Right now, the big thing is convenience. We want everything now. And we want it everywhere. Complete portability and instant access. There’s a lot of money to be made by being the most convenient.
And when convenience becomes ubiquitous, the next big thing will be personalization. Everywhere you want to be, instantly and exactly how you want it. Forward-thinking companies are already pushing this. And if convenience was big, personalization will be huge.
And when personalization becomes the norm…then what? What’s the next (next) big thing?
Maybe it’s exclusivity. Things that are inherently limited.
If everyone has universal access to every piece of music ever recorded, than live music takes on a special value. In a world where everything lasts forever, this performance will only happen once. This is already true, of course, but it might become relatively more valuable in the future.
There’s already a movement of authors pretty much giving away their books and making money from speaking events and small-scale training seminars.
On the manufacturing side, even as customization becomes the norm, perhaps a new elite will form around, oddly, non-customization and, well, inconvenience. Imagine a car designed not for you (like every other car will be) but by an artist pursuing his own vision. Just like how Frank Lloyd Wright insisted residents of his houses used the furniture and decorations he designed for those houses.
The next big thing can’t be conceived yet. Only very few people are gifted or lucky enough to figure out what the next big thing is. The Internet caught on, and now my phone has a faster connection than the good ole 14.4 modem. Using existing things in a new arrangement is the name of the game.
I would propose that the next big thing is a return to where we were – more self-sufficient, locally and family focused, less keen on taking on debt and saving more – before we as a society began to worship the almighty dollar. Somewhere, developers will catch on, and figure out how to profit.
I don’t know that it’s possible to return to where we were. We are shaped by our environment, and as the environment continues to evolve, so do we. Maybe your predictions will come true, but if they do, I’d say they’d come true in a permutation we haven’t seen before.