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It’s good to be nostalgic every so often. It lets you look at your journey, take pride in your successes and learn from your losses. It’s part of enjoying life – both personally and professionally. However, don’t spend too long looking back because it’s what you do with the future that counts most. That’s how to kick off the new year with more bang than a fireworks finale over a capital city.

With that in mind, we have been rifling through interviews with prominent entrepreneurs and looking at the predictions of industry shapers to see which big ideas and trends will make the biggest impacts next year. Know what they are and adopt them into your operations and you’ll find that you’ll stay ahead of the curve – and your customers will love you for it.

  1. A Fragmented Cloud

The cloud has taken the world of business by storm and that won’t stop being the case. However, what we will see is more and more managed service providers, like those at http://forsythes.technology, start to drop the term cloud in favor of ‘microservices’, moving into realms where they offer much more tailored solutions. This will be good for businesses looking to scale with less risk and more efficiency.

  1. Sharing Is Caring

We haven’t seen any major disruptions on this front in a couple of years now. So there must be a major wave on its way, possibly in the financial sector, insurance or healthcare – all of which are ripe for picking according to https://www.morganstanley.com. Amazon did it to retail. Uber did it to taxis.  Zipcar did it to hires. Google has done it to services and Airbnb did it to hospitality. Something is coming and you need to jump on it when it does.

  1. Market To The Individual

One of the biggest shifts in any area of business is this idea of personalized marketing. This is the future and there is absolutely no stopping it. The good news is, you don’t need to be reactionary on this front and wait for the latest tech to come out; you can get ahead by no longer using stock imagery, swapping generic nurturing campaigns for something else and training your staff to be much more personal when calling customers. It will all make a huge difference, especially with millennials.

  1. Intelligence Will Be More Artificial

The Internet of Things has started to climb rapidly and where it will go is becoming more and more understood – even if we are a long way away from understanding its full potential. That said, machine learning and this idea of Blockchain are looking to be the two most prominent areas of innovation. They may only be concepts heading into the new year, but they will make an impact, we believe.

  1. Security Matters Most

The world has gone so technological. With it, comes a new need for extra security. This has partly to do with the IoT and partly because dedicated security operations will help boost your business’ detection and response efforts. Cyber attacks are now a real threat and data is more valuable than ever; so make sure you focus on this in 2018.