Ayesha Khanna

In just three decades between 1990 and 2020, the internet will have grown from linking just a few experts in labs to connecting the entire human species through computers and mobile phones as well as billions of objects into an "Internet of Things," a seamless web of infinite data. As a result, we have transitioned from the familiar Information Age into the uncertain Hybrid Age, an era in which technology is rapidly becoming ubiquitous, intelligent, and social, radically transforming our societies, markets, and governance.

Ayesha Khanna's vast expertise on the intersection of technology, business models, and market trends covers major pillars of this intelligent future, including energy and infrastructure, markets and consumers, work, living, and governance.

Sustainability has become the dominant theme of the early 21st century. To successfully transform societies toward lower consumption and greater productivity requires, first and foremost, increasing our urban intelligence through smart grids that connect offices, homes, and traffic lights into an energy saving and generating eco-system. "Smart cities" are emerging all over the world, from greenfield developments such as Songdo in Korea and Tianjin Eco-City in China to retrofit districts in Stockholm, Hamburg, and Rio de Janeiro. Ayesha Khanna's research has taken her to over a dozen of the world's most advanced infrastructure projects from which she vividly presents high-tech sustainability strategies.

Innovation is once again a buzzword among leading corporations, yet many have failed to realize that the future lies not just in innovating products but, more importantly, in innovating experiences. Based on growing online interaction, consumers now expect a real-time, personalized, and social experience as part of the every product offered. Augmented reality, collaborative consumption, game-ification, and sensors embedded in apparel are all examples of how products are being tailored to location, personality, and preferences, while also allowing consumers to share feedback through social networks. Leveraging her decade of experience advising companies on digital strategy, Ayesha Khanna presents the cutting-edge brands from East and West whose products will dominate the emerging intelligent marketplace.

Corporate management faces dramatic challenges today: an aging workforce, talent shortages, and rising competition from emerging markets. The only way to maximize the skills and ambitions of employees is to enable systems of collaboration called "virtual teams" irrespective of division or geography. The new "soft architecture" of the workplace includes Telepresence monitors, social robots, and software platforms which allow for virtual networked cooperation among globally mobile employees and contractors. Based on her research into virtual team dynamics, Ayesha Khanna provides an overview of the most successful talent sourcing and management techniques used in both large companies like Johnson & Johnson and Google as well as small-scale start-ups.

In an age of information overload, we now need interactive machines to help us analyze and extract maximum value from all the data we collect about ourselves. From the smart home to the smart car, we are moving beyond a one-way relationship with technology towards interacting with machines using natural gestures and voices, and even trusting them with personal information. The most significant impact of such machines will be felt in healthcare, where data collected from wearable devices will monitor everything from our blood pressure to our moods. In order to partake of the intelligent revolution, each of us must consciously fashion our daily lives and personal living spaces to accommodate and take advantage of new data streams and applications rapidly coming to market. Ayesha Khanna presents some of the most popular and effective applications and devices that are saving people time and money while improving longevity and welfare.

Social networks have unleashed citizen revolutions from Barack Obama's presidential campaign to the Arab Spring in the Middle East. Rather than succumb to waves of unforeseen pressure, clever mayors from New York and Paris to Dubai and Singapore are deploying elaborate digital strategies to streamline government services and create citizen engagement platforms. An entirely new kind of governance is emerging: through partnership with private sector entrepreneurs, software programmers, and bottom-up social movements, government increasingly operates through interactive dashboards that identify policy and investment needs and respond efficiently. Ayesha Khanna highlights the most innovative digital government initiatives around the world and provides detailed lessons for officials, businesses, and civil society in advancing to the next stage of collaborative governance.