2015 was a transformative year for technological innovation. 2106 continues that technology trend with more disruption in sight. Below is a short list of my predicted trends for the coming year:

1) The Internet of Things

Cisco, who terms the “Internet of Things”, “The Internet of Everything,” predicts that 50 billion devices (including our smartphones, appliances, and office equipment) will be wirelessly connected via a network of sensors to the internet by 2020. Cisco also estimates that IoT will be valued at $4.6 Trillion for the Public Sector in the next ten years

Image: http://www.innovationexcellence.com

A new year is a great time to both reflect and look forward. In past years, I’ve written about how the cloud is reshaping industry, how interfaces are evolving and the emergence of new ecosystems. We always seem to be in the midst of some great new trend that is reshaping how we live and work.

Yet this year I can’t think of anything truly new that is having a major impact. Yes, there is a sharing economy that’s emerging, robots are taking our jobs and we seem to be in the middle of a new industrial revolution, but those things have been going on for some time. They are, essentially, the continuation of previous trends.

Image: http://www.innovationexcellence.com

It seems that the whole world is now meditating, which is wonderful news, as meditation does so much for us on all levels: body, mind and spirit.

On a physical level, meditation allows the body to stay stress-free. Mentally, it helps the mind feel peaceful and less attached to the outcome of each individual task we undertake. Spiritually, this practice takes us beyond the mind, where a whole inner universe is awaiting us. The possibilities are endless.

Learn what works and what doesn’t before you make all your big plans for 2016.

2015 Was the Year of Change

• Crowdfunding became mainstream – in the sense that it was accepted as part of the ‘new normal’ and not a fad that’s going to fade away 
• In the USA the SEC finally, perhaps reluctantly, followed the Fintech leaders in allowing a limited form of equity Crowdfunding – the limitation will become more and more apparent from May as entrepreneurs actually try to use it and ‘feel the burn’ from all the friction 
• The UK’s regulator, the FCA, embraced the Innovation Unit I proposed and, a year on from it’s inauguration expanded it to create a ‘Regulatory Sandbox’ to support and encourage fintech and innovation

 Image: http://www.crowdfundinsider.com

The US boasts some of the best colleges in the world. But they aren't limited to just the Ivy League — every state has institutions to be proud of.

Niche, a company that researches and compiles information on schools, lets users sort by state, so we took a look at the highest-ranked college in each one. To determine its rankings, Niche considers the academic strength, campus quality, caliber of professors, and quality of student reviews for more than 1,500 schools across the country.

Image: Facebook/uchicago

It is perplexing to see the contrariety between the performance of knowledge-based small enterprises in Canada and similar ventures in the US despite the two counties having so much in common. Canada’s potential to create disruptive innovation is demonstrated by individual success stories that are few and far between. However, there is apparently no dearth of talent and entrepreneurial risk taking when it comes to tech startups or innovative social enterprises. What lacks in almost all cases is the ability of the businesses to organically grow by leveraging a partnership-based innovation ecosystem. The reason is simple; one doesn’t exist.

DO some people have a special talent for serendipity? And if so, why?

In 2008, an inventor named Steve Hollinger lobbed a digital camera across his studio toward a pile of pillows. “I wasn’t trying to make an invention,” he said. “I was just playing.” As his camera flew, it recorded what most of us would call a bad photo.

Image: http://www.nytimes.com

Major global banks and tech companies have started to recognize the potential of blockchain technology. Financial institutions spent an estimate $75 million on the technology in 2015. Various initiatives have been started last year that focus on exploring the blockchain technology, the most prominent ones being R3 blockchain consortium and Open Ledger Project led by IBM.

Image: http://www.econotimes.com

LG Display has a prototype 18-inch screen it's showing off at the Consumer Electronics Show this week that rolls up like a piece of paper. The technology builds on LG's forward-looking OLED work focusing on bendable, rollable, and curving displays. The company showed similar technology last year as a proof of concept, but kept images behind closed doors. Now LG looks ready to show the world.

Image: LG

Virtual reality has a very real problem. With several technology giants preparing splashy introductions for the first VR headsets in 2016, few people own hardware capable of fully supporting Facebook’s Oculus Rift or other systems.

More than half of the internet is in English.

But that percentage may decline in the future, according to research by Álvaro Blanco from Funredes, a nonprofit that studies technology usage in the developing world.

In 1996, Blanco's research estimated that 80% of online content was in English.

Image: http://www.businessinsider.com

Facebook has been making tentative steps in the health tech realm. I’m not referring to Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropic ambitions. But the social media network has demonstrated an interest in some diverse areas from genomic testing to public health. There’s even more going on with its Internet.org division but the company has been pretty tight-lipped about new developments on this front with most information on healthcare projects coming from entrepreneurs rather than the technology company. Here are a few areas that could grow in 2016.

Image: http://medcitynews.com

2016 is already being called the a "year of change." So what changes are on the horizon? We got some insights from 10 leaders and here’s what they predict for 2016.

1. MORE FEMALE FOUNDERS —Sallie Krawcheck, CEO of Ellevest

More women are finding an entrepreneurial spirit, with many doing it later in life, says Sallie Krawcheck, CEO of Ellevest, investment resource provider for women.

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com

Wendy Suzuki, was on a river rafting trip in Peru, when she had a major wakeup call. Suzuki found that she was the weakest person on the expedition, an observation that bothered her given that she was only in her mid-thirties at the time. But Suzuki also wasn't all that surprised. A professor of neural science and psychology at New York University, she had been spending all her time in the research lab. "I was in New York, in my lab, eating takeout, and gaining weight," says Suzuki.

Image: Wendy Suzuki Photo: courtesy of Wendy Suzuki

Ben Fountain was an associate in the real-estate practice at the Dallas offices of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, just a few years out of law school, when he decided he wanted to write fiction. The only thing Fountain had ever published was a law-review article. His literary training consisted of a handful of creative-writing classes in college. He had tried to write when he came home at night from work, but usually he was too tired to do much. He decided to quit his job.

More than half a million new businesses were established over the five-year period that ended in 2012, according to new data released by the Census Bureau that show the types of businesses being created and where they’re opening up.

Among the findings: Several cities registered sizable gains in new businesses, fueled in large part by growth in minority-owned companies.

Image: http://www.governing.com

Welcome to MIT Technology Review’s second annual list of top tech flops. Without further preamble, here are the technologies we thought did the least for humanity in 2015.

Hoverboards 

It was the hot 2015 gift item that went up in flames. Literally. Hoverboards, the two-wheeled, self-balancing scooters, are like Segways without the handle, packed with a circuit board and two AC motors inside the wheels. A rider balances thanks to a phenomenon called the “inverted pendulum.” The problem: shoddy lithium-ion batteries in some hoverboards have caught fire. As quickly as the fad took off, popular hoverboards were pulled by Amazon and banned by airlines as a threat. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said in December that it is “actively investigating hoverboard-related fires across the country,” as well as dozens of reports from ERs of “concussions, fractures, contusions/abrasions, and internal organ injuries.”

Technology advances not so much when it exhibits innovation, but when it becomes truly practical for everyday people. 2015 saw a lot of that as voice assistants started to show how they could live in the home and in mobile devices, always listening for their names, and super computers got to work on language translation and cancer cures.

I have studied thousands of innovation efforts and found that the distinction between success and failure boils down to six words. The successful ones “Think Big, Start Small, Learn Fast.” The failures do not.

As you contemplate your plans and aspirations for 2016, consider how these words might apply.