“What is the quickest and most effective way of getting medicines to disaster affected regions?” –Large Pharmaceutical Manufacturer in a meeting

Based on my experience with customers and charities, questions similar to the one above are cropping up repeatedly.  Data can be used for better identifying the buying habits of individual consumers, running tests on pharmaceutical drugs, or mapping optimal transportation paths for charities. The impact on society is tremendous and would cut across geographies or sectors with security and managing of this data being key.

Firms’ decision making capabilities are being improved thanks to changing behaviours- the blurring of boundaries between the personal and professional “spaces” has lead to the concept of individual mobility. Individuals access their personal technology devices i.e. phones, laptops, tablets etc, using the software they are used to at home. This creates a deluge of data about people’s behaviour and the opportunity of correlating it with publicly available data i.e. social media information, news alerts, weather forecasts etc.

These trends will reduce the cost of entry for organisations with the infrastructure being run off-site and allow organisations to concentrate on their core calling.Imagine if you would, being able to solve only the problems who you are interested in, without worrying about all the operational headaches. That would truly be liberating!
These however are symptomatic of another emerging trend in the technology industry. The industry has always  rewarded disruptive technology start-ups but the barriers of entry for start-ups are getting lower. Having been an integral part of successful start-ups myself, I know how nimbler and adaptable smaller businesses are.

Imagine the confluence of 3D printing, a smaller subset of micro manufacturing, with big data analytics  and that would lead to a juggernaut of advancements ranging from the individual (possibly mundane) to the outright revolutionary. Of course, security and privacy would be paramount given these contraints.

For those of you having got this far, the trends are interwoven in the text and dealing with them individually would do them a great disservice. 🙂 How many can you spot?