9 Predictions for 2022
I’m not normally big on predictions. But the events of the past two years have spawned or accelerated so many fundamental shifts that I think it’s important to take stock as to which will be most salient to our experiences of work, life, play, and learning as we move into 2022 – and beyond.
Here are nine things I believe will happen over the coming year.
Business content will become must-see TV. The era of experiencing rich, immersive content in our consumer lives while abiding predictable, monolithic content in our business lives comes to an end in 2022. Through the power of story, the medium of video, and the channel of digital platforms, companies and creators begin to develop binge-worthy business-relevant content – as both an experience in itself and a relevant way to build more durable, emotional relationships with customers and talent. Be on the lookout for new and novel partnerships among creators, studios, platforms, and businesses as boundaries continue to break down in a remote-first world.
Empathy and purpose will win. The Great Resignation gives way in 2022 to the Great Reshuffling, as those that told us in 2021 that they’d seek a new job make good on their plans. Employees are holding the cards, and employers will become known either for attraction or for attrition. In a world where compensation, roles, and now even location can be equalized as candidates compare Opportunity A with Opportunity B, the variables that will win the war for talent are empathy and purpose. Companies who listen to current and prospective talent and live an employee value proposition rooted in an understanding of people’s preferences and needs – and whose business model and growth is premised on work that matters – will be the ones that succeed and drive impact in 2022 and beyond.
Style will give way to substance in the boardroom. If 2020 was the year of recognizing the need to think differently about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), and 2021 was the year of taking action, 2022 will be the year where organizations are accountable for results. It won’t be enough to announce new Heads of DEI and celebrate their hiring on LinkedIn, to commit to hiring from new schools and communities, or to announce initiatives aimed at bringing more URM candidates into the pipeline. We will see a few companies stand out from the pack as they design employee and customer experiences for greater inclusivity, bring new and diverse voices into product development, and report earnestly and consistently on the bottom-line results of their efforts. It’s the right thing to do, and it’s beyond the right time to do it.
The metaverse will remain an early-stage playground. In a world where the primary VR/AR use cases that the world is spotlighting still give off Nintendo Power Pad vibes, I think it’s reasonable to conclude that we are still in the very, very early stages of the metaverse. Facebook’s move to become Meta was much derided in 2021, but speaking something into existence is the first step in willing it to life. The advent of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), the hypergrowth in blockchain and cryptocurrencies, the expansion of remote work, and the and the innovation in AI and device technologies will begin to come together in meaningful work, education, and entertainment use cases as we near the end of the decade – but 2022 will be a time to “watch this space” as these trends take time to converge in ways solve real problems and create compelling experiences.
The focus of Healthcare will shift to Long COVID. Sometime in 2022, the majority of people on this planet will either have been well-vaccinated against COVID-19 or will have been afflicted by the virus at least once. As the virus becomes endemic, the focus of our universities, care systems, and private companies in the healthcare space will begin to shift from triage and palliative care to understanding and ameliorating the impacts of the novel coronavirus. Those wanting to compare COVID to influenza will, in late 2022, finally have their day, and – G*d willing – we will learn good news rather than bad with respect to long-term pulmonary, cardiac, neurological, and other Nth-order effects from the first plague to have hit our planet in over 100 years.
The Information Supply Chain will be reinvented. We are facing a relative crisis in local information management ecosystems today. The death of local news exacerbates tensions among us, the consolidation of information into a small number of social media platforms narrows the diversity of perspectives we read, and there is no modern mechanism for mass-movement building. In 2022, we will see this gap begin to be addressed. At the local level, because more people will be living where they want to (owing to the opportunity afforded by remote work), we will see more active information flows and more grassroots organizing for change in communities. We will see platforms like Nextdoor innovate more to fill the void in relevant, timely, useful information at the neighborhood and town level. And I am even bullish enough to believe that, in 2022, Google will escalate its existing efforts to promote “news near me.” Taken together, these forces will put more local information in the hands of more people and begin to bring us closer together, one community at a time.
Inflation will pervade until mid-year. The combination of consumer spending from government stimulus checks, bottlenecked global supply chains, and millions of people opting out of the workforce until they land the perfect job will work in inadvertent concert to keep inflation – already at its highest levels since the oil-crisis days of the 70s – rampant through at least the first half of 2022. Before summertime in the Northern Hemisphere, I believe we’ll see the first of a few interest rate hikes that both begin to check these historical levels of inflation and recognize the realities of a world where both labor-force participation and supply-chain economics are forever changed given the effects of the pandemic.
Crypto will move from margin to mainstream. 79 million wallets hold Bitcoin as of November 2021, compared with 19 million three years ago. The 5-year CAGR from 2021 to 2026 in blockchain technology is expected to be nearly 70%. And one of the most famous event venues in the world now boasts the name of a crypto company. Cryptocurrencies are being deployed to create more confidence in money as a store of value, to facilitate cross-border trade, and – in many ways – to simply see what’s possible now that technologies that can disrupt sovereign currencies are truly available and accessible. 2022 will be the year in which exchanges like Coinbase and Binance, asset platforms like Fireblocks and Ripple, and service providers like BitPay and Digital Asset become as well known as the Squares and Stripes of the world, and in which we see legacy payment processors finally forced to innovate after decades of growing based on semi-regulated cash-cow businesses.
Experiences will become more important than things. While we stayed at home over the past few years, we bought more stuff, clogged up supply chains, and wished we could be having an experience somewhere with somebody else. In 2022, as the vast majority of the population becomes inoculated and as confidence sets back into society, we’ll go back to having experiences rather than just consuming goods. Spending on services has already gotten back to pre-pandemic levels, and who isn’t ready for a little bit of the great outdoors and the great beyond in 2022?
What are your reactions to this list? What are some of your predictions? Give me a shout and let me know. It’s always great to hear from you.
Best wishes for a happy and healthy 2022!