With a New Year, comes new innovations. 2018 looks to be an exciting time for innovation and technology, with new trends and products to be created.
We asked some innovation leaders to share what they think will be the top innovations of 2018 and here’s what they said:
Artificial Intelligence & Blockchain Use Will Increase
“A piece of AI software will script and animate a minute-long genre movie, most likely horror or science fiction for reasons of clarity, without any human intervention. Funghi will be discovered to be supremely effective at carbon capture. Blockchain will enable the first self-owned piece of land outlining the contours of what comes after capitalism. The first solar-powered, fully autonomous drone will make an attempt at a round the world trip but fall short somewhere over the mid-Pacific. A chewing gum that enhances cognitive ability will be launched for dementia patients but quickly gain traction amongst college students.” – Magnus Lindkvist, Trendspotting Futurologist & Author
The Rise in Digital Delivery of Health
“We anticipate continued advances around mobile and digital applications in the behavioral health space, improving access and convenience for patients, that deliver measurable outcomes, and begin to shift old social acceptance patterns and attitudes about treatment. We anticipate increased implementations of telehealth, in both clinical and home settings. These interactions are overall a small percentage now, but have both consumer health and cost promise.” - Ben Singer, Innovation Design Strategist, Humana Inc.
Technology Will Continue to Evolve Product Experiences
“As users continue to demand more personalized experiences, companies need to implement strategies where they can deliver a more personal interaction without having to rely on an actual person. We’ll likely see chatbots and messaging platforms on the incline, as they are already helping enterprise businesses provide support information to users. We should look at how they’ve helped to evolve the product experience overall as it transforms from traditional, human-only interactions to more product-led experiences.” - Jonathan Kim, CEO, Appcues
Greater Focus on Brain Boosting Supplements
“Nootropics by definition are supplements relating to, or promoting the enhancement of cognition and memory and the facilitation of learning. Many refer to them as smart drugs and in 2017 they received attention within the bio-hacker community. As we take on more and better understand the damaging effects of stress, incorporating nootropics is a great way for high performers to protect their brains and optimize their day to day lives.” - Carly Stein, Founder, Beekeeper’s Naturals
A Bigger Focus on Human Interaction
"This is the year of the consumer, patient, or member. If your organization is not focusing on the “human” part of your interaction, you are going to be left behind. Yes, technology is important, and should be an extension to your product of service, but not the only thing you think about. Here is one of our belief statements:
Engaging consumers’ (patients or members) stories and voices are mission critical when exploring new ideas and the ONLY way to do business well.
What is the innovation here? It is humanizing your product or service. Or as we say, high-touch and high-tech." - Shawn Nason, CEO & Chief Consumer Champion, Nason Group
Shift in Video Advertising
“Historically, the value of video has been held in the inventory that could be sold against it, which has driven the creation of more video. In 2018 we can expect to see the value of the volume of inventory start to become secondary to the value of high-quality video content itself. Metrics like time-on-site, user engagement, retention rate, completion rate will mean the value of video advertising will truly be in the videos themselves next year.” - Zohar Dayan, CEO, Wibbitz
The Rise of Affiliate Marketing
“The post GDPR and ad-blocked world is going to benefit solutions that don't interrupt the user experience and don't rely on online behavioral advertising to optimize. That naturally puts ecommerce in an advantageous position as a revenue stream for publishers to explore in greater detail next year. Affiliate marketing has been around for ages, and for many publishers remains a side revenue earner, neglected and little noticed. But, like native commerce, it has potentially lucrative advantages too, not only in earning commission on sales quality commerce content inspires but also in the resulting data created by these transactions.” - Alicia Navarro, CEO, Skimlinks
Products, Themselves, Will Be Put to Work
“The market amazingly has more vendors, as funding in the space continues, but we’re seeing an interesting rise in solutions that enable products to essentially become the advance team for marketing. If your product is intuitive, personalized, and helpful, that can reduce the work marketers need to do sending emails, acquiring customers, analyzing data to target against, etc.” - Shafqat Islam, CEO, NewsCred
Want more on the top innovations of 2018? Attend the FEI: Front End of Innovation Conference taking place April 23-25, 2018 at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston, MA. For more information or to register, click here.