The Top Technology Trends | Churchill Club

In this fast-paced world, technology innovations are vital to the economic growth and enrichment of human possibilities. With this in mind, it is imperative to identify what new technology trends will emerge over the next several years and the outcome of their implications. This is a question Churchill Club’s popular Top 10 Tech Trends event has covered well over the years. This year, the 21st annual event was held on May 16th in Santa Clara, Californi. The attendees from Infogain included CEO Sunil Bhatia, Peter Shumaker, Tony Sturgeon, and their guests.

Founded by Rich Karlgaard, now publisher of Forbes magazine and Tony Perkins, former editor-in-chief of AlwaysOn, the Churchill Club adheres to the belief that igniting conversations will strengthen innovation, economic growth and societal benefit. The event is Silicon Valley's top independent thought leadership forum, hosting forums global leaders, senior business and tech professionals, investors, entrepreneurs, academics and media. At the first meeting in 1985, mobile devices were predicted to become a ubiquitous part of our lives.

Each year Churchill Club invites key people to present two trends each that show promise of growth over the next five years. These trends are polled by the audience, and a winner is chosen. This year's event featured Lauren Kolodny of Aspect Ventures, Rebecca Lynn of Canvas Ventures, Navin Chaddha of Mayfield, Jeff Crowe of Norwest Venture Partners and Brian Ascher of Venrock.

Here is a quick snapshot of the top technology trends as presented by Churchill Club, in the order of votes they accrued at the event.

  1. The Renaissance of Silicon Will Create Industry Giants by Navin Chaddha, 79% agreed with this trend. With the rise of tech and industry demands, and the redundancy of Moore’s Law, new semiconductors are required for a Cloud-native, Data- dominated, AI-powered, IoT world. This trend will see a rise in new players who will address the growing demands
  2. Federal Defense and Intelligence Budgets Will Dramatically Unlock for Start-ups by Brian Ascher, 69% agreed with this trend. Start-ups will fill the gap that has been created by traditional military industrial contractors with their lack the software skills and agility to counter the threat, while big tech companies are held back by picketing employees.
  3. Biology as Technology Will Reinvent Trillion Dollar Industries by Navin Chaddha, 60% agreed with this trend. Biology as Technology to reinvent trillion-dollar industries in food, fuels, materials, diagnostics, therapeutics, computers and more.
  4. Flexible Fertility Management Will Become Mainstream by Lauren Kolodny, 57% agreed with this trend. This trend talks about the changing mindset on when and how people will have families; the fact that there are more situations and choices now; a woman choosing to have kids later, same-sex couples, etc.
  5. Rise of Functional Medicine by Rebecca Lynn, 54% agreed with this trend. The trend predicts an increase in one-stop shop companies that facilitate functional medicine and do more than just provide diet or supplements but create packaged actionable results based on diagnostics, diet and diagnosis.
  6. Distributed Workforces Will Become the Norm by Rebecca Lynn, 53% agreed with this trend. Companies to have a global presence without the need to travel. This will be facilitated by collaboration software like Notion, Zoom, etc., turning eastern Europe and the Balkans as hubs for outsourcing, which in turn will create domestic tech industries over the next 20 years.
  7. Digital Technology Makes Positive (!) Inroads on Mental Health by Jeff Crowe, 53% agreed with this trend. An interesting trend, it presented machine learning based therapy for people who are always online, using smartphones frenetically. Texting with your remote therapist to machine learning unique combinations of therapeutic problem/response, digital Technology democratizes access to effective mental health treatment.
  8. Physical Space: The Final Frontier Jeff Crowe, 51% agreed with this trend. Jeff spoke about how physical spaces are utilized. Technology will change the way real estate is consumed, making buying and selling an easier and simpler process.
  9. A Democratized Network of Trust by Lauren Kolodny, 38% agreed with this trend. A massive network of verified identity will make our digital activities more seamless and secure. This network will connect new clearinghouses that verify our most important attributes without unnecessary redundancy.
  10. VR-AI-Bioelectronic Wearables Program Our Emotions in Healthful and Intentional Ways by Brian Ascher, 30% agreed with this trend. The trend presented the case for immersive, non-invasive wearables that bio-hack us into states of relaxation, mindfulness, and peak performance. It also removes the unhealthy addiction to the dopamine hits of social media.

We thank our guests for attending the Churchill Event with us.

We are looking forward to watching these trends unfold and are excited about the next set of trends.

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