But, these new businesses will need to prove themselves to consumers.

"It gets back to the trust. 'Because, you know an awful lot of about me ... how are you going to use that information? Are you going to use it for more benefit or are you going to use it to somehow make money in ways that are not going to be helpful to me?' The winners, we think, are going to be those who are able, and through the economics of their business, really deliver on that fact that 'no, I'm your agent, I'm representing you, I'm not trying to represent others to get to you'.'"

Data is an important part of this business model being realised. If the so-called trusted adviser can effectively analyse individuals' data on a big enough scale and pick up on patterns and trends in similar people, the model can be done on a mass scale, more cost efficiently and therefore be readily available to more people.

"In the consumer space, at one level we've had trusted advisers for a millennia; wealth management, personal shoppers, but they were only available for the very wealthy because it took so much time and effort to get to know you as an individual that if you didn't have a lot of money to spend it just wasn't a viable proposition," Mr Hagel said.

"Now with big data and analytics and artificial intelligence and all the rest, there is a real potential to take this to the mass market and say 'we can add value to you, even if you're spending a tremendous amount of money because it's much more efficient for us to capture all of this and create value from it."

Mr Hagel said the trusted adviser businesses necessary model would be extremely concentrated to achieve the economies of scale to make it widely usable.

"The power of the trusted adviser, and I think the distinction back to the products [companies] which are trying to get to know the customer, is we believe, ultimately, is that the trusted advisers that will create the most value are those who know you more holistically ... they're not just seeing a slice of you, they're seeing your full being and what you're trying to accomplish and they see a lot of other people so they can start to look for patterns that they say 'wait a minute, you haven't asked about this, but people like you are getting a lot of value from this kind of product or service, maybe you should consider that'.'"

Companies and brands that will be most successful will shift the way they market from being transaction-based to offering value, or service, before and after a sale.

"It was just 'how do I get you to buy my product, I collect the money, done. Maybe someday you'll come back and want to buy some more, but the core was I got your money'," Mr Hagel said.

"Versus now 'because of technology they can get visibility of how you're using my product and the kind of value you're getting from my product, I can be more and more helpful to you in terms of getting more value from the product based on how you're using it, what kind of impact it is having and that's an area where I think most product vendors still are not very skilled at, not very focused on, but ultimately the winners in the product space will be the ones really focused on helping you to get as much value as possible after you bought the product versus just trying to get you to buy it in the first place."