A complex vision of tomorrow

From art to technology, our visions of tomorrow are filled with emotions and questions that highlight our curious relationship with uncertainty. Rising both the tools to better thrive in a challenging environment and the needs expressed by communities of innovators, experts and analysts outline flexible approaches to apprehend technology developments. Opening systemic debates, rather than simple discussions, innovation requires to handle complexity in shorter time while creating common languages to align uncertain objectives with critical customer requirements.

A productive curiosity

Connected technologies open an artistic potential to represent our human vision of the world. By shaping and exchanging our emotional pictures of tomorrow, artists around the globe help us externalize inner feelings, questions and worries that translate our requirements for better days to come.

New creators are able to visualize and materialise an innovative form of arts, breaking open the doors of their imagination, taking us beyond. Connecting otherwise locked areas, sectors, methods, materials, they derive the core function of a technical tool which results in groundbreaking ideas. While they for sure are inspiring from an artistic and cultural point of view, they also help shaping the imaginary of societies as they open new opportunities to create, think, and see the world. The beauty of these arts combined with the Internet connectivity enables us to picture the world wondering, fearing, and perhaps, changing at last.

The reality is indeed complex to express through simple words, strategies and approaches to market. The disrupted technological and social environment experts and analysts need to take into account while developing new projects requires demanding analytics capabilities combined with a thorough sense of human needs.

Elaborating a complex equation to define a humanly beneficial place to technology, analysts and experts unveil a prismatic impact of innovation on citizens daily lives. The combination of crowd level audiences and rising willingness to progress towards equality generates a momentum to express requirements as well as head towards common objectives. Using digital tools to spread messages, society builds an accelerated framework to technology, leaving engineers and researchers with the increasing need to better analyse, visualize and bring a human sense to future developments.

As a way to help experts and analysts out, customers, influencers, citizens are using the Internet to share their own views and feeling about the future, generating an open debate on freedom of speech and privacy. Although under detailed discussion, the intensity of such a debate shows how crowd-based innovation needs a better legal framework to show full potential.

The Internet has thrown us in an virtual environment of virtual freedom, opinion variety and sometimes conflicts. Information and data that can be used either for good or bad purposes. It leaves us with the responsibility of judgement, which is a great, if not the most important one. How do we, as one global community interacting on one global platform, draw the line between good and bad, that is sharing freely while protection our freedom of privacy?

Our virtual freedom contributes to generate new ideas, new visions. This idea proliferation proves necessary to understand our common requirements and concepts in line with human needs. In that context, the Internet becomes “a never-ending resource of knowledge and inspiration”.

Because they have understood the centrality of their play, humans are starting to use technology to create differently. SHAUNACY FERRO as an example reports for Fast Co-Design about an incredibly detailed architecture monuments that you can collect. Carrey Dune from Fast Co-Design relates the mesmerizing work of Jakarta-based Rizkiyanto. He gets inspiration from the Internet and claims “It’s the never-ending resource of knowledge and inspiration, from the most basic design tutorials to ‘out of [this] world’ inspiration.”

Partnering with uncertainty

Advanced technology researches highlight areas where human questioning remains a hurdle to market, alongside high market potentials and continuous industrial developments. At a clear crossroad between a machine oriented and human oriented future, analysts and experts keep stressing the need to further investigate the social impact of innovation.

There are immediate effects that can be seen from existing development of AI. They come in the form of worries that robots “invade” our social and economic space, pointing to the fact that we do not trust AI yet. Yet the opportunity is measurable. With a high market potential combined with decreasing costs of development, AI is seen a being a strategic opportunity for major players already and strategies are being concretely rolled-out. We even start to hear specialists considering how robots could protect us.

Technology developments also enable to scope more data and analysis in shorter time, with cloud and analytics as key enabler of more detailed customer need analysis. To take advantage of these agile tools, players pursue investments and strategic developments to position themselves on key growth markets.

There is room for improvement, and only “offensive” developments will enable a chessmate. As Tony Levy from IBM reminds, “With analytics delivered on cloud through software as a service (SaaS), finance organizations and users can take advantage of the full breadth of reporting, analysis, planning, budgeting, forecasting, scorecarding and what-if profitability analysis capabilities—but with the speed and agility of a cloud-based solution.”

The level of uncertainty combined with potentially exponential growth are generating needs for adaptive strategies. Specialists therefore develop flexible models, including “emergent strategies”, to enable balanced risk taking and decision making that allows space for change over time, while learning from achievements.

Innovation has yet to be seen in different angles, as the levels of issues it wants to address can vary from simple, complicated to complex. As this SSIR article explains, each of these problems requires a different strategy. Emergent strategy is highlighted as an adaptative plan that accepts “realised plans” which are affected by environmental changes unidentified in prior versions. Emergent strategies can handle complex types for issues (affected and affecting a whole system), when traditional strategies focus on simple and complicated problems.

A constructive talk

Flexibility is greatly enabled by a growing connected knowledge and creativity, fostering new ideas and concepts while validating market opportunities with open discussions between suppliers and customers. Not only is digital a targeted market for growth, it also enables to better scope how this growth should be delivered.

Embracing the opportunity to connect experiences and knowledge, experts and analysts highlight a global thinking framework to create the right ecosystem for a digitally led growth. While new services and business models disrupt our legacy approach to innovation, our connected professional and individual creativity appears as a key enabler of intelligent change.

Digital is seen as a central piece enabling communities to share common values and needs, getting them heard through smart and creative channels. Companies, investors, customers find a new “agora” on the web, building end to end views of future services, provided that stakeholder properly listen and scope expressed needs and priorities.

Social networks encourage the transmission of key attitudes and values that help communities build a common language, grammar and story to accelerate their impact. Because they are inspired by professionals and talents, members of communities on social networks develop projects that emphasize sharing and caring, building stories that resonate with a need to challenge growing global issues through collaboratively built knowledge.

One condition remains though in order to make sure requirements and needs are properly scoped. Members of communities need to make sure messages are shared with the right channel, message and target audience, turning conversations into constructive languages that lead to a collaborative betterment of concepts and actions.

Languages shape our technological and cultural environment, affecting our creativity and innovation capabilities. Today’s selection of ideas shared on WAI networks highlights four different ways language affects our creativity.