Hypothesis: empathy is the skill most effective at taking vague, poorly specified requests from customers and clients and transforming them into a design with well specified requirements and a high level plan to implement the design. For example, what a customer says they want often isn't what they need. Empathy is how we bridge that gap for them and deliver something truly valuable.

Given empathy is all about feelings, it's not something models and tools will be able to displace in the next few years.