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How the Next Five Years Will Revolutionize Business The years until 2020 are poised to redefine almost every facet of how we work, from the way we run customer service to the way we build our businesses.

By Jason Ankeny

This story appears in the January 2015 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »

It's 2015. The arrival of any new year inevitably provokes discussion on how the next 12 months will unfold, but with the pace of innovation accelerating faster than ever before, progressive entrepreneurs should be looking even further ahead and adapting their businesses for a new decade.

The period between 2015 and 2020 is poised to redefine virtually every facet of how we live and work. It probably won't bring jetpacks and hoverboards, but it will usher in other radical technologies, business models, customer experiences and even a new breed of entrepreneurs—a wave of so-called digital natives who think and act differently from every generation before them.

Entrepreneur asked leading futurists and cultural anthropologists what this brave new world will be like, how it will evolve and what you need to know to thrive within it. In short: how to play chess while everyone else is playing checkers. Here are their forecasts, in their own words.