The Essential Eight technologies: what you need to know

Eight essential emerging technologies useful to your organisation right now
Includes AI, IoT, Blockchain, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Advanced Robotics, Quantum computing and Neuromorphic computing
They’re converging to deliver greater impact

If you’re a business leader, your company is almost certainly using at least several of the Essential Eight emerging technologies right now. You’ll likely need to use others soon. Since these technologies can be so transformative, understanding what they can do will be fundamental for both everyday operations and long-term strategy.

Though the technologies are at different maturity levels, we believe all eight are essential. They’re also converging to deliver greater impact. While a single Essential Eight technology may help solve a business challenge, combining it with others may enhance the solution. And when used together, multiple emerging technologies can help derive new value from the data that each one is collecting or creating.

The Essential Eight are organised into three categories that reflect how business leaders can prioritise their efforts: expand, evaluate and experiment.

Essential to expand

These technologies are used at scale in many enterprises, and many companies are ready to expand further. If you’re not looking at more widespread implementation, you should be.

Essential to evaluate

These technologies are deployed for a growing number of use cases but may have been back-burnered at some companies. You may want to reevaluate their fit within your business strategy given recent advancements.

Essential to experiment

These technologies are highly promising and rapidly advancing but not yet mainstream. It’s important to begin exploration and consider how your business or industry could be impacted by them in the coming years.

1. Artificial intelligence

AI reached a tipping point in 2023. One type, generative AI (GenAI), is so powerful and easy to use, it’s starting to change business models and revolutionise how work gets done. Conventional AI is advancing too, delivering greater productivity and new revenue streams. This includes the foundational subfields such as machine learning, deep learning, and knowledge representation and reasoning — techniques that seek to imitate how humans learn, process knowledge and make educated decisions.

AI today is no longer the exclusive domain of data scientists and software engineers. Traditional knowledge workers everywhere are using it — anyone can create content using simple human text-based prompts. AI’s potential to deliver value keeps growing, both as a stand-alone technology and as an enabler of other technologies, and many types of AI are already being used responsibly and at scale across organisations to help solve everyday challenges.

The bottom line: AI is already growing productivity and driving efficiency. With GenAI leading the way, AI is poised to scale quickly, enable new business models and transform how work gets done.

2. Internet of things

The Internet of Things (IoT) might as well be called the internet of (almost) everything. From wearables and home appliances to enterprise-level devices, IoT makes systems more intelligent and enhances decision-making. Some might say that IoT is becoming as integral to business today as electricity. IoT applications can be pivotal for innovation, enhancing operational efficiencies, improving compliance and creating sustainable, competitive advantages.

The bottom line: Today’s IoT is about recognizing how the technology can enable data-driven insights and support a wide range of use cases — helping drive efficiency as well as business transformation.

Essential to evaluate

3. Blockchain

Blockchain can provide transparent, cost-effective and secure ways to store, monitor and transfer information and assets — helping enable new digital business models and revenue opportunities. Growing adoption, interoperability advancements and regulatory clarity are positioning blockchain to become a critical enabler of enterprise innovation and trust.

Blockchain is designed to seamlessly integrate with existing company systems, processes and data sources while also enabling trusted interactions between external ecosystem participants. Its decentralised nature can provide businesses with greater agility, flexibility and new, trusted ways to interact with customers, counterparties and other stakeholders. Better yet, the ecosystem effect enables companies to offer integrated solutions or services that combine the strengths of multiple participants to help attract new customers.

The bottom line: Blockchain is poised to be a building block of the global economy, enhancing trust and securing financial transactions, safeguarding data, verifying digital identities and streamlining essential business processes.

4. Virtual reality

Virtual reality (VR) can transport you, your employees and your customers into a designed, digital environment that feels increasingly real. Both the metaverse and virtual environments inside individual organisations are hosting more and more business applications. For example, VR environments can already enable agile teams around the world to collaborate on daily sprints. Through VR, these teams can access data, tools and their teammates’ insights. VR’s rising ease of use and realism — helped by the integration of AI and of eye and facial tracking — is poised to blur the line between digital and physical worlds. That could transform customer and employee experiences, stakeholder trust and more.

The bottom line: VR is already a powerful tool for upskilling and workforce collaboration. In the near future, its startling realism could transform employee and customer experiences and companies’ daily operations.

5. Augmented reality

Augmented reality (AR) overlays digital elements onto the real world, enabling new experiences and ways to access data. Advances in computer vision, object recognition and IoT capabilities are allowing AR to deliver even more relevant and interactive overlays tailored to an individual user's environment and needs. AR often helps solve problems and enhance processes in areas such as maintenance, design visualisation and customer engagement.

The bottom line: Like VR, AR is becoming integral to upskilling and workforce collaboration. Its seamless use of data and powerful real-time capabilities will likely prove an invaluable tool for business.

6. Advanced robotics

Advanced robotics integrates artificial intelligence into robots so they can perform intricate tasks and autonomously interact and respond to real-world complexities. Leveraging deep learning and neural networks, these robots can process vast amounts of data, adapt to dynamic environments and make real-time decisions. Enhanced sensor technology allows them to better perceive their surroundings. With the incorporation of human-robot collaboration principles, modern robots (or cobots) are designed to work seamlessly alongside humans.

The bottom line: Advanced robotics is transforming complex, labour-intensive physical processes, enhancing productivity, workforce safety, reliability and data-driven decision-making.

Essential to experiment

7. Quantum computing

Quantum computing is poised to revolutionise classical computing — and it has the potential to transform industries. This technology can conduct far more complex operations exponentially faster than classical computing, and it can enable applications (such as AI) to produce reliable results even with smaller data sets. Quantum computing derives its immense power by using the principles of quantum mechanics to process information. Recent advances in quantum computing’s building blocks (quantum bits or “qubits”) are making the technology increasingly relevant to business. Its increasing reliability and fusion with classical computing (“hybrid quantum-classical”) paradigms could help computational power grow dramatically.

The bottom line: Quantum computing could soon enable computers and computer-based applications (such as AI, optimization, simulation) to perform far more complex operations and help solve previously “unsolvable” problems faster than conventional solutions.

8. Neuromorphic computing

Neuromorphic computing mimics the architecture and functioning of the human brain. Unlike traditional computing systems that operate on the basic on-off principle of binary code, neuromorphic computing uses electronic circuits to emulate the brain’s intricate web of neurons, connections and interactions. A subset, neural interfaces, can facilitate a direct communication pathway between the brain and external devices such as prosthetics and other systems. Neuromorphic computing has vast implications for business, including faster AI decision-making with far less computing power and greater pattern recognition.

The bottom line: Neuromorphic computing could be the foundation for a new era in intelligent computing, creating efficiencies in both data processing and power consumption for better sustainability and greater cost savings.

Convergence among the Essential Eight is real — and accelerating. It is enhancing everyday processes and driving long-term transformation. The IoT blends with AI and blockchain for more resilient, transparent and agile supply chains. AI and quantum computing together can help improve travel routes for business travellers. Virtual and augmented reality blends with AI and the IoT to help develop products and services and enable seamless workforce collaboration across geographies. Neuromorphic computing and advanced robotics automate complex industrial processes. These are just a few of many convergence examples in the business world today.

This is an abridged version of an article that originally appeared in PwC’s TechEffect. If you would like to learn more about using these emerging technologies within your organisation in Australia, please contact Rohit Anato or Scott Likens.