The days when you can learn a trade and stick to it throughout life are long gone. You might not change careers seven times or even five times but you can expect your work to change. Advertising channels rise and fall. Content that worked once loses its effect. Televisions become smart and screens becomes wall-sized, pocket-sized, and foldable.
With each of those changes comes opportunities. As old industries fade away, new ones rise up and take their place, offering fast routes to the top for people smart enough to spot their chance and lead the field. Here are five new industries now showing powerful signs of life—and how you can make them work for you.
- New Social Media
The last few years have been dominated by the rise of social media platforms. Facebook has more than 2.3 billion active users. Instagram, which Facebook owns, topped a billion monthly users in June 2018. Twitter is far smaller but as the communication channel of choice for the Commander in Chief, is now required viewing for anyone who follows politics. The industry is also lucrative. Facebook alone is worth nearly $475 billion.
And yet the industry appears to be in crisis. Facebook is saturated. User growth has stalled. The platform added just two million users in North America and five million users in Europe in the last quarter of 2018. Most of the people who want to join the site have already done so. At the same time, the platforms are now facing strong regulatory and popular headwinds. Governments are considering new laws to force platforms to take down violent content. Facebook recently dodged a lawsuit levied by shareholders after the company lost $50 billion in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Twitter is plagued by trolls and streams of outrage, and people have started noticing strange things in the content that YouTube’s algorithms offer children.
Each of those sites looks like a giant today. But the same was once true, to differing extents, of MySpace, Orkut, Google Plus, and Vine. None of today’s social media platforms has a guaranteed future.
At the same time, we’re already beginning to see the rise of a new kind of social media. China’s platforms developed in an environment surrounded by a firewall and protected from Facebook and Instagram. Without that competition, they’ve become far more than places to stalk exes or follow brands. Apps like WeChat and Weibo are complete ecosystems used to pay for goods and services, book flights, call taxis, and make investments as well as share images and updates. It’s social media in China that is partly responsible for the growth of a cashless economy in that country.
That development has largely been ignored in the West. Although the Chinese firewall only blocks influence in one direction, Chinese appmakers have done a poor job of penetrating US and European markets. Or they did until the rise of Douyin.
A short video-sharing platform, owned by a Beijing-based AI firm called ByteDance, Douyin is a cross between Vine and Instagram. It’s filled with user-generated videos in which participants typically do strange things. They lip-sync to popular tunes but also create new dance memes and riff off each other’s visual Internet jokes. It’s strangely addictive.
The platform has more than 500 million users in China and since buying Musical.ly in 2017 for more than $800 million, it’s also built a following in the US where it’s known as TikTok. The app has been undergoing a huge growth spurt, especially in India. In December 2018, TikTok added 75 million new users, nearly three times the number it added the previous December. It was the fourth most downloaded app worldwide in 2018.
The attraction of TikTok is simple: it’s fun. It has none of Twitter’s anger. It doesn’t collect massive amounts of user data like Facebook does. The AI that governs the recommendation algorithm does a good job of feeding more videos to the stream without users having to look for them. It entertains. It’s been described as “Instagram for the mobile video age.”
The rapid rise of TikTok has shown that there is still an appetite for user-generated content shared on social platforms. It’s also shown that the current platforms are vulnerable. A savvy outsider can rise quickly, build a following, and pull users away from an established company.
It’s possible that one day TikTok and any other service that follows its simple model will run into the same challenges that have bedeviled Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. As its user base grows, it will need to move faster to filter content and manage takedown requests. It will have to balance demands from advertisers for demographic data against users’ growing concerns about privacy. It has already shown that it can take a slack approach to intellectual property, and US audiences are unlikely to accept the censorship that characterizes Chinese social media.
But social media has to change, and the direction of that change is likely to be towards the environment created on the other side of the Pacific. Social media will become more managed, less personal, more fun. It might also start to develop the kinds of additional services that Mark Zuckerberg has so long envied. Instagram has already started experimenting with in-app brand purchases.
Now though is the time to understand what kind of content works best on those platforms. Brands struggled with Snapchat. They’ll need to set up processes to quickly identify and act on the new memes bubbling through TikTok while maintaining authenticity. They’ll need to be able to identify each new platform’s rising talent, and they’ll need ways of working with less user data.
Companies and suppliers that keep an eye on those new platforms and understand how they operate will find themselves in high demand.
- Fintech
For anyone currently involved in social media, tracking the rise of new social media solutions will feel largely familiar. Much of the paradigm will remain. Brands will still have to create engaging content and build an audience. What will change will be the nature of the content and the ability to reach audiences with less personal data. They’ll also need to get to grips with the ability to make deals within the platform itself, and they’ll need to know which strategies work best to land those conversions. Much of that work is already taking place in China.
Developments in fintech present a much more complex challenge—and a much bigger opportunity.
Bitcoin hasn’t turned out to be the world’s replacement reserve currency. It’s still too volatile to function as a form of exchange, while the limitations built into its blockchain protocol have given it a scalability problem that has proved to be intractable. Alternative coins have turned out to be little better. You’re still no more likely to walk into a store and pay with Litecoin than you are with Bitcoin. Even at Overstock, one of the first retailers to accept Bitcoin and whose founder Patrick Byrne is a strong believer in cryptocurrencies, digital coins make up just 0.2 percent of sales. The company converts half into fiat immediately and only holds about $200,000 in cryptocurrency.
But while Bitcoin might not be the answer, the financial sector still has plenty of questions. Users are shifting away from bank branches and towards mobile applications. They expect to be able to manage their investments, deposit checks, and complete transactions instantaneously. According to Accenture, nearly $100 billion has been invested in fintech projects since 2010.
If the results of those investments are hard to see that’s partly down to the nature of the service, and partly down to the environment in which the fintech sector operates. When a new service comes online, such as Venmo, it looks little different to other transaction services. We don’t see the work that takes place behind the scenes to process the financial transfer, preserve customer data, and safeguard the assets. Asked why so many fintech ideas stall at the proof of concept phase, financial executives mentioned the need for regulatory compliance and security. Fintech executives however, talked about a lack of employees, insufficient funds, and a lack of alignment between use cases and product roadmaps.
Those challenges represent opportunities. The fintech sector might be awash with investor money but it needs people who understand financial regulations and security issues as well as blockchain technology and coding. Artificial intelligence knowledge and the ability to understand data are also in demand in fintech. But there’s also plenty of room for lawyers, tax experts and people with experience on Wall Street or in banks.
None of these skills comes easily. An understanding of how to speed up arbitrage in the derivatives markets doesn’t come quickly. But for those who have that knowledge—and for the people who can support them—fintech will be a growing sector.
- Artificial Intelligence
ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, doesn’t describe itself as a social media firm. It calls itself an AI firm. Founder Zhang Yiming founded ByteDance in 2012 with the aim of combining artificial intelligence with the mobile internet. For users and for marketers, it’s the content on TikTok that suggests we’re heading into a new social media era. For technologists though, it’s the technology that delivers that content that matters the most.
Like fintech, money is pouring into the industry. A report by KPMG predicts that investment in AI, machine learning, and robotic process automation technology will reach $232bn by 2025. That money is being used to crunch the massive amounts of data generated as we drive and use the Internet and operate mobile devices.
But the industry is new. The data that companies have collected is now sufficient to start analyzing but graduates with the necessary skills to make sense of that data are still lacking. According to an article in Tech Republic, the number of job postings with “AI” or “machine learning” made on Indeed, a jobs site, doubled between June 2015 and June 2018. Most of those jobs were for “machine learning engineers” and “data scientists.” Some 41 percent of those jobs were still open after two months.
The difficulty of finding people who can crunch the data and turn the numbers into algorithms is reflected in the salaries offered for those jobs. A research engineer starts at $71,600 while a data scientist earns $130,503. Rise to become a director of analytics, and you can expect to earn an average of $140,837.
Grabbing a share of those salaries isn’t straightforward. This isn’t a matter of keeping an eye on content, judging engagement, and testing different ideas on new platforms. It’s a technical, computer-oriented industry that demands programming skills.
But it is something that you can learn yourself—which is great because there is a shortage of accredited courses that lead to diplomas in artificial intelligence.
To be ready for the growing demand in AI skills, you’ll need to know Python and SQL. You’ll need to understand probability theory, statistics, and data science. Once you’ve picked up some of that knowledge, you can start practicing on sites like scikit-learn so that when you apply for a job or pitch on a project, you’ll be able to point to real AI applications that you’ve created.
All of that will take time, and it still might not be enough to land an actual job creating artificial intelligence.
What it will do though is help you to understand what AI does and what it demands. That already puts you ahead of most of your competition. AI firms might need skilled data scientists, but they also need marketers and strategists and consultants who can help them get where they want to go. They’re more likely to hire businesses who understand their industry for those services than companies that don’t.
Artificial intelligence is already here. Demand for people with AI skills already outstrips demand. You might not want to get elbow-deep in data but if you can understand what’s involved in manipulating it and using it, you can take a slice of a growing market.
- LED Lighting
A new era in social media is only now starting to show its first buds. Fintech has a lot of promise but it’s also had a stuttering start as ideas run into regulations. Artificial intelligence is felt but rarely seen. One new development that depends on a technology that’s now approaching maturity is LEDs.
Light emitting diodes have been around for more than fifty years but it’s only now that they’re hitting the mainstream. Buy a new car and the headlamps will be LEDs. The streetlights on the side of the road may well be LEDs, as will the lighting in your house. A 2016 report by Goldman Sachs stated that the short lifespans of what it called “legacy lamps” suggests that “lighting globally will shift almost exclusively to LEDs sometime in the 2020s, marking one of the fastest technology shifts in human history.”
LEDs use about 15 percent of the energy of incandescent bulbs but if LEDs were only about saving energy, there would be little more to say about them. In fact, they do much more than emit light in an efficient way. They can also emit light in different colors and in different strengths, and on command.
Phillips, one of the pioneers of LED technology, has already developed Hue, a smart lighting system that allows users to control their lights and the color of those lights from an app. You can use voice assistants such as Siri and Google Assistant to turn on the light in the bedroom while you’re sitting in the living room or driving home. The lights can work with third party products such as security cameras and smart doorbells for extra security, and adjust light levels throughout the day so that you wake up in one light, work in an another, and read in a third.
Outside the home, businesses are experimenting with the right LED tones for agriculture, retail, and healthcare.
All of those represent new opportunities for people with expertise in lighting and electronics. But interior and product designers should also be making use of the new lights and, at the very least, business owners should be wondering how their lighting levels affect productivity. Any makers of hardware should be aware of how LEDs work, and how they can either incorporate them into their own products or allow their products to work with third party lighting systems.
Whether you’re making lighting products or implementing lighting products, the development of LEDs gives businesses an opportunity to add a new level of functionality and productivity to their goods.
- The Experience Industry
Shopping has changed. Ecommerce continues to grow, eating into the sales of bricks and mortar stores. Online retail now makes up nearly 10 percent of all US retail spending, a change in consumer habits that has had an effect on malls and city centers. Chains as familiar as Macy’s, Toys “R” Us, and J.C. Penney have all announced closures in the last couple of years; in August 2018, as the economy boomed, the US saw a ten-year high in the closure of retail space.
The effect of the rise of online shopping, though, has been uneven. Industries whose goods can easily be bought online, such as music, books, and electronics, have felt the greatest pressure. Car sales, groceries, and jewelry have fared better.
But while some businesses have responded by improving their online services and shrinking their real world footprints, others have tried to reinvent the retail experience. When Apple opened its stores, the company deliberately created an entirely new kind of experience, swapping shelves and desks for long tables at which customers could try products, guided by informed sellers. In January 2019, Apple announced the expansion of its Today at Apple sessions, in-store creative and fitness lessons that help customers to make the most of their purchases. People who take part in those sessions aren’t just buying a box of electronics. They’re enjoying a memorable experience in which the services function as the stage and the goods as props.
The idea isn’t entirely new. Hard Rock Café and Planet Hollywood have long turned dining from a need into a form of entertainment, combining the restaurant and game park experiences. Writing in the Harvard Business Review as long ago as 1998, B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore, authors of The Experience Economy, described an episode in the television show Taxi. Iggy, a terrible but appealing cab driver, set out to become the best taxi driver in the world by adding city tours and Frank Sinatra songs to his rides. In the show, customers gave him bigger tips and even asked him to keep driving around the block. Today, Uber drivers attempt to give their customers more than a journey from A to B to ensure that they land positive reviews. Retail stores and other sellers who can add memorable experiences to their offerings can stand out and beat off the appeal of online shopping.
Unlike AI and LED technologies, taking part in this new industry doesn’t require specialist training. It only needs an awareness of the importance of the customer experience. If your business serves other businesses, keeping that customer experience in mind and emphasizing to clients the memorability of the experience can help to win new work. And if your business is battling the endless rise of Amazon and other online sellers then you will need to focus on giving your customers experiences so that they don’t just want to buy from you but enjoy buying from you.
Industries always change. Mechanics have replaced blacksmiths. Software programmers have replaced the human calculators once employed by NASA. The industries rising today represent a range of opportunities and differing degrees of demand. Some industries, such as fintech and AI, require some very special training and knowledge. Others, such as new social media, experiences and even LED lighting are also open to creative types who can think of original ways to make use of the new opportunities.
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