Trends In 2021: The Future Of Life, Learning,

 And Play
 

As 2020 draws to a close—a year of great change and disruption—it is a good time to look ahead to the trends that will shape the business landscape in 2021 and beyond: hybridization, instrumentation and servicization. While the pandemic will hopefully subside by the end of next year, it has accelerated these three trends that, taken together, will have a profound impact on how we live, work, learn and play. Let us look at each.

The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated these three trends that, taken together, will have a profound ... [+] impact on how we live, work, learn, and play in the future.

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Hybridization: Here, There, and Everywhere

The quote attributed to humorist Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) reminds us that “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often does rhyme.” We see that sentiment in action in the first trend of hybridization—the here, there, and everywhere of how we live, work, and play.

First, the history part. Twenty-five years ago, when e-commerce was being launched, it operated in a silo, separate from brick-and-mortar retail. If customers bought products from Sears.Com, for example, they could not return them to a physical Sears store. But customers don’t come in online and offline versions, so why should retailers create these artificial separations?

Gradually, retailers stepped up to serve customers wherever and whenever they wanted, and omnichannel commerce was born. Today, customers can see and try out a product in a brick-and-mortar store, read customer reviews and do comparison shopping online, buy in-store or online, and have their purchase delivered or pick it up at a physical location. Commerce has become a truly hybrid channel experience.

Now, we’re seeing hybridization in work, school, and leisure. For example, during the pandemic, those who could work remotely did so—and companies discovered it was a success. Twitter and Microsoft, for example, have enabled their workforce to be 100% remote beyond the pandemic.

Looking ahead, just because people may be able to return to the office does not mean they always will. Instead, sometimes they will be in the office and sometimes at home. That may change day to day or even during the day. As a result, organizations and the people who work for them will become location agnostic, thanks to technology from live streaming to collaboration software. As BCG observed, hybrid work will span both “fully in-person and remote work” as the “two ends of a fluid spectrum of options.”

Moving forward, organizations will see a “hollowing of hubs” with smaller central offices and the “filling of spokes” with an increase in satellite offices and remote locations. People will work where they can be most productive: in central locations for larger meetings with colleagues or clients, in satellite offices for collaboration, and remotely for independent projects. This shift in work patterns will change the future of corporate campuses. In a conversation I had recently with a Fortune 500 company about its new $1 billion campus, leaders admitted that if the structure had been built two years later, the design would have been very different—most likely a smaller, smarter hub and more satellites.

This same hybridization of locations will take hold in higher education. Traditionally, universities have made a binary distinction between online learning and in-person learning. Online learning has been treated as a silo and often regarded as an inferior and cheaper form of learning. This distinction will blur with the development of hybrid learning modalities that combine “roomies” attending in person and “Zoomies” who attend remotely. The same student might be a roomie for some class sessions and a Zoomie for others. Hybrid learning will also blend asynchronous instruction and synchronous instruction (in-person or live streaming) to create learning experiences that will be better than pure in-person learning.

In executive education, physical campuses will progressively give way to a “hub and spoke” model with the instructor teaching from the hub to geographically distributed “pods” of students who attend classes in small teams from a hotel conference room or co-working space. Like commerce and work, higher education learning will become location agnostic.  

Hybridization has also moved into entertainment. Typically, viewers who want to see a first-run, new movie must go to a theater, or else wait 90 days for it to be released on streaming or cable networks. As a result, there was an artificial separation between movies playing in theaters and those available on streaming services. Recently, Time Warner announced that it will release movies simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max, a streaming service owned by WarnerMedia. As the New York Times observed, it is “a startling move that marked the biggest challenge yet to Hollywood’s traditional way of doing business.” In response, movie theaters will need to justify their existence by creating a superior user experience featuring premium seating, food, and beverages to lure viewers out of their homes.

As these examples show, the binary, siloed world is outmoded. Hybridization is here to stay.

Instrumentation: Everybody and Everything

Greater use of instruments, such as sensors that collect data, will enhance the experience of products and services. We’ll see this increasingly in both people and things.

Among people, there is an ongoing trend of self-measurement and self-quantification, with the continued popularity of activity trackers such as Fitbit and Apple watches. But it’s not just about counting steps. These trackers also have electrocardiogram apps and can track sleep and blood oxygen levels, with newer trackers for biomarkers like glucose levels. Taking it a step further, one day it might be possible for sensors to triangulate multiple health factors: connecting nutrition and caloric intake with exercise and calorie burning, while ensuring a healthy workout (e.G., maintaining a heart rate acceptable for someone with a heart condition).

Similarly, sensors are increasingly embedded in complex networks known as the internet of things (IoT). It is everywhere—wind turbines, factories, warehouses and supply chains, cars and roads, and even vending machines—as well as in infrastructure, such as roads and buildings. For example, retail robots that scan shelves and track inventory gather voluminous data. McKinsey has forecasted that, by 2023, there will be 43 billion IoT-connected devices, nearly three times as many as in 2018.

These sensors will spawn a wide range of new products and services, such as usage-based insurance, in which measurements of driver behavior, as well as road and traffic conditions, are used to offer discounts to drivers who operate vehicles responsibly.

From people to products, supply chains to services, “smarter” products will improve performance, predict problems, and personalize products.

Servicization of Everything            

In the digital age, products are increasingly becoming shells for the delivery of services. An example is Peloton, which is far more than a high-tech exercise bicycle; it is a community of users gravitating around streaming media.

Imagine the possibilities for other product-based companies. A company that sells detergent could find new opportunities in selling “laundry as a service,” with ride-shares used for delivery. A tire manufacturer could move beyond the product alone to selling “tires as a service”: monitoring tire pressure, offering maintenance and repair, and even commercial fleet optimization, by knowing where the trucks are going and whether drivers are sticking to their assigned routes.

What makes servicization possible, of course, is instrumentation, as well as the desire for a hybrid experience that combines products and services into personalized solutions. Thus, servicization brings together all three trends in a powerful show of how technology is transforming user experiences.

 Acceleration into the Future

Hybridization, instrumentation, and servicization are less a revolution and more of an evolution, thanks to an acceleration in technology. While the pandemic was a disruptive force, in many ways it added fuel to a fire of change that was already burning.

As William Gibson observed, “The future is already here; it’s just unevenly distributed.” Now, thanks to these three trends, both disruptors and more established organizations will be able to change how we live, work, learn, and entertain ourselves. The winners will be consumers, who will dictate how, where, what, and when they consume a particular product, service, or experience.