Source: CBInsights

Intro

“Unprecedented”; “extraordinary”; “once-in-a-lifetime.” There’s no overstating the case for how 2020 has scrambled our lives and inflated the role of technology. It has moved front and center in almost every adaptation we’ve made to a year of living through a pandemic. From resilience in the C-suite to bringing the hospital to the home, technology in 2021 will draft off the accelerated trends brought about by social distancing measures and stay-at-home orders. We’ll see wellness imbued in building design as well as more immersive — and branded — retail experiences in a new virtual “metaverse” dimension.

There are also technology trends on the immediate horizon that have bubbled up largely outside of the extraordinary 2020 experience. AI is now table stakes for companies, and the new race will be to imbue these algorithms with emotional data that differentiates and improves the customer experience. Crypto is officially mainstream (perhaps helped along by a year of economic uncertainty and bored, home-bound crypto enthusiasts), so much so that we see payments companies embracing bitcoin as the new rewards points currency.

Exclusivity and futuristic tech havens built from the ground up are also taking off, while psychedelic medicine could this year be where medical cannabis was less than a decade ago. In 2021, much will depend on the pace of vaccination and how quickly or slowly we find our way out of the pandemic. As we do, technology’s centrality across our behaviors is more assured than ever before. And while some individuals may embrace a post-pandemic luddite retreat, for organizations, 2021 will likely be a year of technological refinement and retooling, as lessons learned on the fly inform a more thoughtful, less frantic embrace of the
technology trends reshaping industries.