Frontier & WEF: The Top 10 Emerging Technologies
The world is constantly evolving with global leaders and scientists creating innovations to keep up with the ever changing landscape.
The World Economic Forum has partnered with frontier to create its top 10 emerging technologies report.
This report highlights tech that has recently been established but may not be ready to emerge into society yet or technology that is being used for a new purpose.
Sheri Hinish, Senior Partner, Global Consulting Sustainability, Technology and Ecosystems Leader at EY said on Linkedin: “The WEF 2025 top 10 Emerging Technologies are not just scientific milestones.
“They represent choices that will either accelerate a sustainable and equitable future or widen the gaps we are already struggling to close.”
The Dubai Future Foundation
WEF has collaborated with the Dubai Future Foundations to create forward looking scenarios based on the new technologies, with the aim to inspire people into committing to what is needed to move these technologies forward.
The foundation’s aim is to imagine, design and execute the technologies of Dubai's future, following the belief that leading in the present isn’t sufficient and that it is the future that must be focused on.
Dubai Future Foundation assess emerging technologies based on three interconnected lenses:
- As an assumption - technological progress will continue to accelerate
- As an uncertainty- Technologies are shaped by complex constraints like infrastructure limitations, energy demands, policy shifts and societal readiness
- As an enabler - Technologies that underpin emerging megatrends and future opportunities.
H.E. Khalfan Belhoul, CEO, Dubai Future Foundation says “Strategic foresight is the deliberate exploration of possible futures to inform today’s decisions.
"In an era of accelerating change, foresight enables leaders to move beyond short-term thinking, anticipate disruption and uncover opportunities that lie beyond the immediate horizon.
“At its core, strategic foresight recognises that technological innovation cannot be understood through a single, linear perspective.”
How was the top 10 list created?
Technologies featured in the top 10 list were nominated through a survey distributed by the WEF and those in collaboration.
The report defines emerging technologies as both novel innovations and established technologies being applied in transformative ways.
When innovators applied through the survey they provided information about the technology including key breakthroughs, case studies and how it will impact economies, the environment and society.
More than 250 nominations were submitted by experts across the industry, WEF used the AI Trend Analyzer developed by Frontiers to screen the submissions.
All technologies were evaluated using the World Economic Forum Resilience Consortium’s framework, looking at the technologies potential to address systematic challenges and contribute to building adaptive capacity for future generations.
The 250 was refined to the top 20 which was assessed by experts that applied three main criteria: novelty, impact and depth.
WEF has added an ecosystem readiness map for each technology, evaluating how ready the technology is to achieve its projected impact.
In a joint statement Frederick Fenter, CEO at Frontiers and Jeremy Jurgens Managing Director, World Economic Forum say “Every year, remarkable innovations emerge from research labs around the world.
“Many hold tremendous promise, yet too few successfully make the critical leap from scientific discovery to real-world application.
“For 13 years, the World Economic Forum’s Top 10 Emerging Technologies report has aimed to change that by shining a spotlight on breakthrough technologies with the potential not only to cross this threshold but also to help societies adapt and thrive in the face of complex challenges.
“This report serves a clear purpose: to catalyse forward-looking dialogues and shape technology agendas by connecting cutting-edge research with those who can help advance it.
“By identifying technologies at their turning point – where scientific achievement meets practical potential – we provide leaders in government, business and science with the insights needed to make forward-thinking decisions in a rapidly evolving landscape.”
The top 10 emerging technologies
1. Structural Battery Composites
Structural battery composites are weight bearing materials that can store electrical energy.
This technology could make electric vehicles lighter and more efficient as well as be applied to aircrafts to be included in fuselages.
If safety regulations and standards can be developed for the tech the WEF believes it could make a significant impact on the environment and economically.
2. Osmotic Power Systems
Currently the world has an imbalance of water and salt water on each side of earth and is trying to reach equilibrium. Osmotic power systems aim to generate clean, renewable, low impact electricity. By moving water over to the side that has salt to dilute it, pressure is generated as water moves across the membrane.
Recent advances in the materials and system designs have created two versions of the system:
- Pressure Retarded Osmosis that uses a semipermeable membrane to enable water to move from low to high salinity
- Reverse Electrodialysis which uses ion-exchange membranes to move positive and negative charges between two sides of the membrane which creates a charge in the process.
3. Advanced nuclear technologies
New advances in nuclear power include small modular reactors and alternative cooling fuels with the aims to lower costs, simplify design and boost power generation.
The ultimate goal of nuclear technologies is to achieve nuclear fusions which means fusing hydrogen atoms to release huge amounts of energy.
The ITER project in France has been working on this for years and if its achieved it could bring a transformative solution to global energy challenges.
4. Engineered living therapeutics
Scientists hope that turning bacteria into small medicine factories can treat disease from inside the body, creating cheaper and more efficient care.
This could be done by introducing genetic code that contains instructions for producing therapeutics into living probiotic systems like microbes, cells and fungi.
The systems could be programmed with switches to control production on demand.
5. GLP - 1s for neurodegenerative disease
GLP-1 RAs were developed to manage type 2 diabetes and obesity and are now showing promise of treatment of brain-related diseases like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's.
The treatment has been shown to reduce inflammation in the brain and encourage the removal of toxic proteins, with more than 55 million globally living with dementia the treatment could create significant social and economic benefits.
6. Autonomous biochemical sensing
The devices can detect and quantify specific biochemical parameters, using wireless communication and self sustaining power sources the technology could enable real time, ongoing monitoring.
This tech has already seen success as a wearable glucose monitor for diabetes management.
7. Green nitrogen fixation
This tech converts nitrogen from the atmosphere into ammonia at scale.
It aims to cut the environmental impact of the process of fertilisation production which currently consumes around 2% of global energy.
It would replace existing systems with ones like engineered bacteria and enzymes to fix nitrogen and use sunlight or green forms of electricity to provide energy.
8. Nanozymes
Nanozymes are lab produced and manufactures nanomaterials similar to enzymes but more stable and cheaper to produce.
Acting like catalysts the nanosymes support chemical reactions like enzymes but are more robust and can be used for a wider set of conditions.
It could be applied to water purification and food safety with trials already underway for cancer and neurodivergent disease treatment.
9. Collaborative sensing
Individual sensors are already widespread but if expanded it could change how cities operate and organisations use data to make decisions.
The sensing can connect traffic lights and adjust themselves based on traffic cameras and environmental sensors, allowing them to help manage congestion and cut pollution.
It could also change mapping mines, environmental monitoring and the analysis of storm systems.
10. Generative watermarking
AI generated content makes identifying what is real and what isn’t in an era of deepfakes.
Tech companies are increasingly integrating watermarks, however it is still facing challenges like uneven adoption and users attempting to remove or forge watermark and ethical concerns about falsely labelling real content as AI generated.
Frederick and Jeremy say: “We offer this report not as an endpoint, but as a call to action – a catalyst for the collaboration essential to help these technologies fulfil their promise.
“In an era of unprecedented challenges and uncertainty, these innovations give us powerful tools to adapt, overcome and thrive.”
