McKinsey recently released their 2023 Technology Trends Outlook. The list is pretty similar to last year's, which we also covered.
The one big difference from last year, unsurprisingly, is the addition of generative AI. The other 14 trends on this year's list are repeats from last year.
McKinsey has, in our opinion, one of the better descriptions of generative AI:
"Generative AI can automate, augment, and accelerate work by tapping into unstructured mixed-modality data sets to enable the creation of new content in various forms, such as text, video, code, and even protein sequences."
Although generative AI is new to their trends list this year, McKinsey, like everyone else, is forecasting it to have a significant economic impact. Key quote:
"Generative AI is poised to add as much as $4.4 trillion in economic value from a combination of specific use cases and more diffuse uses—such as assisting with email drafts—that increase productivity."
McKinsey ranks the trends on three metrics:
- Innovation: based on related patents and research efforts
- Interest in the technology: based on recent news and web searches.
- Amount of investment in the technology in 2022 (size of bubble in the chart)
McKinsey also provides an adoption rate score for each technology.
As the McKinsey chart below shows (click to enlarge), applied AI is the leading technology with a high innovation score and relatively strong interest and investment scores.
Looking closely, you will find generative AI bottom-left on the chart. And if you were rank-order the technologies, generative AI would come in 14th out of 15, just edging ahead of quantum technologies.
The McKinsey article provides a detailed analysis of each of the 15 technologies on their list.
We like McKinsey's approach because they go beyond just looking at the technology and include data on the drivers of adoption.
Anyone interested in tech trends will find McKinsey's list well worth reading. In addition to the summary, there is a more comprehensive 81-page report.
