Technology continues to be a primary catalyst for change in the world. Technology advances give businesses, governments, and social-sector institutions more possibilities to lift their productivity, invent and reinvent offerings, and contribute to humanity’s well-being. And while it remains difficult to predict how technology trends will play out, executives can plan ahead better by tracking the development of new technologies, anticipating how companies might use them, and understanding the factors that affect innovation and adoption.

To that end, we have worked with the external and internal experts on the McKinsey Technology Council to identify and interpret 14 of the most significant technology trends unfolding today. This study builds on the trend research we shared last year, adding fresh data and deeper analysis to provide a more granular assessment of trends in two thematic groups: Silicon Age, which encompasses digital and IT technologies, and Engineering Tomorrow, which encompasses physical technologies in domains such as energy and mobility.

To assess the development of each technology trend, our team collected data on five tangible measures of activity: search engine queries, news publications, patents, research publications, and investment. For each measure, we used a defined set of data sources to find occurrences of keywords associated with each of the 14 trends, screened those occurrences for valid mentions of activity, and indexed the resulting numbers of mentions on a 0–1 scoring scale that is relative to the trends studied. The innovation score combines the patents and research scores; the interest score combines the news and search scores. (While we recognize that an interest score can be inflated by deliberate efforts to stimulate news and search activity, we believe that each score fairly reflects the extent of discussion and debate about a given trend.) Investment measures the flows of funding from the capital markets into companies linked with the trend. Data sources for the scores include the following:

The associations shown on the industry heat map were derived by reviewing the news reports on each trend for references to specific companies within each of the 20 industries.

In addition, we updated the selection and definition of trends from last year’s study to reflect the evolution of technology trends:

Our analysis examines such tangible factors as investment, research activity, and news coverage to gauge the momentum of each trend. We also conducted dozens of interviews and performed hundreds of hours of research to learn which industries are apt to benefit most as they absorb these technologies. And, recognizing that trends can shift, we examined the uncertainties and questions that surround each of them. (For more, please see the sidebar, “Research methodology.”)

Below, we lay out these considerations for all 14 technology trends, so that you can better understand them and consider how they relate to your organization. At the bottom of this page, you can download detailed profiles of all these trends or download a customized PDF containing profiles of the trends you choose.

The research overview offers summaries of all 14 technology trends. You can also create a custom document containing detailed profiles of trends you choose: check the boxes in the list below to select trend profiles, and then click the “Download your custom report” button at the bottom to generate a PDF.

Michael Chui is a McKinsey Global Institute partner in McKinsey’s Bay Area office, where Roger Roberts is a partner and Lareina Yee is a senior partner.

The authors wish to thank the following McKinsey colleagues for their contributions to this research: Soumya Banerjee, Arjita Bhan, Andreas Breiter, Tom Brennan, Ryan Brukardt, Kevin Buehler, Zina Cole, Jacomo Corbo, Chris Daehnick, Ian De Bode, Hugo del Campo, Rayan Elsharkawi, Delfino Garcia, Justin Greis, Liz Grennan, Rob Hamill, Tinashe Handina, Martin Harrysson, David Harvey, Kersten Heineke, Matt Higginson, Nicolas Hohn, Alharith Hussein, Mena Issler, Jesse Klempner, Benedikt Kloss, Charlie Lewis, Martin Linder, Niko Mohr, Timo Möller, Chandrasekhar Panda, Mark Patel, Robin Riedel, Tanya Sheptock, Sven Smit, Shivam Srivastava, Bhargs Srivathsan, Brooke Stokes, Kimberly Te, Kasia Tokarska, Selena Wang-Thomas, Ameera Waterford, Allen Weinberg, Linde Wester, Olivia White, Perez Yeptho, and Matija Zesko.

They also wish to thank the external members of the McKinsey Technology Council.

This interactive was designed, developed, and edited by McKinsey Global Publishing’s Nayomi Chibana, Zachary Enco, Richard Johnson, Stephen Landau, LaShon Malone, Kanika Punwani, and Josh Rosenfield.

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