8 biggest tech trends predicted for 2021

At the end of the coronavirus torn year, one of the world's renowned tech experts, Scott Belsky has envisioned some tech trends to reign the forthcoming year, 2021. 

In a write up released on Business Insider recently, he shared the thoughts as a way to connect more dots, meet more founders and solicit input to further develop the ideas.

Scott Belsky is the founder of Behance, which was acquired by Adobe, where he now serves as Chief Product Officer and EVP for Creative Cloud.

1. The notion of "decentralized" is spreading to unexpected places.

Bitcoin and blockchain-powered solutions will be all the rage these days, and one side-effect is ideas for how other aspects of work and life can be decentralized, he said.

At the same time, the traditional model of central owners of community-powered utilities (marketplaces, app stores, etc.) taking a percent of everything (and central "bosses" for huge teams insisting on reviewing and approving everything) may finally be getting old.

2. Behold the era of "eduployment.

Scott Belsky projected that the process of identifying a trade, getting an education, and getting a job (or starting a company) will become fully integrated.

He envisioned that the companies will train people and then set them up in a marketplace to start getting jobs in local areas under their supervision.

Rather than enduring an expensive education only to assume the complete risk of career, the new eduployment model will give everyone skin in the game.

The vertical integration of education and employment will help address (at-scale) major systematic issues in the economy at scale while also minting a ton of new small businesses, he said.

3. A few seemingly quirky social apps will tune into the under 16 demographic's distinct approach to creation as a form of self-expression and tolerance for transparency by default.

What do these next gen social platforms share? They combine ephemeral sharing with lasting reputation building, they lean towards default transparency and with a more liberal interpretation of "privacy," and they have fewer creative constraints and are geared to reward those with the most creative self-expression, Belsky wrote.

In the category of social, he saw the rebirth of India's Gowalla as a wild social game that is still a bit under wraps.  

The he future of social is exciting and, contrary to popular belief, will not be constrained to today's dominant social networks, he added.

4. Talent will increasingly own their audience, with the rise of "channels of one" and community-as-a-service.

Gone are the days when super talented people needed to sign a contract with a TV network to break through. But the ad-supported and algorithmically-driven alternatives, like YouTube and TikTok, still have the upper hand with talent. The pursuit to "own your own audience" will be a macro trend over the coming years.

Now the Instagram and YouTube type products serve as top-of-funnel marketing initiatives. In such a world, the goal becomes simple converting everyone you reach on other platforms to your own privately owned and managed channel.

The world will see a massive acceleration of this trend in the years ahead, he said.  

5. More and more niche functions of enterprise will become multi-player, powered by a next generation of highly specialized, AI-bolstered, enterprise companies with consumerized product experiences.

From procurement and security to financial planning and design, functions of a company that were once siloed to particular teams are being transformed by SaaS tools that are collaborative-by default, easier to use, and inclusive of stakeholders across the company.

From companies like Globality for procurement, Sora for HR interactions, Meter for WiFi and IT, Welcome for hiring, closing, and onboarding new employees, there are many approaches and the list goes on. These types of products will fundamentally change how big companies operate across functions while transforming the quality of life for employees.

6. Creativity tools will be deployed across the enterprise, much like productivity tools were deployed in previous decades.

Until the age of AI, being more productive was the best way to stand out at work.

But now, as bots and algorithms supplant mundane and repetitive labor in the workplace, the benefits of human labor will shift to the skills and capabilities that are uniquely human. Chief among them: creativity.

Think compelling ways to visualize data, better ways to share a narrative with your coworkers, attractive graphics to spice up every presentation, and powerful prototypes that are worth a hundred meetings.

These capabilities will drive outperformance at work (and in school, and on social) in the coming decades, and everyone must be outfitted to make it happen.

7. New and disruptive interfaces will emerge that aggregate and connect the underlying services we use to live and work.

Some companies are now rising to the occasion, including Command E (an easy keyboard shortcut to open any document, contact, file or record from the cloud).

No doubt, all of these underlying services and resources will be stitched together, and whoever does the stitching will control the interface where we actually live, work, and make decisions, he said.

8. Another round of the Roaring '20s is ahead of us, where the pent-up desires from the pandemic will be unleashed in the form of fashion, travel, and culture-bending creative self-expression.

The post-pandemic fashion will have more fun and edge than ever before. I imagine our vaccinated selves fervently jumping back into the world through travel, fashion, parties, concerts, and meeting new people.

Our desire to fill the cultural void that has accumulated in us will result in a form of overcompensation that will make for an epic decade ahead.