Big Ideas for 2018

The biggest challenges in defining big ideas for next year are twofold:

1) Are the ideas big enough?

2) Are those ideas really achievable in next one year?

However, neither of these challenges can stop any enthusiast from going ahead and predicting the ideas for next year. If analysts can predict ideas/trends year after year, why can’t you as a practitioner? And when Linkedin prodded me to publish my take on #BigIdeas2018, there is absolutely no reason to shy away. So here are my ideas — the streams that in all likelihood would be impacting Indian BFSI Industry in 2018 in a big way.

1. More AI: While Narayanmurthy (of Infosys) has reasons to believe that AI is overhyped, I do have reasons to believe that Artificial Intelligence is going to be much bigger than what we have imagined so far. The Indian BFSI industry is just scrapping the surface. The use cases would start getting built with higher frequency in the days to come helping the customers more.
2. More automation: Automation is not something new. Technology industry lives and breathes automation every day. However, the approach of automation has changed with the introduction of Robotic process automation. The traditional way of building interfaces, integration layer and so on would continue to stay, but the pace of automation would pick up with RPA. Quick turnarounds using RPA tools would be the flavor of 2018.
3. Digital assistants/humanoids/bots/chatbots: Millenials in UK are apparently more likely to date a humanoid than a Homo Sapiens of opposite gender, which shows the rate of adoption of bot/humanoid is going beyond expectation. Customer service, IT automation, Self-helpdesk would be the primary targets of 2018. More players would come up beyond the select few banks / FIs and more customer-focused real use cases would be built up during the course of the year. Going beyond the initial glitz and public relations exercise would be key to success in 2018.
4. Blockchain: Unlike digital assistant/automation/AI, blockchain would require a strong support from a central body (it’s funny that a decentralized ledger would require a centralized body for increased adoption) or consortium to build a consensus amongst the practitioners. Early shoots are visible from countries like Dubai, which is going towards Blockchain in a big way. While Indian blockchain players would continue to look for the tipping point, 2018 would need to see more use cases which are closer to business and goes beyond KYC and smart contract only.

2018 would also see human touch to be back in demand. These are early days of robots/automation/digital assistants/AI, But questions have already started popping up about the job market for next-gen.

Historians and philosophers have started warning about the rise of an un-working class, who would not be ready for any job with the level of sophistication going up every day. While the debate about the positive and negative side of AI would continue to evoke strong emotions amongst the tech giants, there would be an undercurrent from the job-protection angle, which would try to slow the automation path down to some extent.

The large, tech-matured but human-heavy organizations would continue to have this debate internally, while the newer nimble organizations would continue to push the envelope towards more automation and a human-less business experience in 2018.

Wish you all a very happy 2018!