Frost & Sullivan banks on its Tech Vision

• 50 disruptive technologies identified up to 2020
• Helps businesses prioritise growth strategy

MANAGEMENT consultants, research houses and market research firms will always try to coin a catchy phrase that encapsulates an emerging future trend.
 
The hope is that the term catches the market’s imagination and the firm becomes associated with the buzzword, while enjoying a positioning that ensures it is seen as a trend leader.
 
In that sense, management consulting and market research firm Frost & Sullivan is no different. And with everything on the planet getting ever more deeply connected, it set out five years ago to connect the dots of a fast-moving tech world to help meet the needs of the corporate world’s desire to be the first to build a market position in any new opportunity that arises from any emerging disruption.
 
“That first piece of macro work was called Mega Trends and we introduced it five years ago,” says Manoj Menon (pic), Frost & Sullivan partner and managing director of Asia Pacific.
 
The second was on the disruptions caused by the mega trends and technology on business models.
 
“Business models are shifting today, chiefly enabled by technology but also due to different consumption patterns. We have issues like co-creating, the sharing economy, and pay-as-you-go,” he adds.
 
Following its research into these two areas, and as recent as three years ago, Frost & Sullivan started working on what was its third thrust, Tech Vision.
 
This thrust was launched by identifying 50 disruptive technologies. “Our intention was to help our clients by enabling them to have an understanding of the various disruptive technologies that are coming along, especially up to 2020,” says Manoj.
 
The hope is that this insight will help clients prioritise their investments and strategy till 2020.
 
It was no easy task to start from 500 hardware and software innovations, and then bringing them down to 50 technologies in nine areas.
 
Frost & Sullivan was guided by some criteria such as funding. The amount of private and public funding that had been poured into the nine areas is a combined US$150 billion. That funding yielded a wider scope of 175,000 intellectual property pieces.

Manoj is clearly excited by the possibilities from this research, and especially from the realisation that the biggest value comes from when two or more different technologies and business models are aligned.
 
And over the next six months, Manoj will be highlighting some of the key trends Frost & Sullivan has seen and identified, while trying to connect the cluster of technologies he picks to a relevant local event in either Singapore or Malaysia. Watch for his column soon in Digital News Asia.
 
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