As happens at the end of every year, editorial teams at publications and websites dust off their crystal balls, and interview knowledgable experts, to outline the coming trends in their areas of coverage.
For this piece, I collected 78 articles or reports in total across 21 industries. These ranged from the Deloitte’s annual tech trends report to Pantone’s choice of the “color of the year” to a PhocusWire post on hospitality trends. With a little assistance from Anthropic’s Claude, I was able to mine those reports. Of course, it found obvious themes common to about every sector like, “AI and genAI agents will accelerate,” “digital transformation continues,” or “sustainability remains a key imperative.”
I offer this meta trend analysis as an innovation holiday gift — a stocking full of insightful nuggets from the world of trade pubs and consultancies that we hope can fuel your work for the coming year.
Industry-Specific Predictions
1. Grocery, Restaurants & Food/Beverage
- Focus on ingredient quality and transparency becoming paramount
- Emphasis on clean labels and real ingredients with no added sugars
- Rise of functional foods (e.g., prebiotics, pressed juices)
- Increased consumer interest in sustainable food options
- Innovation in personalized nutrition solutions
2. Hospitality
- Shift toward hyper-segmentation of guest experiences
- Enhanced personalization of environments and services
- Evolution of informal lodging concepts
- Integration of AI-driven guest services
- Focus on demographic-specific amenities and experiences
3. Manufacturing & Advanced Machinery
- 93 percent of middle-market manufacturers confident about growth
- Key challenges identified:
- Supply chain disruptions (52 percent concerned)
- Rising business costs (35 percent concerned)
- High interest rates (26 percent concerned)
- Increased adoption of automation and AI technologies
- Focus on sustainability in manufacturing processes
4. Higher Education & EdTech
- Major transformation expected through GenAI technologies
- Widespread adoption of agentic AI in education
- Enhanced research support through AI integration
- Shift toward more refined digital learning experiences
- Convergence of multiple factors creating significant industry change
5. Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)
- Market expected to reach $245 billion by 2030
- Strong focus on personalization strategies
- Emphasis on consumer loyalty programs
- Response to price sensitivity
- Integration of AI for consumer insights
6. Energy & Chemicals
- Continued recovery and production level increases
- Focus on cost-reduction and margin improvement
- Significant investment in decarbonization
- Innovation in sustainable processes
- Balancing short-term and long-term goals
7. Marketing & eCommerce
- Shift toward algorithmic-driven media ecosystem
- Full addressability and accountability in media
- AI integration in content creation and planning
- Growth of niche online communities
- Evolution of retail media networks
8. Space & Aerospace
- Advanced AI/ML integration in space operations
- Development of proliferated satellite constellations
- Focus on space-based 5G networks
- Advancement in nuclear space propulsion
- Enhanced climate and weather monitoring capabilities
9. Social Media & Consumer
- Increased focus on data privacy and ownership
- Shift in platform polarization dynamics
- Enhanced privacy safeguards as competitive advantage
- Evolution of microblogging platforms
- Adaptation to increasing regulation
10. Information Technology
- AI integration across all technology sectors
- Focus on sustainable technology solutions
- Enhanced cybersecurity measures
- Cloud computing advancement
- Digital transformation acceleration
11. Freight & Logistics
- Implementation of real-time tracking systems
- Integration of blockchain technology
- Enhanced 5G technology utilization
- Focus on last-mile delivery optimization
- Increased automation and robotics adoption
12. Banking & Finance
- Adaptation to low-growth environment
- Changes in deposit costs affecting interest income
- Focus on noninterest income for growth
- Expected normalization of credit quality
- Enhanced digital banking solutions
13. Healthcare & Hospitals
- Increased focus on digital health integration
- Emphasis on personalized medicine
- Enhanced patient experience through technology
- Focus on operational efficiency
- Evolution of care delivery models
14. Insurance & InsurTech
- Industry transformation through technology
- Market growth to $86 trillion by 2025
- Focus on product design innovation
- Enhanced customer experience
- Integration of AI in risk assessment
15. Engineering & Construction
- Optimistic outlook for construction firms
- Focus on productivity improvement
- Integration of new technologies
- Emphasis on sustainable construction
- Enhanced project management systems
16. IT & Physical Security
- Enhanced remote video monitoring capabilities
- Advanced AI-based security systems
- Improved low-light security capabilities
- Focus on false alarm reduction
- Integration of cloud-based security solutions
17. News & Journalism
- Evolution of digital media products
- Focus on responsible journalism
- Language and communication adaptation
- Integration of AI in news production
- Enhanced digital storytelling approaches
18. Media & Telecom
- AI-driven content creation and distribution
- Focus on streaming optimization
- Enhanced personalization of content
- Evolution of digital advertising
- Integration of new technologies
19. Public Sector
- 60 percent focus on business process automation by 2026
- Enhanced citizen service delivery
- Digital transformation of government services
- Focus on operational efficiency
- Implementation of AI in public services
20. Real Estate
- Steady consumer demand expected
- 1.1 percent household growth projected
- Focus on technology integration
- Enhanced digital services
- Adaptation to market changes
21. Bio/Life Sciences & Pharma
- Focus on cyber-physical system integration
- Enhanced data integrity measures
- Development of personalized treatments
- End-to-end supply chain integration
- Implementation of adaptive technologies.
Most Common Cross-Industry Trends
1. AI/ML Integration (appears in >90 percent of industries)
- Manufacturing: AI for process automation
- Healthcare: AI for diagnostics and personalized medicine
- Financial Services: AI for risk assessment
- Retail: AI for customer personalization
- Media: AI for content creation
- Security: AI for threat detection
2. Digital Transformation (appears in > 85 percent of industries)
- Common focus on automation
- Process digitization
- Cloud technology adoption
- Enhanced digital capabilities
3. Personalization/Customer Experience (appears in >70 percent of industries)
- Hospitality: Hyper-segmented experiences
- Healthcare: Personalized medicine
- CPG: Customized products
- Banking: Tailored financial services
- Media: Personalized content
4. Sustainability (appears in >65 percent of industries)
- Energy & Chemicals: Decarbonization
- Manufacturing: Sustainable processes
- Real Estate: Green building practices
- Food & Beverage: Sustainable sourcing
- Logistics: Green transportation
How I Did This Analysis
I would be remiss not to share a few caveats and footnotes on the process I used to get these insights from the data I gathered.
First, this was not a “drag-and-drop onto ChatGPT, and presto, you’re done.” For giggles, I tried that, and it was hallucinating more than analyzing. This involved coaxing Claude to do web scraping and cleaning, so that I could focus the AI on just the trend data. Even so, when you ask open-ended questions, such as “what are the most surprising quantifiable predictions in the data set,” obedient GPTs will do their best to answer you, but they will fill in any gaps with outright hallucinations. They will make it up as they go along.
Lesson here is, for broad theme extraction, you’re pretty safe. For getting hard data points, or exact quotes from the dataset, you’ll need to be a fact-checker, along with having the AI fact-check itself. Indeed, if you do the latter, it can find some of its own errors. But it requires a fair deal of human quality control. All in all, it is fascinating how quickly I could get to industry-specific insights and some cross-industry insights in ways that used to require a whole team to spend weeks working to complete.
I suppose that observation leads to the biggest caveat of all: don’t let AI replace the conversation you would have had in the past with your teammates. Use the AI’s initial extractions to spur a better conversation with your team than you could have had before.
