[Forbes]

[Philip Lelyveld comment: this is a business strategy article with one mention of 3D.]

Strategy and entrepreneurship will have ever-greater interdependence.

Access to assets will be replacing ownership of assets.

The tradeoff between reach and richness will continually diminish.It is a classic truth of information technology that for a message to reach a lot of people, it has to be stripped of a great deal of rich contextual information. Thus a bond trader can connect instantly with a global network of other bond traders, but the information they exchange is very bare-bones. We will increasingly see companies develop technologies that can help re-enrich far-flung communications. Apple’s Siri voice-command personal assistant is an example. It’s still a computer talking, but it is helping to create a much fuller context for our interactions with our handheld technology. We’re going to see more advances in making remote communication feel more real, and that will change how businesses and virtual teams interact, adding in some of the texture and emotion that gets squeezed out. Technologies such as 3D imaging, the ability to use better voice recognition, and price drops for various kinds of telepresence may well make it much easier to work in virtual teams.

Mass markets will be micro-fragmenting.

Oblique competition will become ubiquitous.

Implications. What does all this mean for company leaders today? I think three overarching themes deserve time and attention. First, we must consciously and aggressively compare our existing assumptions with unfolding reality. Most of the time, today’s strategies are a response to constraints from the past. Relax the constraints, and all kinds of new possibilities become feasible. Second, regular time-outs from day-to-day concerns to pay attention to early warnings are crucial. All too many leaders stay so busy operationalizing today’s strategy that they miss the obvious. It isn’t usually the unthinkable that undoes companies; it’s the possible that nobody paid attention to. Finally, consider where leaders get most of the information they use to make decisions. If they aren’t tapping into different sources of data and insight, they are increasingly likely to overlook some crucial trend—until it’s too late.

Read the full story here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesleadershipforum/2011/12/19/five-big-trends-in-business-innovation-in-2012/