My top ten predictions for the next decade: 2011 – 2020

Happy New Year to you all! Wow! Here comes another new decade and I have been asked to predict what might happen in my world over the next ten years. Am I mad? How long before we forget Sir Alan Sugar’s wonderful prediction, announced during an interview in February 2005, “Next Christmas, the iPod will be dead, finished, gone, kaput.”?  Or Bill Gates announcement to the 2004 World Economic Forum, “Two years from now, spam will be solved.” Both predictions made it into the T3 gadget website’s top ten worst predictions of all time. We might only wish…And let’s not forget poor Cassandra, the tormented Greek princess who had her ears licked clean by the temple snakes so she was able to hear the future, yet was cursed by Apollo never to be believed – and whom I gratuitously mention simply so I might use her image rather than subject you to yet another photo of either Alan Sugar or Bill Gates!

However, what we can do is learn from hindsight and not fall into a similar trap. So, with the understanding that I have never allowed a single snake to lick my ears, here are my ‘predictions’ for 2011 – 2020:

1. Malvern Instruments will continue to manufacture materials characterization systems!
2. Customers will continue to use these systems in new and innovative ways, extending our scientific understanding in both research and product development.
3. Many of these new and innovative methods will include a combination of more than one measurement technology, delivering higher value measurements and, subsequently, improved product knowledge and control.
4. Malvern’s experts will continue to feedback performance gains across the company’s entire portfolio, enabling users to fully exploit the benefits of the technologies we develop.
5. Dissemination of expert knowledge and applications understanding will remain a key driver in technological and methodological advancement.
6. Malvern Instruments will continue to improve the way it shares the knowledge it holds and responses to customer feedback, using all of the innovative tools at our disposal to ensuring our users obtain the most out of their investment in the products we develop.
7.  The demand for faster and reliable particle characterization systems will continue to increase, as the push towards improved product quality becomes an even more important differentiator.
8.  Malvern customer services will remain wise to the need for the highest quality of rapid, value-added support.
9. Malvern Instruments, and its portfolio of characterization systems, will continue to grow and adapt in line with customer demand.
10. I, Paul Kippax, will continue to avoid having snakes anywhere near me!

Not such a Greek tragedy

So, with those thoughts I can only hope that I have more avid listeners than Cassandra. And, as I look forwards to all that the New Year will bring, I leave you with a few, ever useful tips for the New Year:

1. Don’t let life turn into a Greek tragedy!
2. Beware of Trojan horses
3. Look out for the real thing.