I was involved with a project called "Blue Sky" which was intended to design the next generation business class seat.
To kick off, we went to B/E Aerospace at their Winston-Salem offices and saw several concepts, including some that were pretty similar to existing products:
i) a seat similar to EK's A380 product
ii) a super-diamond style seat quite similar to the existing product on 787, 380 and 350
iii) a seat with walls around it, much like a first class seat on EK or EY
...and some which were quite new:
i) a 'room' with a seat and bed, and a separate desk and office-style seat
ii) a series of suites with an absolutely enormous footprint and in a yin-yang/Club World like configuration, only much more spacious than Club World - this was Akbar Al Baker's favourite and I think is what he might have in mind - if I recall the codename was "Whiskers".
I left soon afterwards though, so do not know any more.