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Did you know that waves, tides and currents in bodies of water could provide more reliable sources of energy than either wind or solar? Or that volcanic sand and genetically-edited crops could be significant natural carbon-capture and storage opportunities? Of course, such tech trends on their own cannot predict the future. But by understanding the changes shaping the technology landscape, leaders can make informed decisions and capitalize on new opportunities. The author, who heads up the Future Today Institute, shares three key categories of trends from the Institute's annual Tech Trends Report: Financial Services, Artificial Intelligence and Climate, Green Tech & Energy.

With a growing range of virtual interfaces continuously evolving around us, reality isn't what it used to be. The author argues that leaders across sectors and industries must familiarize themselves with the emerging 'metaverse' and be able to draw distinctions between the various digitally mediated formats that span the virtual reality spectrum. These include augmented reality (AR), virtual reality VR), mixed reality (MR) and diminished reality (DR). Understanding how these technologies can-and will-affect your business model is a first step towards being prepared for what lies ahead.

A great transformation of human life is underway that will soon determine everything from how we treat disease to how we nourish ourselves and fight climate change. That according to the authors, who describe possible scenarios for incorporating biological innovation into organizations. If they pan out, the resulting impacts will be world-changing indeed: beating cancer, embracing biofuels at scale and the end of traditional meat farming, to name a few. And the scenarios they describe, they say, are only the tip of the iceberg.

Navigating the chaos that characterizes periods of rapid change demands tools that prepare an organization for an uncertain future. So says the founder of the Institute for the Future, who shares several 'tools of the trade' that she uses with clients to help them navigate uncertainty. Leaders must also know the difference between trends and fads, and weak and strong signals. Her 'tools of the trade' are invaluable because, as she notes, "Accounting data, competitor intelligence and consumer research covering near-term needs can be accurate and useful in the present, but they are often unreliable predictors of the future."

When faced with deep uncertainty, organizations often develop a habit of controlling for internal, known variables and fail to track external factors as potential disrupters. This practice lures decision-makers into a false sense of security, and it forces a narrow framing of the future. As a result, even the most successful businesses become vulnerable to disruptive forces that appear to come out of nowhere.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Futurists are skilled at listening to and interpreting signals. They look for early patterns on the fringe, before those "pretrends"begin moving toward the mainstream. Although futurists know most patterns will come to nothing, they watch and wait and test the patterns to find the few that will evolve into genuine trends. The art of forecasting the future, author Amy Webb notes, involves "simultaneously recognizing patterns in the present and thinking about how those changes will impact the future so that you can be actively engaged in building what happens next."Organizations that are able to track emerging trends have opportunities to converse and collaborate with those in other fields to plan ahead. Although it's rare for companies to have their own in-house futurists, Webb argues that forward-thinking organizations can develop their capabilities for foresight by combining creative perspectives with logic-oriented ones. BlackBerry Ltd.'s inability to reconcile different views, she writes, contributed to the decline of the company's smartphone business. BlackBerry's smartphone experience, she concludes, "suggests that forecasting the future of a product, company, or industry should neither be relegated to inventive visionaries nor mapped entirely by left-brain thinkers." In this article, Webb offers a six-step process for identifying trends. To begin with, she advises keeping an open mind and gathering information from the fringe without judgment. This involves creating a map of what you observe at the fringe. Next, she proposes narrowing the research and uncovering the hidden patterns to spot trends. The third step is asking questions to determine whether the patterns you observe are really trends. The fourth step involves interpreting the trend and ensuring that the timing is right for the organization.