Next big thing: Going digital

By Beth Kowitt

Want to know what the next big thing is for investors? Look for industries that haven’t hopped onto the digital wave, said Nancy Peretsman of Allen & Co. during Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit.

“You can see that for very few businesses,” said Peretsman in a session on investor insight with Juliet Flint, partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins.

Essentially none of the women at Fortune’s conference can say their companies operate the same way that they did 15 years ago, but those that do are ripe for change, says the managing director of the media investing firm.

For Peretsman that means health care and education, “two industries that haven’t yet made the migration to a digital age.” The green and mobile industries were also mentioned during the session as areas for potential investments.

As an example of the lag in education, look at the textbook industry, Peretsman says. A consumer pays on average $100 for a textbook, but the originator of the content only gets $3 to $5 for every book.

“The rest is lost in an archaic distribution system,” she says.

The major barriers for these industries entering the digital age: They are ridden with local politics, have an embedded employee base, and have a disproportionate number of non-profits attached to them.

The way that we run our lives is changing. The key for these industries is figuring out how they can keep up.