Ten Technologies for the Future

Digital banking and electric vehicles among the top 10 disruptive innovations, according to Citi Research.

May 20, 2014

NEW YORK – What are the top 10 disruptive innovations for 2014? Citi Research has come up with technologies it says will transform the world, Business Insider reports.

“For the most part, when people think about disruptive innovation, technology is the first thing that comes to mind — smartphones, flat-screen TVs, MP3 players — things that have come on the market that have totally replaced products that we had and make us think, ‘How did we ever live without this wonderful machine?’” said Citi Research’s Kathleen Boyle in the BI report. “But disruption can be so much more than just a better way to listen to music.”

Here’s Citi’s list in no particular order.

  1. 4-D Printing. This will help people put stuff together under extreme conditions, such as using a 3-D printer “to build the object layer by layer,” and putting “intelligence” directly onto the structure.
  2. Digital Banking. Mobile banking is poised to take flight around the world. Citi predicts a jump to $447 billion from $69 billion within two years. 
  3. Digital Currency. Bitcoin and others like it will continue to make inroads as more merchants accept it as currency.
  4. Digital Marketing. While digital marketing is not new, Citi believes the growth of it will accelerate as more user data becomes available.
  5. Electric Vehicles. Citi sees a wider market for electric cars as consumers can purchase EVs at a lower price than previously available, with greater confidence in battery technology advancements.
  6. Energy Storage. Solar generated electricity has great potential for households.
  7. Immunotherapy. Immunotherapy is when a person’s immune system is “trained” to identify and then attack cancer cells. This type of treatment would mean longer periods of cancer remission and/or turning cancer into a chronic disease.
  8. Insurance Securitization. Insurance securitization would let insurers spread around their risk in securitized bundles, rather than pool their own risk separately.
  9. Precision Agriculture. From yield mapping to soil sampling to hyper-local weather detectors, technology will help farmers farm better and more productively.
  10. Robots. China is the world leader in robots, which are being used to do traditionally low-paid manual assembly labor, such as picking, inspecting or packing factory jobs.
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