Last year, author Aaron Aude wrote a post entitled, Info Synthesis and Collaboration Create a Recipe for 2014 Breakthroughs as part of Centric’s series on the Top 14 Business and Technology Trends of 2014Now, more than a year later, Aaron explores the accuracy of that prediction. 

Prediction:

Society is standing on the edge of significant breakthroughs. These breakthroughs are across a spectrum of industries such as finance, healthcare and manufacturing. What’s behind these breakthroughs, however, is fantastic and deceptively subtle – ultimately it’s collaboration and mashing disparate data sources together that will take us there.

In terms of 2014 trends, what does this mean? Consider this:

  • We’ll see many more sophisticated tools for information synthesis.
  • We’ll see a rise and adoption of real-time (non-email) collaboration between groups and organizations.
  • We’ll see increased use of predictive information models down at the individual level embedded in more processes.

Breakthrough capabilities to emerge include:

  • In healthcare and biosciences, we could see new treatments to permanently stop cancer growth through use of Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors (HDAC).
  • In retail, we could see customer purchasing through predictive modeling incorporating more disparate information.

Analysis: Prediction is correct in 2014, 2015…and beyond  

Certainly data visualizations and the tools for creating them have blossomed in 2014 and 2015. As for HDACs, there are some interesting clinical trials underway, but nothing newsworthy in the near term.