Gartner Top 10 Strategic Predictions for 2023 and Beyond

Heading into 2023, consider how Gartner's predictions for some of the most critical areas of technology and business evolution in the ensuing years can affect your thinking. Build these strategic planning assumptions into your roadmap for the years ahead to capture the interest of strategic thinkers and fuel the excitement of tactical decision-makers.

The theme of this year’s predictions is ‘seize uncertainty.' This imperative prompts organizations to focus on the weakest link in the chain of their success — themselves. It challenges thinking and action at the same time because it recognizes uncertainty is a repository for ‘hope’ — for opportunity.

Seize uncertainty

People typically hate change. People, culture, markets and strategies value consistency and stability over innovation and uncertainty. “But executives must allow for the possibility of failure as a means of finding success,” says Plummer. That requires flexibility and a willingness to let go of old ways of thinking and old patterns of action. 

The options for driving improvement are seldom discrete or binary. Sometimes, doing more is better; sometimes, you need to do less. For example, you can improve sustainability with automation and AI, but must still implement them carefully to avoid diminishing returns. Similarly, workers want to pursue work situations that offer flexibility over where or how to work even as inflation and an economic downturn could threaten their job options. And companies must balance growth through investments with cost-cutting. 

Consider these 10 predictions as you seek to turn uncertainty into opportunity and make your organization more flexible and adaptable — and prepared for whatever comes.

Virtual workspaces increase the ability to hire and bring together employees regardless of geographic location. This also includes employees who are unable or unwilling to join in-person engagements. Virtual spaces provide an alternative to travel and meeting solutions and will eventually disrupt both industries. For remote-first or hybrid organizations, virtual workspaces may replace the office and eventually become the center of the digital employee experience.

“Material” is an accounting term that means “of significant financial consequence and must be explained on financial disclosures.” As many as 40% of organizations will struggle to ensure consistency and stability in their operations. Organizations will need to make a significant shift to focusing on flexibility to ensure the execution and delivery of their business models. For example, 57% of employees do not believe their company is enabling them to create a superior customer experience right now.

Organizations struggle daily to have talent with the right skills to deliver against their business strategies. At the same time, they’re striving for more diversity due to investor pressure, societal expectations and a desire to realize its business value. Compensation is the top driver in retaining talent. Employees want to be compensated fairly and will change jobs to get that pay. The business case for diversity is abundantly clear: Retain more women to realize those benefits — better profits, greater revenue, higher productivity and superior innovation.

Organizations that create a better employee experience tend to perform well on customer experience metrics, which in turn leads to higher revenue growth and loyalty. Traditional ROI models tend to elevate investments that result in short-term outcomes, like those that lower costs(such as reducing headcount) or directly improve revenue (hiring another sales rep). Organizations that use more expansive metrics beyond ROI will shift their investment focus to long-term growth, disruption and innovation.

The energy consumption by AI is growing rapidly along with increasing use to automate human activities. Machine learning (ML) models need to be trained and executed, which requires more cloud data centers. Practices are emerging in order to significantly reduce energy consumption for ML. Before dismissing AI as a technology that consumes too much energy, note that the benefits of AI may potentially far outweigh its own footprint. However, this potential can only be realized if AI is proactively and effectively applied in as many processes, companies and organizations as possible.

Currently, users must prove their identity repeatedly across online services, which is not efficient, scalable or secure. As such, the market will move toward portable digital identity wallets in which a user proves their identity just once and can then assert that proven identity many times.

New identity data markets will be a requirement under Web3 to support a more personalized user interaction. With this new model, users will have to release their identity data and contractually set the terms of usage and required payments for said data.

There is debate about whether denial of service attacks should be considered a form of free speech, as it currently violates various international policies and laws. This debate will only become more complicated, potentially spurring the need for new legislation when these attacks are increasingly perpetrated by citizens focused on social issues as opposed to maliciously motivated hackers. Citizen-led denial of service attacks could force organizations to incur significant expenses. To prevent citizen-led attacks, Amazon, Google, Apple and other virtual assistant providers may face pressure to remove the skills or actions that allow a virtual assistant to contact organizations.

Leading enterprises will take advantage of uncertainty or disruption, leveraging new and unknown mindsets, capabilities and skills to capture growth opportunities. A moonshot is enterprise and shareholder acceptance of high-risk or speculative technology investment with high potential for return. It is a radical new way to solve an existing or new problem using disruptive means (i.e., product, technology, innovation). Traditional practices that use defined innovation budgets and predict future outcomes through business cases will be replaced. Organizations will accept failure first as a way to maintain viability, investment and future innovation. 

Today, cloud ecosystems integrate the tools of a cloud solution provider (CSP) or an independent software vendor (ISV). Most of these ecosystems are incomplete, missing functionality, maturity and adoption. As such, most organizations develop a blended ecosystem in order to make improvements. Over time, as the primary ecosystem vendors mature and add to their own tools, organizations will replace third-party ISV tools. As CSPs increase the usefulness of their tools and fast-follow innovation, there will be greater cost savings from reduced integration, time to market and training.

Increased awareness among governments and regulators leads to tighter privacy and data protection policies, higher requirements for data sovereignty and data control, and more demand for digital sovereignty, such as through technological control and long-term autonomy.

The expectations regarding sovereign cloud solutions are evolving from data sovereignty and privacy concerns to concerns regarding continued, long-term access to and availability of cloud solutions. Regulators and cloud providers will need to work together to clarify the appropriate potential approaches and measures. A jointly owned cloud provider approach between governments and regulators can (re)establish trust among cloud users in global cloud brands and facilitate continued technical globalization.

The original article by Daryl Plummer, Gartner's vice president, distinguished analyst and Gartner fellow is here.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CDOTrends. Image credit: iStockphoto/smirart; Table: Gartner