Each year my team of futurists puts together a list of big trends for the coming year. We analyze how right we were with our “15 for 2015” and compile our “16 for 2016” (they must be dreading 2030). I’m relieved to see our methods are working; in 2015 we were right on the money – and money was one of the major things to change. 2015 saw Goldman Sachs as the first financial juggernaut to invest in Bitcoin, and I started to pay my daily London commute with Apple Pay on my iWatch, along with 40% of Londoners now using contactless payments for the tube; Fintech has now entered a revolution. We also backed autonomous machines, and the US airspace applications for drones have gone from 1 in 2014 to 50 per week as we stand today (source FAA), leading to a rapid need for “drone-ports,” where I’m sure Amazon will be keen to set up a duty-free shop. Other trends we highlighted included B2B ecommerce now rising at a rate twice as fast as B2C commerce did; “women as a customer” as all industries tackle diversity head on; and one of my personal favorites, and a brave one, was policymakers and diplomats globally coming together on trade and important policies like climate change. It was good to see that we are learning to compromise, as we saw with the climate change agreement. Read our 2015 predictions and judge for yourself: http://www.forbes.com/sites/sarwantsingh/2014/12/17/top-15-trends-for-2015/
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