Members of the McKinsey Technology Council shared their perspectives on three questions – their answers may surprise you:

• What technology trend do you predict will headline business agendas for the remainder of 2022 and why?
• What technology trend do you think is under businesses’ radars but merits more executives’ attention?
• What’s one piece of advice you would give to business leaders as they consider incorporating new technologies into their business?

Some leaders talked about adopting cutting-edge technologies, others focused mostly on technologies that have been around for several years.

“Incorporating new technologies can be risky but also hugely rewarding. My advice for business leaders is to be agile in starting pilot studies that are realistic in realizing the benefits of new technologies and possibilities of a disruptive transformation.” — Animashree Anandkumar, Director of machine learning research, NVIDIA, Bren professor of computing and mathematical sciences, California Institute of Technology.

“Don’t start with the technology—bright shiny objects tend to fizzle. Start with the problems you are trying to solve and then identify how these emerging technologies can help solve these problems and benefit your business. … Seek out trusted partners that can both develop the road maps for incorporating these new technologies into your infrastructure and work closely with your organization to teach and train your teams.” — Alan Baratz, President, and CEO, D-Wave Systems

“Most traditional companies would benefit from greater attention to productivity-enhancing opportunities from automation. Technologically advanced companies would benefit from greater attention to productivity-enhancing opportunities from cognitive immersion via the metaverse.” Ajay Agrawal, Professor of entrepreneurship, University of Toronto Rotman School of Management

“Invest ahead of full certainty. We learn by trying out different technologies and use cases. Through succeeding (and failing), we uncover ways to substantially advance productivity, solve problems we had not previously thought possible, or move at a speed that was unfathomable just a few years ago. The more we experiment, the more we will learn. As we learn, companies will be better positioned to decide which technologies are critical one-to-three-year investments versus those that are three to eight years out.” Lareina Yee, Senior Partner, McKinsey & Company

Read more perspectives and predictions for the rest of 2022.