9 Top Business Trends (2024 & 2025)

Top Business Trends Shaping 2024 and Beyond

This post outlines key business trends dominating 2024 and those poised for continued growth in 2025. We’ll explore the sectors, consumer behavior shifts, and technological innovations driving these trends. Whether you’re a budding startup or a seasoned Fortune 500 executive, here are the top business trends to watch:

1. Generative AI Revolutionizes Productivity

Generative AI is making waves in the business world. Since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, search interest in “generative AI” has skyrocketed. By 2025, it’s predicted to capture roughly 30% of the entire AI market, valued at approximately $60 billion.

Consumers increasingly expect businesses to leverage generative AI applications. Nearly 70% of consumers believe most businesses will soon use this technology to enhance customer experiences.

Generative AI platforms rely on large language models (LLMs). Trained on billions of pages of text, LLMs learn to understand contextual relationships between words and patterns in sentences. This enables them to generate original content.

For instance, the BERT LLM achieves 85-90% accuracy in mere milliseconds. And LLMs are continually improving. AI experts anticipate future models capable of self-improvement, integrating external information, and operating more efficiently through “sparse expert models.”

Boston Consulting Group forecasts that generative AI could produce “final draft” content by 2030. While current LLMs are imperfect, businesses are already harnessing their versatile capabilities.

Businesses are keen to explore how generative AI can boost their bottom line. Its applications span text generation, translation, summarization, categorization, sentiment analysis, and conversational engagement.

Generative AI’s impact extends across industries. Accenture estimates that LLMs could affect 40% of all working hours. Moreover, 98% of global executives believe AI models will play a pivotal role in their organizations within the next five years.

Startups in the healthcare sector have already introduced promising generative AI technologies. Syntegra, a San Francisco-based startup founded in 2019, employs AI to generate synthetic patient data that’s highly realistic but unlinked to any specific patient.

Syntegra’s generative AI solution accelerates clinical research by providing synthetic data that matches the statistical accuracy of real data. This ensures patient privacy while meeting the data needs of health systems and research institutions. It’s also significantly faster and often more cost-effective than traditional data acquisition methods. Search interest in “synthetic data” has surged by 733% in the past five years.

Generative AI is also proving to be a valuable tool for software developers. GitHub’s Copilot, one of the most popular AI coding solutions, is used by over 400 organizations. Copilot takes natural language prompts and suggests code or entire functions, essentially acting as an autocomplete for developers.

One Copilot user reported that programming tasks that previously took 10 minutes now take only 30 seconds. In files where Copilot is used, GitHub claims the AI solution writes 40% of the actual code.

Generative AI will soon make its way into advertising. Google plans to introduce AI-powered ads that allow businesses to simply upload materials to train the AI model. The model will then create new ads with fresh text, images, and videos. Meta has announced similar plans for AI-driven ads on its platforms.

2. E-commerce Continues to Thrive Post-Pandemic

The pandemic dramatically altered consumer shopping habits. E-commerce, already on the rise, experienced explosive growth during the pandemic. Shopify reported 10 years’ worth of growth in just three months. While the growth rate has slowed post-pandemic, e-commerce continues to expand modestly.

In 2023, global e-commerce sales reached $6.3 trillion, and this figure is projected to grow to $8.1 trillion by 2026. E-commerce accounted for nearly 14% of all retail sales in 2019, but is expected to exceed 22% in 2023.

Specific retail categories like electronics, home improvement, and home furnishings have maintained post-pandemic growth. For instance, the furniture industry is estimated to have generated over $149 million in e-commerce revenue in 2022, with growth projected to reach $208 million by 2025.

North America boasts over 4 million e-commerce companies, with new ones launching daily. Disney, for example, announced plans to focus on e-commerce and close 60 brick-and-mortar stores in North America.

In late 2022, Disney announced plans to expand the Disney+ platform to include in-app commerce options. Users can scan QR codes on product pages to access exclusive merchandise available only to Disney+ subscribers.

Your Super, an e-commerce superfood supplement company, experienced significant growth during the pandemic and beyond. In 2021, they partnered with Target and were acquired by The Healing Company.

3. 5G Enhances Data Collection and AI Capabilities

The development of the 5G mobile network has the potential to revolutionize business operations. Search interest in “5G” has increased by 978% over five years.

5G offers higher data speeds, greater reliability, and sub-10ms latency. As of November 2023, the United States and China were leading the 5G rollout.

The 5G market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 65.8% through 2030, reaching a valuation of $797.8 billion. This technology is crucial for businesses seeking to offer new services and gain valuable insights to stay ahead of the competition.

The 5G mobile network is driving enhanced data collection and analysis for businesses. This means more data from diverse sources at faster speeds, enabling real-time intelligence.

These data speeds are essential for utilizing AI and automation. Potential applications include intelligent data analysis, remote medical control, remote traffic light control, and virtual reality machinery monitoring.

BMW is testing the capabilities of 5G technology at its factory in Leipzig, Germany. By combining 5G and AI, BMW can locate machines, cars, tools, and parts within the factory in real time with centimeter-level accuracy.

In early 2021, T-Mobile deployed its first 5G network in a hospital at the Miami Veterans Affairs Healthcare System. The network’s peak speeds of 1 gigabit per second enable healthcare providers to access data-intensive patient records from devices anywhere in the hospital.  

5G connectivity is also critical for telemedicine. The high speeds of 5G networks enable near real-time video and remote patient monitoring. Searches for “remote patient monitoring” have climbed over 300% in the past five years.

Businesses are leveraging 5G connectivity via the Internet of Things (IoT) to improve operations and launch new services. IoT sensors are already used in manufacturing production lines, supply chain tracking, autonomous vehicles, and more.

IBM is testing the use of IoT to monitor civil infrastructure. This “next-generation maintenance program” combines data from sensors, cameras, drones, and wearables to assess the safety and risks associated with roads, bridges, water mains, and other assets. IBM estimates that this program can help address a $2 trillion backlog of infrastructure improvements.  

The agribusiness industry is expected to rapidly integrate 5G and IoT into daily operations. Remote sensing and connected devices can monitor soil conditions, assess harvest readiness, and control pests. Connected devices are already monitoring livestock.

Lely’s “cow-recognition system” outfits each animal with a transponder attached around its neck. The data-driven solution provides farmers with insights to efficiently manage livestock, collecting data on animal health, activity, eating, and reproduction. While the system doesn’t currently operate on mobile networks, agribusiness experts anticipate that 5G networks will drive efficiency, seamless workflows, and a higher-quality end product in the near future.

4. Employees Embrace Remote and Hybrid Work

At the height of the pandemic, 71% of Americans with jobs that could be done from home were working exclusively remotely. Search interest in “remote work” soared during this time and continues to rise. The number of people working from home tripled between 2019 and 2021.

A 2022 Gallup survey revealed that 56% of full-time US employees have jobs that can be done from home, amounting to 70 million workers. As the pandemic wanes, many employees are adopting hybrid work schedules. Of those workers, 50% have a hybrid work schedule, 30% work fully remotely, and 20% work fully in-office. Search volume for “hybrid work” has increased by over 332% in the past five years.

Young people with college degrees are most likely to have access to remote and hybrid work environments. Research shows that those with a bachelor’s degree or higher are five times more likely to work from home than those with less education.  

Recent trends indicate that employees who have experienced remote work are reluctant to return to traditional in-office setups. A 2022 survey by the Pew Research Center reported that 78% of those currently working remotely desire to continue this arrangement in the coming years, up 14% since 2020. Search volume for “remote hiring” continues to climb, up 2,250% in five years.

More than two-thirds of remote workers say they would start looking for a new position if their company