HP Innovation Journal Issue 10: Fall 2018 | Page 10

HP has always had a deep-rooted passion for the future. In
recent years, the HP Megatrends initiative, spearheaded by
Shane Wall and his team, has harnessed this energy into a more
formal ongoing study of the global issues, insights and trends
that will create the opportunities and solutions of tomorrow.
These megatrends include rapid urbanization, changing
demographics, hyper globalization and accelerated innovation.
These are massive global shifts that will cause us all to start
asking new questions: How will we live fulfilling urban lives
with even fewer square feet of personal space? What will a
younger workforce mean for how we design the office of the
future? How do we secure intellectual property when goods are
shipped digitally instead of on container ships?
percentage will rise. Technology solutions must be designed to
answer these questions. At the same time,
technology must be personalized like never
before to meet the expectations of billions of
new consumers. The 2030 mantra, shaped by
megatrends, will be “Relevant to everyone,
and made for the individual.”
» Changing demographics: THE EXPERIENCE AGE IS UPON US
There will be 2.6B Gen Zers As we consider this Future of Computing, we
do so from a vantage point that is relatively
new in the long history of humans and
technology: the Experience Age. Technology
innovation launched the Industrial Age
and spawned the Information Age. And
today the Experience Age does more than
take advantage of technology for better
productivity or higher-quality products. The
Experience Age is molded by technology that
is inseparable from our lives—that adapts to
and empowers natural human behavior, work
needs and lifestyles.
A FUTURE DRIVEN BY
MEGATRENDS
» Rapid urbanization:
$8.6B people on earth by
2030; 42% will live in urban
centers by 2025, and that
in the workforce by 2025.
This new demographic is a
major factor in the growing
“Gig Economy,” already
valued at over $1T today.
» Accelerated innovation:
There will be more than 44T
GB of data available for us
to parse by 2020; this rise
is driven by connectivity,
IoT, etc., which is a double-
edged sword, as it also
leads to rising security risks:
companies will spend $90B
on security in 2018.
Innovation Journal Issue Ten
We’re still in the early days of the Experience
Age, but technology is already reshaping our
world in ways that were all but unheard of a
decade ago.
Everyone is connected, all the
time. Smartphone cameras in
every pocket inspire people to
create and share from anywhere,
anytime. We move ideas and
information between the digital
and physical worlds with the tap
of a button.
The opportunities are impressive but not
without drawbacks: After the rise of the
smartphone, now comes the growing concern
of too much screen time. With access to
always-on entertainment and information
comes the worry of digital fatigue. And with
the rise of ever-larger troves of sensitive and
personal data comes the reality of escalating
security threats.
Trying to avoid the pitfalls, there is even a
nostalgia—easily observed in millennial,
Generation X and Generation Z (Gen Z)
circles—for a return to the analog days of old:
vinyl records, knitting, artisanal goods.