As technology continues to evolve, many opportunities for advances in the development of search systems are emerging. Over the next decade and beyond, people will interact with search systems in new ways. There will be new, more natural and richer, interaction capabilities, as well access to knowledge mined from both data and human resources to help answer searchers’ questions. With the move beyond the current reactive model, there are significant and exciting challenges in how to make search systems assume the role of a companion or intelligent assistant, in terms both of understanding query semantics as a human intermediary would, and – given that understanding – search the world's knowledge to get people to answers and information quickly. This support will help searchers explore and learn about new topics and domains, and facilitate effective decision making and action.