Mapping Megatrends for Consumer Tech Futures
Foresight input for Samsung’s strategic research
Contributing independent, human- and culture-centered insights to a megatrends process on the future of human–technology interaction.
Challenge
Consumer technology is evolving in a landscape where innovation is shaped as much by social trust, shifting identities, and demographic change as by breakthroughs in AI and hardware. For global technology leaders like Samsung, the strategic challenge is not only identifying what is emerging, but understanding what it could mean for people’s lives, and for long-term R&D and innovation priorities.
This work supported a strategic research initiative focused on the megatrends shaping future consumer technology, with a particular emphasis on how human expectations, ethics, and everyday behavior are changing alongside technology.
Approach
ANTICIPATE contributed as a key opinion leader to a global foresight initiative, providing an independent perspective grounded in human and cultural dynamics.
Our contribution focused on mapping and sensemaking across megatrends relevant to consumer tech, including themes such as:
- AI and personalization
- Ambient and always-on technology
- Societal trust and ethical expectations
- Demographic shifts and changing life patterns
- Digital intimacy and new forms of attachment to technology
We translated these megatrends into implications for how people may relate to technology in the years ahead, where adoption may accelerate, where friction may grow, and which ethical questions are likely to become strategic constraints rather than peripheral concerns.
Outcomes
1) A clearer view of human–technology interaction as a strategic frontier
Our input helped strengthen the initiative’s ability to interpret megatrends through a human lens — not only as market shifts, but as changes in values, norms, and trust.
2) Implications to inform long-term innovation
We provided structured reflections on where emerging expectations around intimacy, personalization, and ethics could shape product experiences, R&D priorities, and innovation narratives.
3) Stronger internal sensemaking
The contribution supported internal strategic reflection by linking macro-level megatrends to plausible implications for consumer tech futures — helping decision-makers discuss trade-offs and opportunity spaces with more precision.
