McKinsey Digital | Future Frontiers: Navigating the Next Wave of Tech Innovations

McKinsey Digital | Future Frontiers: Navigating the Next Wave of Tech Innovations

July 31, 2024

McKinsey Digital released its fourth annual report on technology trends that matter most for businesses, narrowing 100 prominent technology trends into the following categories:

• AI Revolution

• Generative AI

• Applied AI

• Industrializing machine learning

• Building the Digital Future

• Next-generation software development

• Digital trust and cybersecurity

• Compute and Connectivity Frontiers

• Advanced connectivity

• Immersive-reality technologies

• Cloud and edge computing

• Quantum technologies

• Cutting Edge Engineering

• Future of robotics

• Future of mobility

• Future of bioengineering

• Future of space technologies

• A Sustainable World

• Electrification and renewables

• Climate technologies beyond electrification and renewables

Why do these trends matter for business?

McKinsey compiles this report to offer business executives a landscape of relevant technology trends.

"These are the markers of what will change our capabilities and abilities to compete faster and better," said Loreina Yee, Senior Partner at McKinsey.

The report found that despite economic challenges and a slight drop in technology investment, the underlying outlook among businesses remains optimistic, with things like job postings, searches, patents, and research continuing to grow.

Roger Roberts, Partner at McKinsey, outlined the five stages of adoption for technologies - frontier innovation, experimenting, piloting, scaling, and full scale - and noted that the time between them has compressed significantly, especially among the top 15 trends featured in the report.

"As business leaders look at this landscape, they need to get ready even faster for things that come over the horizon at them, and we'll see real advantages to the organizations that are the most ready to act when the moment comes," said Roberts.

It's critical for businesses to quickly evaluate which technologies are relevant to their success and how to efficiently implement them in their organizations.

How can tech trends impact the talent landscape?

In the report, McKinsey broke down each trend to determine the skills needed to support them and evaluate the talent supply and demand in each of those areas. The data found a clear supply deficit, even in some of the more established trends, such as advanced connectivity and the future of mobility.

"We're going to need a lot more upskilling and reskilling," Roberts said. "Just what our universities and training programs can deliver formally will not be enough, and enterprises are really going to have to think about how to invest in that upskilling and reskilling to be ready for the futures that are coming."

What should leaders do differently to monitor and mobilize these trends?

"When we break down the capabilities that matter by trend, this is also a bit of a roadmap for executives to think about the capabilities they're going to need," said Yee. "They're not going to adopt all 15 trends … but you're going to adopt a subset of them, and they're going to be a business imperative."

Though these trends may seem daunting for businesses, Yee shared that it's about partnering them with businesses' existing technologies. These trends will be more ecosystem-dependent and no longer a simple "build or buy" approach. In this environment, while there is more to learn, there is also a more robust, supportive ecosystem to harness as businesses adopt these technologies.

How can businesses distinguish "hype" vs. true value with technology trends?

According to Yee, these trends are all multi-decade trends in the making. She encourages businesses to establish a system to regularly monitor trends so they are not as surprising.

Further, a trend's use cases can also be a helpful reference against which to evaluate.

"The vast majority of the applications will actually accelerate your business priorities, which-not to oversimplify-tend to be around productivity and efficiencies in your work, your business process and systems, or the ability to drive growth," Yee said.

Connecting your business objectives with how technology accelerates them in a practical sense is important.

View the 2024 Report