Accenture's annual "Fjord Trends 2021" report identifies 7 key trends that will shape society and the business environment, and thus the technology landscape.

  • According to experts, the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic will bring innovation on an unprecedented scale, redefining the relationship between business and consumers and re-evaluating how companies think about growth.
  • The time of change will be a major challenge for companies, and strategic and operational activities will have to adapt quickly to an unstable business environment if firms are to survive and grow.

The most important trends of 2021

The past year has shown us that technology can be a powerful tool supporting human ingenuity and innovation. The groundbreaking events we have witnessed have changed our society, and consequently our needs and expectations regarding products and services. The aim of the Fjord Trends 2021 report is to present the current global technology landscape.

- The Fjord Trends report shows in which areas technologies may develop. This is not about pointing to the next technology sensu stricto after AI or cloud computing. It is about identifying the problems and challenges that technology can solve. This will have an impact on business. Companies that closely observe what is happening in the world and have decided to use technology to improve their operations, or to make changes in areas of business activity such as communication and marketing, R&D, operations and administration, or even HR, can gain a great competitive advantage in these unstable times – comments Agnieszka Kubera - Managing Director, Accenture Products.

Among the trends that most strongly affect society and business, we can mention:

  1. Collective displacement: in 2020, everything changed. The mechanism of collective displacement forced us to look for new forms and places in which we fulfill our duties and spend our free time. For many of us, the way we work, shop, learn, lead our social lives, carry out parental duties or take care of our health has changed. Brands must look for ways to offer customers new experiences and to interact with them.
  2. Home inventors: Innovation is sometimes strongly linked to technology, but increasingly it is also driven by people's talent for inventing new ways of coping with various challenges. Technology plays a key role in this process, but it less often provides ready-made solutions and increasingly acts as a factor triggering human ingenuity.
  3. The essence of teams: for many people, working from home has become a kind of living in the office, which strongly affects the mutual relations between employer and employee and many related issues. Who has the final say on how people are dressed during business video conferences held in their own homes? The future will not look the same for all employees. It is possible that the situation of employees will look different in each organization. The changes will affect four main areas in which employers have opportunities (and obligations) to introduce innovation: technology, culture, talent development and control. For now, what work will look like in the future is unclear - we are entering a space of conjecture and forecasts.
  4. The need for interaction: most people spend much more time in front of a screen in order to stay up to date with what is happening in the world. This revealed a certain template-like quality in the design of digital technology. Organizations must rethink design, content, audiences and the interactions between them in order to bring more emotion, joy and unexpected twists to digital experiences.
  5. Fluid infrastructure: the ways and places in which we buy goods and services changed significantly in 2020. Organizations must rethink their physical assets and focus on providing the most attractive customer experiences at the stage immediately preceding purchase. People expect instant gratification and a level of satisfaction from delivery comparable to what accompanied them when making a purchase in a store. Organizations can (and should) build agility and resilience into their supply chains to gain the ability to adapt quickly to change.
  6. A new dimension of empathy: people attach great importance to the values professed by brands and the way they communicate them. The pandemic shed light on many poorly functioning systems around the world, including discrimination and access to healthcare. As a result, companies must work hard on managing their communication, prioritizing the topics that matter most to them and building their activities around them.
  7. Old and new rituals: celebrating births, weddings or even spending holidays together had a significant impact on the well-being of communities. Companies have the opportunity to help people find new meaning in life by creating new rituals that will bring them joy and well-being. The starting point is understanding the void left by a lost ritual and proposing something that could replace it.

Fjord Trends 2021 report: trends for business

Every year Accenture Interactive prepares a list of trends in business, technology and design for the coming year based on suggestions submitted by our global network of designers comprising 2,000 talents from more than 40 creative agencies around the world. Fjord Trends for 2021 focus on the issue of meeting human needs by people themselves, organizations and brands. The full report is available at this site.

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Accenture is a global company providing professional services in digital technology, cloud computing and security. Thanks to the extensive experience and specialist knowledge of our experts from more than 40 industries, we offer services in the areas of: Strategy & Consulting, Interactive, Technology and Operations, using the world's largest network of advanced technology and intelligent operations centers. We employ 514,000 employees fulfilling a complex promise in the area of technology development and human ingenuity, serving clients in more than 120 countries. Accenture uses innovation to create value and shared success for clients, partners and communities. In Poland, Accenture offices are located in Warsaw, Krakow, Lodz, Wroclaw and Katowice. They employ more than 6,000 employees. Visit our website and learn more: www.accenture.com.