by Brianna Crandall — March 20, 2015—The Visionary Innovation team in growth partnership company Frost & Sullivan has been scouting and monitoring new mega trends and their impact on convergence in the future, including areas that affect various aspects of facilities and the technology increasingly used to run them.
According to Frost & Sullivan, the journey to visionary innovation begins by understanding new areas of convergence. As a part of its Visionary Innovation program, Frost & Sullivan has identified 4 types of convergence: Products, Technologies, Industries and Competition. An integral factor for growth for companies is to understand the landscape of new convergence areas and subsequent opportunities that could be generated in the future, says F&S.
According to Archana Amarnath, global director of the Visionary Innovation Group, “Companies are beginning to understand the importance of convergence. We see many players such as Google moving out of their traditional business areas to form new partnerships and new solutions. Customers no longer are interested in silo-based apps or services. They demand holistic, end-to end solutions of their connected life and for that to materialize, we will see a lot more partnerships between Energy, Security, IT, Healthcare, Automotive, and other sectors. ”
Many of the connected living solutions in the future will be a lot more evolved to converge various aspects of users’ home, work and city environments. Telecom players such as AT&T and Deutsche Telekom have understood the power of convergence in their connected home platforms called “Digital Life” and “QIVICON,” respectively. In the future, telecom players are best positioned to provide converging solutions even beyond physical home environment including areas of connected work and other aspects of a city as well, according to the report.
Convergence solutions will not be isolated to connected home or work environments alone. On a macro side, the report indicates that the convergence of different solutions within a city will be a lot more integrated and intelligent than is seen today.
Intelligent mobility platforms and services, for example will need integration of players from the transport, banking, mobile phone/telecom and financial sectors to converge and form a singular intelligent solution for cities. This in turn will lead to multiple options and applications with big data analytics providing an additional interesting angle.
A lot of cities and companies are already evolving their business models to mirror aspects of convergence, points out the report. Many smart cities globally have adopted integrated urban solutions as a part of their overall smart city framework that encompasses all sectors/industries within a city. The Amsterdam Smart City Consortium is a good example of how a city has rebuilt its smart city framework to integrate various sectors and projects within its city.
Identifying new convergence areas will additionally stimulate the development of new business models. Convergence will be a driving factor for companies scouting for new areas of innovation, providing a lot of scope for new product development.
“A lot of this convergence will be driven by connectivity,” says Amarnath. “Key aspects such as proliferation of connected devices, smart city solutions, and social factors would also drive convergence. Social trends, like aging societies for example, would demand specific solutions around assisted living—an area that a lot of telecom players are actively looking at,” she added.
The report concludes that connectivity and convergence will have a massive impact on business, society and personal lives. Most importantly, the future of all industries will be defined by the impact and adoption of connectivity. As connectivity continues to drive convergence, companies will need to identify those adjacent, periphery products and services that could be added as a part of their portfolio in the future. This will define new solutions, new customers, and even new partnerships and competition.
