Predictions That Become Reality

The large, major music labels will lose half of their business and shrink by 50 percent if they continue to fight the internet. Their way forward is to see digitalisation as an opportunity and to build up a new, internet-based business strategy..

By 2013, the music industry's global sales had fallen by nearly 50 percent. Then came the reversal. Thanks to new digital business models, revenue began to grow slightly. The rapidly growing revenues from online sales approaches today have led to new forecasts, such as that by Sony Music in 2015, that turnover will have risen to an all-time high within three years. EMI Music, the world's largest label for nearly 50 years, went bankrupt during the course of these developments and was broken up in 2011. Parts of the company were taken over by Universal Music and Sony Music.

Brain food will have become a normal, everyday product by 2020. For many people, it will have become normal to temporarily improve mental performance using special foods.

The trend towards "functional food" can be seen clearly in today's supermarkets. The food industry sees this as the next big thing in their industry. The trend is limited not only to brain food but also "power food" and "beauty food" as well.

A major trend in society and business over the next decade will be a disappearance of the middle class. Unemployment benefits, taxes, retirement funds, health care - society's middle class is shrinking and, with it, the buying power which most of our business models are designed around.

In most branches, the original market pyramid containing the economy segment at the bottom, the smaller, premium segment at the top and an overly-large middle segment between them, no longer applies. Where it does still exist, this standard segment is disappearing. Not only peoples' financial situations but more importantly, digitalisation has led to the decline of the standard segment. This has, however, also led to companies recognising how business models without a middle class look:

1. Highly digitalised and optimised for greater value for money in
   the new economy segment.
2. Identity management in the expanded
   premium segment.

The future of television will, in the coming ten years, initially be defined by on-demand offerings. This will mean a breaking up of traditional linear programming. New providers will appear in the market. Afterwards, these individual pieces of content will be relinearised. We will navigate television using intelligent TV assistants and will have YouTube on our remote controls.

Developments are occurring exactly as predicted and are taking only slightly longer than was expected. Initially, there was growth in on-demand offerings which attacked the market holdings of established television networks: Netflix, Hulu, Amazon etc. YouTube is now located in a prominent position on modern devices, either as a YouTube button on the remote control or as an app located on user interfaces. The described relinearisation will take place in the near future.

In 20 years (2025) we will have autonomous, driverless cars. These will arrive in various stages of development. Initially, the large automobile manufacturers will develop assistants which take over the task of parking. Autopilot functions will determine the route to be taken and will automatically avoid traffic problems assuming that these are still a problem in a world monitored by satellites. The autopilot will automatically control our driving speeds.
If we do decide to drive ourselves, electronic systems will continue to monitor us and will, for instance, suggest breaks should we become tired or lose focus.
And since we no longer need to concentrate on steering, shifting and breaking, we will be able to spend our time more effectively during our commute. For instance, we might discuss current projects with colleagues via video conference or check the evening's entertainment calendar online.

The trend towards self-driving cars is progressing rapidly in large steps. Automatic parking assistants are already available in many mid-range vehicles. Navigation systems, speed limiting controls, break reminder functions and automatic drowsiness detection have become standard, indispensable tools in many of today's cars (2015).

Die ersten komplett selbstfahrenden Autos wurden auf den Messen bereits vorgestellt. Der „Autopilot“-Knopf für simple Verkehrssituationen (Stau, Kolonnenverkehr bis 50 km/h) ist bereits in Oberklassefahrzeugen Realität. Bis 2020 wird er den Massenmarkt erreichen.

Komplett selbstfahrende Autos (von Haustür zu Haustür, auch in komplexen Verkehrssituationen) werden, Stand heute (2015), nach wie vor für das Jahr 2025 prognostiziert.

By 2025, social freezing will have become a normal instrument used in family planning. People will have their embryos and sperm cells frozen when they are young, so that they may use them to have children later in life. This will be done, in part, to avoid the increased risk of genetic mutation and birth defects that these "later" children are often born with.

In 2014, Facebook and Apple announced publicly that they would financially subsidize this type of family planning.

3D printing technology will influence a large number of industries in the coming decade. Initially, industries which deal with a large number of replacement parts will be affected. The same is true of branches with a high degree of customisation potential: manufacturers of furniture, toys and dishes. In the long term, the traditional business models of other, different types of businesses will also come under pressure: housing construction, medicine and the food industries.

Enormous advances in the technology have already been seen. Early 3D printer prototypes are now in serial production and are available at a reasonably low cost. Additionally, large investments of money and resources are being made into the development of printable materials. These range from materials for the building of homes to organic material for the food industry and even human tissues for medical uses.

By the year 2025, 6.5 million more people will have left the German labour market than will have entered it. As a result, there will be between two and five million unfilled job positions at all times. The labour market will transition from a supply market to one of demand. The "power" will be in the hands of the job seekers. The result will be that approximately 40 percent of project employees will not be loyal to their company but, rather, the project and will change employers every two to three years. This will be the largest and most expensive challenge facing companies in the coming years. They will react with new HR strategies. They will become either fluid enterprises or caring companies.

What was initially called a lack of qualified personnel at the beginning of this trend, has now developed into a genuine crisis in many branches. Companies are no longer able to find the employees they need. The number of unemployed continues to fall sharply and will near total employment in the coming years. A number of companies are now beginning to understand how serious the situation is and are enacting countermeasures. The full scale of this demographic development will only become truly felt following 2020.

In 2025, there will be intelligent, electronic executive boardroom assistants which autonomously prepare meetings, develop questions, plan conferences, design compromises and evaluate the strategic value and logic behind decisions made by executive boards. These assistants will also sort emails according to relevance. Those deemed unimportant will be archived for later reference but remain unread.

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By 2020, the insurance industry will have been affected by a breaking of the rules. While the product development for insurance surrounding claims settlement has been largely differentiated, another area is coming to light. An area that is, for the most part, without competition to date: insurers have significant market opportunities as service providers and coaches in preventive and forward-thinking risk management.

It is currently difficult for the insurers to understand and constructively use the breaking of the rules occurring in their business model. A breakthrough is expected in the coming years when competition from neighbouring branches with corresponding business models begin to enter the market.

In the future, there will be no single norm for data protection. Instead, the business models of the future will be characterised by a general consensus that we will allow access to our data but wish, however, to retain the sovereignty over that information. We will want to take advantage of the promises that new technologies offer without losing control and autonomy. The level of privacy that each person would like to retain will vary among individuals meaning a change in thinking for businesses. It will mean that companies no longer create standard products and services and then, retroactively, think about how a uniform level of privacy protection can be applied. In the future, it will mean designing products which, from their very conception, have varying levels of data protection built into them. Products will be conceived, produced and used with up to six different levels of privacy protection.

Although the topic is of ever-increasing importance, recognition of this trend is still in its early stages. It will be several more years before it can truly take hold in the strategies of companies.

The trend towards the urbanisation of the world remains unwavering even as the reasons behind the continually growing attractiveness of cities have changed over time. It is no longer the dream of becoming rich quickly which, for instance, drove farmers into the cities hundreds of years ago. People moving into cities today are looking for identity, freedom and the ability to shape their own lives as they wish. That is why cities of the future will, first and foremost, be places of freedom. But while in the past, a city dweller's freedom was defined by their ability to own material possessions, freedom today often means not needing to own these things at all. This is one of the reasons that the adaptive city of the future will be a kind of peer-to-peer platform. Using intelligent data analysis, it will become possible to use sharing strategies in almost all areas of our lives: Washing clothes. Grocery shopping. Carrying bags. Cooking. Walking the dog. Parking. Housework. Home improvements. Repairs. Gardening. Babysitting. Clothes. Offices. Learning. Investing. Risk management. The list continues even into the smallest of things. Just a few other items which can be shared are: model cars, games, hobbyhorses, toy cars, Legos, car seats, wine glasses, blenders, ice skates, rubber rafts, tents, golf clubs, backpacks, hacksaws, socket wrenches, drills.

Numerous smart city and urban technology initiatives are already making this trend reality in many places around the world. You can read about in the newspapers almost daily. Pilot projects can be found in major cities around the entire world and can be read about almost daily in the media. It will be at least 2024 before one can say that this trend has fully taken shape however.

In ten years, customers of B2C industries will be served comprehensively by omnichannel management. All points of contact will be integrated and linked. This new form of customer dialogue will characterise our lives and, accordingly, what customers expect of their insurers. The omnichannel approach will lead to new job descriptions and a shift in occupational activities at the very core of companies. The omnichannel approach will open new product opportunities for all market participants. The foundation for these new products will be the trust your customers place in you and your digital support systems. The omnichannel approach will also have an effect on incentivising; the study suggests using the development of long-term customer value as a basis.

Development and elaboration of omnichannel strategies currently characterise the strategic processes in many branches. However, the first version of the omnichannel strategies still remains most common. This is a phase where trial and error are not far apart. Professional establishment of appropriate omnichannel structures will, for the majority of companies, take several more years.