Taking A Peek At The Future

The Peak speaks to a futurist to get his opinion on the year ahead in technology.

Futurist Mike Walsh is an extremely busy man. The veteran futurist of 13-years and founder of Tomorrow, a research and consulting firm, is constantly on the move, traveling almost 300 days in a year.

The Peak managed to catch up with Walsh despite his busy schedule on the sidelines of the Maxis Business Sparx Summit 2019 at Menara Maxis. We asked him what were the notable trends in technology that are currently shaping the world of business today.

Could you give a brief explanation as to what you do as a futurist and what inspired you to beone?

There are many kinds of futurists out there. Some are focused heavily on technology while others wonder about building habitats on Mars. I’m much more focused on digital transformation and reinventing organisations. I got into this because I’ve been involved in the digital industry since the late 90s when I started Jupiter Research in the Asia Pacific, which like Gartner, was one of the first research companies in the region.

I was living in Hong Kong for quite some time and I spent a lot of time in the early 2000s traveling around China, Japan, Korea, India. It was then that I saw first hand how we were going to move to a mobile first digital world. That really inspired me to write books and start doing my own research firm and that’s how I ended up being a futurist.

What are the major shifts in trends in technology and business over the past decade that you have observed?

It is evident that in the next few years the focus around technology will shift from devices and hardware to centre around software and experiences. If you were to look 10 years ago, the biggest differences are probably the hardware and devices we used. We were using flip phones and Blackberries and even very early smartphones then look antiquated today.