Each week Nikolas Badminton, Futurist Speaker, summarizes the top-5 future looking developments and news items that I find to be inspiring, interesting, concerning, or downright strange. Each day he reads through dozens of blogs and news websites to find those things that we should be aware of.
In Future Trends – The Best 2017 Predictions we look at some of the best articles circulating the web at the end of 2016 that look to predict what will happen in 2017 and beyond.

Top 17 Tech Trends For 2017

Every year, the team of futurists, analysts, and consultants in Frost & Sullivan’s Visionary Innovation Group takes a pause from looking at 10-year horizons and comes together to identify the trends that will make the biggest impact in the coming year.
Looking at our predictions from last year, we were particularly accurate in our assertions regarding the Fintech revolution, augmented reality, the cyber battlefront, millennial power, online marketplaces, and a jobless future. 2016 saw Fintech market revenues double and the explosion of augmented reality with global Pokémon GO mania. Next year we expect augmented reality to play a more prominent role in B2B applications. On the cyber battlefront, we predicted that governments and corporations would face increasing cyber security and cyber policy struggles. This played out in the US election as outside forces contributed hacked information to the campaign discourse. Millennials wielded their power, also bringing a show of force to the US election with the unexpected rise of Bernie Sanders. Online marketplaces continued to make gains, with online “click” sales outpacing growth of in-store “brick” sales, and B2B launches such as BMW’s online parts marketplace in Germany. We saw the dragon stumble and the elephant run; China’s growth slowed to less than 7%, and India saw good growth and strong policies addressing red tape with demonetization. As for a jobless future, the world saw increased inquiry into the implications of a universal basic income, political focus on loss of jobs due to automation, and the mobilization of blue-collar workers in the US and UK to protect their jobs.
Read more at Forbes

17 for ’17: Microsoft researchers on what to expect in 2017 and 2027

One issue sometimes cited for the dearth of women in computing fields is the lack of professional role models who could inspire girls to pursue their STEM dreams.  We’ve attempted to counteract this by asking 17 women within Microsoft’s global research organization their views on what’s likely to occur in their fields in 2017.  Since it’s prediction season, we also asked them to tell us what’s likely happen 10 years from now.
We hope you’ll enjoy their breadth of knowledge and also take a moment to share this feature on your social networks.  If that simple act of sharing inspires just one more girl or boy to pursue their STEM passions, you will have contributed to the spirit of the week.
Read more at the Microsoft Blog

Health care stocks to lose 50% — and 9 other ‘outrageous’ analyst predictions

How does a 100% rally in Italian banks sound? Or U.S. health care stocks plunging 50%? Or maybe even the U.K. bailing on Brexit?
Sound outrageous? Well, while most analysts keep their crystal-balling for next year in tight ranges, Saxo Bank has 10 unlikely events that could rattle investors in 2017.
Of course, they aren’t Saxo Bank’s main calls for 2017.

The Copenhagen-based bank has made a tradition out of publishing outlandish outlooks each year. Chief economist Steen Jakobsen points out that this season’s prediction reflect how the past year has exceeded what most people imagined.
“After a year in which reality has managed to surpass even seemingly unlikely calls — with the Brexit surprise and the U.S. election outcome — the common theme for our Outrageous Predictions for 2017 is that desperate times call for desperate actions,” Jakobsen said.
“With change always happening in times of crisis, 2017 may be a wake-up call which sees a real departure from the ‘business as usual, both in central bank expansionism and government austerity policies which have characterized the post-2009 crisis,” he added.
Read more at Marketwatch

Whole Foods Predicts These Foods Will Be All the Rage in 2017

On Tuesday, Whole Foods released its predictions for 2017’s hottest food trends—a list that’s compiled by experts who track consumer behavior at more than 400 of the chain’s stores.
One of the more colorful food trends of the new year is “purple everything,” the company says, such as purple asparagus, purple cauliflower, and purple sweet potatoes, among others. And environmentally-friendly shoppers will be happy to know that Whole Foods predicts that food made from byproducts—whether it’s leftover whey from strained Greek yogurt or spent grains from beer—will be trendy, too.
 
Read more at FORTUNE

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Nikolas Badminton is a world-respected futurist speaker that researches, speaks, and writes about the future of work, how technology is affecting the workplace, how workers are adapting, the sharing economy, and how the world is evolving. He appears at conferences in Canada, USA, UK, and Europe. Email him to book him for your radio, TV show, or conference.