However, depth interviews with business leaders and futurists around the world indicate that this voracious appetite often leads to investing based on hunches rather than statistical data, potentially limiting the effectiveness of the investment.
This insight reaffirms the increasing importance of organisations to look externally and develop systematic and deliberate ways to monitor the ever-shifting digital environment, anticipate change and prepare themselves for the future.
Futures research tools such as horizon scanning and scenario planning allow organisations to assess how digital technologies and trends will impact industries helping them to inform, define, execute and persist with strategic initiatives to proactively respond, rather than simply react.
As we head into the future, many industries serviced by the architecture, engineering and construction sector will transform.
Those who stay up to date on emerging trends and new technologies can turn disruption into opportunity by knowing what is being developed, what is available, when to use it and how, when it will likely reach maturity, how it will likely impact their industry and how they can respond commercially.