used to being seen by others. They tend to behave more responsibly as a result, and may get better value in terms of how much others trust them. Down the road, they are also likely to be targeted with more personal ads–whether that is an intrusion or a value-add is a rule that has yet to be worked out.

Masters Scholarship for Africa, India and Commonwealth Countries

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To apply, please: Complete and submit an online application form by 30 April 2010
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We aim to notify applicants of the outcome within 6 weeks of the closing dateDeveloping Solutions/Commonwealth Shared Scholarship Scheme

In partnership with the Department for International Development (DFID) under the British Aid programme and the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU), The University of Nottingham will also offer 6 FULL Scholarships (tuition fees, airfare, maintenance award and additional allowances) to new students registering on Masters programmes in the Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences in September 2010.

Please note that nominations for this scholarship will be chosen from the Developing Solutions Scholarship applications – you should apply

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The Golden Rule of Success

I have been reading the discussion of “The Golden Rule” as presented in Chapter 16 of Napoleon Hill’s “Law of Success” and have had an epiphany! I always took the Golden Rule to suggest that you will receive the same (or similar) response from others in similar fashion to the way you treat them. Treat people nicely and people will treat you nicely. Treat people poorly and expect to be treated poorly.

Day to Day Interactions

In our day-to-day lives, we all interact with people; family, friends, business associates and strangers. And, so much of our day is influenced upon the outcomes of those interactions or, more specifically, how we respond to those outcomes. If we take the transit system or, as an even more emphatic example, an elevator to work, we are very familiar with the manner in which we stay isolated in our separate world, interacting as little as possible with those around us. We have our protective barriers erected against possible interaction. We read books or the newspaper, plug ourselves into our iPods or work on our lap-tops. If we have an exchange with a taxi driver, vendor or just bump into someone in the street, depending on the nature of both their response and our own, such an incident can set a “mood” for an entire day, if we let it.

Our mind set, our disposition dictates how we treat the world and, in return, how the world treats us.”Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts. Dye it, then, with a continuous series of such thoughts.

Manifest the Change You Desire in the World

To be clear, all I am proposing is a simple smile, and possibly a “Hello”, to the people we meet in the course of our day. A little daily courtesy to the coffee vendor in the morning. It has been said that smiles are contagious. “… our brains become magnetized with the dominating thoughts which we hold in our minds, and … these “magnets” attract to us the forces, the people, the circumstances of life which harmonize with the nature of our dominating thoughts”.

I believe we reap what we sow. If we present a pleasant and outgoing (positive) demeanor to those we encounter in our day, we become pleasant and outgoing and develop a corresponding positive attitude.

If, on the other hand, we present a disagreeable, negative demeanor to the world, we will drive people away and develop a negative attitude to the world over time (to match our negative demeanor – negative response feedback loop).
To take this argument further, in order to develop the character traits we desire in ourselves, we need to be actively exemplifying them in our daily lives.
If we walk around, day-in and day-out, with a frown on our faces, how long until we develop a frown on our heart (if you will permit the metaphor)). Conversely, if we pass our day with a smile on our faces, acknowledging and relishing the good things we encounter every day, how long until we develop that same smile in our heart.

At the very least, begin and end your days with a smile and good word for the members of your family. A smile from your wife or husband as you head off to work and smiles from your children goes a long way to easing the stress and tension in a day.

We reap what we sow. With these words in mind, I suggest we go out and sow a cheerful day. Doing so will place a cheerful disposition on ours souls and, over time, we will reap cheerfulness from those we meet.

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