Next advancement in road bikes?

Every year, carbon road bikes evolve....sometimes dramatically, sometimes fueled solely by marketing.  The goal of building racing bikes has always been weight, down to every gram!  Eddy Merckx even drilled out his chainrings back in the 60's.  However, in the last 20 years of carbon fiber development, bikes have changed a lot.  Ride quality, shape, and performance can be 'tuned'.  Nobody would have ever thought that we could have frames as low as 747g(Guru Photon).  But recently things have changed.  The manufacturers race to have the lightest frames has calmed, the UCI has not budged in lowered the weight limit, (of 6.8 kg) and racers end up having to strap weights to their bikes to make the limit. 

So if they cant get lighter, then they will make them faster in other ways, like stiffness or aerodynamics.  Well, it turns out aerodynamics has much more to do with the riders position than minor frame shape tweaks.
So they turned to stiffness.
Integrated seat posts were the hot item of 2007.  They were supposed to reduce any movement causef by the rider rocking on the saddle, and keep the pedal stroke more efficient.  But they turned out to be better to look at, than ride.  The the ISP bikes are notorious for the harsh ride, severe inconvenience in fitting, re-sale, and shipping.

The trend of BB30 (oversize thread-less bottom bracket standard) is really nothing new...kids have been hammering bearings directly into their BMX frames for years, and Cannondale and Klein have been using the concept for a while as well.  But in the last couple years, manufactures have really grasped the full potential, making super sized downtubes to bond with the bottom bracket, as well as beefed up chainstays.  The wider 30mm crank spindle, lack of threaded interface, and oversized frame tubes have improved stiffness significantly.

Somewhat related to the BB30 convention is the oversized/tapered headtube.  A larger downtube makes a better connection with the larger headtube.  The larger headtube requires a larger fork, and bearings--up to 1.5 inches.  All increasing stiffness.

So the industry has been driven by stiffness to obtain maximum power transfer,  so what is the next step?

This got me thinking.....

Mountain bikes have benefited from through axle forks (over 9mm quick release) like this FOX 15mm version.  The front wheel transfers loads in many different directions.  The through axle is amazingly stiff interface compared to the QR.  So much so, that I wonder how it would perform for a road bike???