The next big thing is always sought after. Managers are looking for the next biggest basketball player or the football player who will bring millions in value to the team.
Stock Market Investors are looking for the next big company to invest in that will give them unimaginable returns.
People are always looking for that one single thing that can bring them big things. A lot of entrepreneurs are also the same. They look at research papers and Gartner reports to identify the next big industry.
It is definitely a way to figure out what the next trending Industries are. So to help with this analysis, we’ve come up with a list that we think will be huge.
- Solar
Solar always has been in the radar of Tech Entrepreneurs as a space that can churn the next billions. Nothing has given a boost to the solar industry’s chances as much as Elon Musk has. Elon Musk has showed proof of concept for Solar with his Tesla Powerwall and Solar City. He believes that human homes can be powered only through solar power. This industry has a few competitors in the likes of Enphase Energy and China’s BYD.
- Security
Babies born in the current era don’t have privacy from when they are born because their parents publish their photos on social channels the second they are born. Computers with softwares are taking over everyday objects. Cars like Tesla can already be accessed remotely by Tesla engineers and software updates can be made through the internet. Our homes are getting computerized with locks and other essentials that control our homes running on software. Now the thing is, the crimes of the future can affect us directly and at the comfort of our homes. If there is an electronic device running on software, then it can be hacked. There will be vulnerabilities. An entrepreneur building a business in this space will have their work cut out for them, but will be a very integral part of the future of technology.
- Self-Driven cars
The self driven market is already getting crowded, but with self driven cars taking over, there will be a lot of structural changes to the city and the world. The concept of a car will change and become more like a train. Companies built in this space can ride a new billion-dollar Industry. The roads will change and so will the internals of a car. Building apps and tools on top of the car can make drastic change.
- Electric Vehicles
A double concern for the world is using fossil fuels for transportation. Elon Musk’s Tesla aims to make every vehicle an electric vehicle and reduce the dependence on fossil fuels. Even in emerging markets, if value is shown to people that electric scooters will cost lesser than scooters that run on fuel, then people will gladly shift as long as charging does not take too long.
Also read: Five rules for those who want to get rich by trading stock
- Space Tourism
There has been a massive growth in the space industry and that is also because of Elon Musk. He has boosted the attention given to this industry and now everybody wants a piece of the pie. Space tourism as a concept is very lucrative because a lot of millionaires in the world are willing to pay millions of dollars to spend time in outer space. Companies like Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin compete with SpaceX to get humans to space as well as payloads to satellites.
- Mobile Education
Education isn’t restricted to schools anymore. It’s ubiquitously available through free applications like Khan Academy, Udacity and so on. Education is going to become more available through mobiles in emerging markets. This will mean, that a person sitting in new york city will have the same educational content as somebody in a small town in India. The one who is able to democratize it and make it affordable would be able to tap into a vast audience and make billions through subscriptions and advertising.
- Health Technology
Health technology is a space that hasn’t been tackled very widely, but it is an area that can be tackled through technology. There are talks of embeddable chips in humans that help in diagnosis, but none has come out of it. There are generic apps that focus on maintaining people’s health records but there is nothing more immersive. If this technology is tackled it will rapidly change the way people live and a billion dollar industry will be born.
- Artificial Intelligence
AI has a huge role to play in the coming years. A lot of repeatable tasks can be automated through AI and with computers that learn by themselves, a lot more advanced tasks can be automated. A perfect example of a working AI is IBM’s Watson. The thing about AI is, a self-taught programmer who is interested in big data can create their own AI. An AI that can perform very high level tasks will create a billion dollar company.
- Robotics
Robotics is another space that is getting pretty big. There are drones that are getting built doing deliveries. Drones are also being used as surveillance tools and as a security measure. Robotics has been used in warehousing where they automatically package and move goods around in warehouses. Robotics have a larger role to play in terms of physical automation of things. What was being done manually before could be done by a robot. A company that finds use cases for robotics and builds the right products can look at tap into another billion dollar industry.
Also read: How Pokemon Go can affect the Telco Share Price
All said and done, we might not know what the next billion dollar company will look like. Nobody could predict the rise of Airbnb. The next billion dollar idea might just be incrementally disruptive and that cannot be foreseen by existing businesses. All entrepreneurs who have a vision, should focus on is building a world with products which makes the world a much better and efficient place.