MISC: 2020 by MISC

a journal of strategic insight and foresight Fall 2016 $12 USD $12 CAD ÂŁ7.50 GBP Display Until 01/31/2017

Design Perspectives for 2020 P.26

The Future of Financial Crime P.56

Perspectives & Speculations

2020: Exploring Industry Futures P.70

63 0

74470 80650

Science Fiction in 2020 P.120

1 The all-new BMW 7 Series

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The University of Houston’s Foresight Program offers a Master’s Degree in Foresight, a four-course Graduate Certificate, and a week-long intensive bootcamp overview, each of which prepares students to work with businesses, governments, non-profits, and others to anticipate and prepare for the future. Established in 1974, it is the world’s longest-running degree program exclusively devoted to foresight. Some students enroll to become professional futurists, while others seek to bring a foresight perspective to their current careers. Students have three major areas of focus: understanding the future, mapping the future, and influencing the future, blending theory and practice to prepare graduates to make a difference in the world.

kaospilot.dk

Kaospilot is an international school of entrepreneurship, creativity, and leadership. It was founded in 1991 as a response to the emerging need for a new type of education – one that could help young people navigate the changing reality of the late 20th century. The program’s main areas of focus are leadership, project management, creative business, and process design. Promoting a hands-on approach, case studies are replaced by immersing students in real projects with real clients. Out of more than 600 graduates, one third have started their own company, NGO, or other similar initiative, the remaining hold management positions. Kaospilot also offers a wide range of courses for professionals in creative leadership and educational design.

Co-Publishers

Publisher

ideacouture.com

As publishers of MISC, our aim is to provide a new level of understanding in the fields of insight and foresight. We navigate the blurred boundaries of business, design, and innovation through in-depth articles from some of the preeminent voices of design thinking, technology, customer experience, and strategy. Idea Couture is a global strategic innovation and experience design firm. It is the innovation unit of Cognizant, and a member of Cognizant Digital Works. We help organizations navigate and innovate in complex and uncertain environments. We use design thinking methodologies to solve problems and exploit business opportunities – generating new growth, meaningful differentiation, and economic value. By taking an insight and foresight lens to our explorations in MISC, we can thoroughly examine the impacts and opportunities for change in a vast range of industries, allowing businesses to plan for the present and the future.

Publisher / Editor-in-Chief Idris Mootee

Theory, So What? 6 Signal, So What? 8

Publishing Advisory Council  Dr. Andy Hines  Michael Novak  Christer Windeløv-Lidzélius Lenore Richards

Insight, So What? 10

Special Feature Editor Robert Bolton

Design Perspectives for 2020 26

Head of Media & Publications Ashley Perez Karp

Health in 2020 32

Managing Editor Esther Rogers

Technology and Religion: Prayer in 2020 50 The Future of Financial Crime 56 2020: Exploring Industry Futures 70 Speculating on Speculation: Science Fiction in 2020 120

Editor Mira Blumenthal Taylor Dennis Editorial Intern Erika Streisfield Art Director / Design Sali Tabacchi, Inc. Additional Design Idea Couture Design Team Illustration Jen Backman

Create 126 Distribution (US/Canada) Disticor International Distribution Pineapple Media Subscription Enquiries subscription@miscmagazine.com Letters to the Editor letters@miscmagazine.com Contribution Enquiries contribution@miscmagazine.com Advertising Enquires advertising@miscmagazine.com MISC (ISSN 1925-2129)  is published by Idea Couture Inc. Canada 241 Spadina Avenue, Suite 500 Toronto, ON M5T 2E2 United States 649 Front Street, Suite 300 San Francisco, CA 94111 United Kingdom 85 Great Eastern Street London, EC2A 3HY

Contributing Writers Dr. Emma Aiken-Klar  Shannon Ashley  Dr. Melissa Atkinson-Graham Dr. Eitan Buchalter Maree Conway Laura Dempsey Maxence Derreumaux Thom Doyle Robert Evans  Lee Fain  Theo Forbath Scott Friedmann Jared Gordon Rachel Ison Dr. Mitchell Joachim Gajen Kandiah Stephanie Kaptein Elinor Keshet Dr. Marc Lafleur Yehezkel Lipinsky  Carson Marks Ginny Miller  Dr. Khairunnisa Mohamedali Jaraad Mootee Rachel Noonan Will Novosedlik Atul Patidar Dr. Scott Pobiner Gemma Rogers Omid Rostamianfar Lotte Rystedt Shane Saunderson Alexis Scobie Dr. Maya Shapiro Valdis Silins Brandon Smith Suzanne Stein  Dr. Michelle Switzer Dr. Rimma Teper Udit Vira Aqeel Wahab Dr. Ted Witek

Based in Monterrey, Mexico, CEDIM takes a design, innovation, and business comprehensive approach to education. Design is promoted as a core philosophy, and the faculty consists of active, young, and experienced professionals who have expertise in a broad range of fields. Students are engaged with real and dynamic work projects, and are encouraged to immerse themselves in these active projects in order to participate in the realities of the workforce long before graduation. As a result, students at CEDIM develop an extensive sensitivity to their social, economic, and cultural environment, and go on to make real, pragmatic change in the world of design and innovation. cedim.edu.mx

All Rights Reserved 2016. Email misc@miscmagazine.com The advertising and articles appearing within this publication reflect the opinions and attitudes of their respective authors and not necessarily those of the publisher or editors. We are  not to be held accountable for unsolicited manuscripts, artworks or photographs. All material within this magazine is © 2016 Idea Couture Inc.

photo: Alex Wong

Contents

ocadu.ca

OCAD University’s Strategic Foresight and Innovation program (SFI) can claim a place at the leading edge of pedagogy and foresight practice. The SFI program is creating a new kind of designer – a strategist who sees the world from a human perspective, rethinks what is possible, and imagines and plans a better future. Recognizing the increasing importance that design thinking can play in positively impacting society, enhancing business success, and managing organizational change, students in the program address the complex dilemmas of contemporary society. This interdisciplinary program interweaves design and foresight methods with social science, systemic design, and business, while providing the skills and knowledge to identify critical issues, frame problems, and develop innovative and humane solutions to better implementation plans.

ost of us have come to the realization that we are entering an era of digital industrialization. Industries and organizations are going through structural changes and realigning themselves with the fourth Industrial Revolution, characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres. Companies are asking what it means, how best to organize, and how and when to respond to the discontinuities brought on by this revolution. Traditionally, technological discontinuities alone are not enough to disrupt an industry’s dominant logic or structures. Companies need to go a step or two beyond by quickly identifying the weak signals and key factors that might trigger change. By applying these insights and disrupting the dominant logic, companies can develop strategies that enable them to capture (and offer) greater value from their innovations.

Business model innovation is a main driver of dominant logic disruption, and it is triggered by new patterns of behavior and collaboration. I hope this 2020 issue can trigger the urgent need for companies to deal with their pathologies of trying to “reintegrate” outdated business models with new realities. I hope it allows them to develop a repertoire of strategic actions, enabling the meta-capabilities needed to accelerate the renewal and transformation of business models. In 2020, we will be reaching a new threshold accelerated by complex interlinks and interactivity. It is not too late to prepare yourself for that. When curating the topics we wanted to cover for this issue, we quickly realized there was no limitation to the industries that could benefit from this preparation. In Will Novosedlik’s “Health in 2020,” he looks at the trajectory of the healthcare industry and its effect on the rich and the poor – and the findings aren’t exactly rosy. In “The New 40,” Dr. Maya Shapiro explores the needs of an emerging “sandwich generation,” and how their specific needs will impact a range of industries, from communication to finance. Gemma Rogers and Robert Evans explore “The Future of Financial Crime” in their in-depth look at financial security and how fintech will impact it in coming years. And for our special feature, “Exploring Industry Futures,” we do a bit of time traveling with a selection of fictional magazine covers and articles set in the year 2020, inspired by some of our favorite publications such as WIRED and Fast Company. 2020 isn’t far away. While it’s tempting to think even further beyond, it’s the near future that often makes or breaks a company, sometimes even an industry. The last couple of decades have been nothing less than a stark reminder of just how much can change in a short period of time. So what will you change by 2020?

Idris Mootee Publisher / Editor-in-Chief

7 In this regular feature, we pick a social theory, explain its relevance to everyday life, and then explore how the theory’s implications could impact the future of your business, industry, or category.

Theory, so what?

Temporality and Innovation Using Design Anthropology to Imagine and Design for 2020

So What?

Design Anthropology Signals:

Shifting anthropology’s temporal lens forward to design for the future. Anthropology’s emphasis on temporality isn’t just about the subjective experience of time and the importance of the past in shaping the present. Design anthropology, in particular, shifts the temporal orientation forward to explore the ways that humans imagine their futures, and then incorporates these imaginings into the design of relevant and contextual future experiences. Rather than producing ethnography as text, design anthropology engages users and consumers in collaborative, co-creative activities, producing artifacts that reflect the needs and contexts of future experiences. As Caroline Gatt and Tim Ingold describe, doing anthropology through design means that, temporally, we are engaged in a kind of transformation that is prospective. We project an imaginary field that considers the future. Design anthropology uses what Joachim Halse has termed “technologies of the imagination” (scenarios, enactments, prototyping, and other co-creative activities) to represent possible futures, and then critically engages with what life looks like in the futures we imagine. Shifting the temporal lens forward, anthropology becomes about what is possible and the field of study becomes the human imagination. This temporal shift moves us away from anthropology as retrospection, and places it instead at the heart of future making.

Design Fictions Anthropologists and design researchers are increasingly using fictitious scenarios to engage with users to imagine and explain possible futures; these understandings form important context for future design. Ethnographic Co-Creation Empathetic product and service design is being collaboratively developed through co-creation of artifacts that allow participants to reflect on past and present experiences, and imagine experiences they’ll have in their possible futures. Ethnocharette Conceived and piloted out of the University of California’s Center for Ethnography, the ethnocharette is an experimental approach to applying design thinking and methods to ethnographic inquiry. Borrowing from a design studio format, the ethnocharette is a highly collaborative approach to prototyping new forms of (non-textual) ethnographic knowledge.

What If…

How might your business or brand benefit from an anthropology that shifts its temporal lens into the future?

What is Temporality? Anthropologists use the term “temporality” to talk about the way we experience time; temporality allows us to think about how time is, what it feels like, and how it exists in our lives. Whereas time can be understood as the objective movement and change of existence from past, to present, and then future, temporality speaks to the subjective experience of time and the relationship that humans have with time as a construct.

Temporality has been an important concept for anthropologists in a couple of different ways. The first is in the subjective nature of the experience of time, and how these experiences shape everyday life. For example, many cultures have different ways of conceptualizing the relationship between past, present, and future; temporality is important when seeking to understand how these cultures interpret their lives. In this sense, anthropologists have often studied differences in the ways in which time is experienced locally. Alternatively, temporality has been an

important part of anthropology’s own critique of itself, specifically the need for anthropologists to avoid freezing the people they study in an “ethnographic present” by critically engaging with how the past plays an important role in shaping the ways that the present is understood and experienced. As we seek to understand human experience, we must engage with how past contexts (be they social, political, environmental, etc.) contour current conditions. In this sense, temporality reminds us that there is a history of factors embedded in every moment and event of social life.

01 photo: Loic Djim

B y D r. E m m a A i k e n -K l a r

How do your products’ features and benefits support or amplify your customers’ fears and hopes about the future?

When people imagine their ideal futures, do your services still meet their expectations?

What shapes the ways that people imagine they will interact with brands in the future, and what kinds of partnership ecosystems will support these scenarios?

How do people imagine their future selves? Does your current business support these imaginings? //// Dr. Emma Aiken-Klar is VP, insights at Idea Couture.

Signal, so what?

In every issue, we highlight a weak signal and explore its possibilities and ramifications on the future of your business, and how to better prepare for it.

The Coming Age of Artificial Intelligence

Overview

We’ve come to a point where humans aren’t the only source of new ideas. Last March, Google’s AlphaGo, an artificial intelligence (AI), played the ancient game of Go against one of the world’s greatest players, Lee Sedol. In game two, it played a move no human would ever make. When one commentator saw the move, he observed it as a mistake. The move didn’t compute for us, but it did for AlphaGo. And it was the tipping point; the move turned the game in the machine’s favor.

photo: “Aaron with Decorative Panel” by Harold Cohen

Aaron, created by Harold Cohen in the 1970s, is a computer program that is able to draw both abstract and representational forms with a remarkably organic and human-like quality.

B y Ye h e z k e l L i p i n s k y

AlphaGo rose above human thinking because humans weren’t its only teacher. AlphaGo’s education began by studying the best human moves. Then it played versions of itself over and over. Then it analyzed the moves played against itself, realizing the future impacts of each move. Its training began with human ingenuity and insight, but it didn’t finish there. From studying its own moves, it learned something humans didn’t already know. In an entirely different setting, IBM’s Watson has applied itself to cooking. It’s able to mix ingredients we might not think to mix, and it creates intriguing food combinations because it doesn’t focus on food’s historical availability and ethnic origins. These instances of machines seeing our world differently and providing new thinking could usher us into an age of “artificial insight” – an era in which machines’ new insights into our world fuel human progress.

So What? We could be entering an age where we’re always working with two heads – our own and an artificial one – solving problems together. Frost & Sullivan reports that spending on AI will grow from $633.8M in 2014 to over $6B by 2021. In 1960, J.C.R. Licklider wrote that there will be “a fairly long interim during which the main intellectual advances will be made by men and computers working together in intimate association… those years should be intellectually the most creative and exciting in the history of mankind.” Medicine is one space this vision is already beginning to advance. IBM’s Watson already has a 90% accuracy rate in diagnosing lung cancer – 40% higher than humans – and Dr. Larry Norton, who conducts research at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, says that AI could assist medical professionals to navigate unfamiliar disease states with ease and expertise. If the 20th century was defined by extraordinary feats of human intelligence, the 21st century could be defined by feats of AI. Pushing this further, the next decade’s breakthroughs might not be new gadgets but new minds. AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky sees the human mind as just one kind of mind. He points out that AI is a deceptive catchall – multiple kinds of AI could be produced, some similar to our thinking and some beyond our current comprehension. Academic Murray Shanahan poetically refers to a spectrum of multiple kinds of brains – humans, animals, and upcoming AI, all comprising “the space of possible minds.” Joseph Modayil, who now works at Google’s DeepMind, told Nautilus, “Artificial systems show us intelligence spans a vast space of possibilities.” One can think about it like the color spectrum – humans can only see a fraction of it. What if minds work similarly, with humans experiencing just a narrow band of thought? The next era could see different intelligences making their mark on a globe that, so far, has been mainly impacted by one kind of thinking.

What If… Personal It might feel threatening knowing that human intelligence might be surpassed by artificial intelligence. However, take note of Lee Sedol’s reaction to playing AlphaGo: he was energized. He got better by competing against his artificial opponent, and developed new ideas for how to play the game because of it. Artificial insight showed one of the world’s greatest players a larger plane of possibility.

Brand What occurs when AI helps create new products? Will it devise a brilliant invention and look to us for help in giving it human warmth? If AI is leading us to product insights, how will this change the nature of competition?

Organizational In a World Economic Forum study, 45% of experts and executives consulted said that by 2025, they expect an AI to be on a board of directors. Artificial insight could be so profound that it finds itself engaging at the highest levels of organizations. If further forms of AI are created, where will each one fit into your business? A world where our thinking is complemented by another intelligence sounds distant and strange. John McCarthy, who coined the phrase “artificial intelligence,” remarked: “as soon as it works, no one calls it AI anymore.” Facebook already uses AI. So does Google. Your own thinking might be the next platform that engages with it. //// Yehezkel Lipinsky is a foresight and innovation analyst at Idea Couture.

Insight, so what?

In every issue, we explore a topic through an anthropological lens in order to better understand its impacts on a wide range of industries.

B y d r . Me l i s s a A t k i n s o n - G r a h a m

One of the central tenets of anthropology is to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange. Anthropologists do this by putting aside any assumptions or preconceived ideas we might have about the objects we study, whether they are social groups, practices, or products and services, in order to understand those objects in their cultural specificity. This can be especially challenging when it comes to studying something as familiar as traffic. However, by making traffic strange, we can find novel routes toward comprehending this problem.

photo: RayBay

The Strange Road to Insight

A Part of Everyday Life

Making the Known Unknown

No End in Sight

Most of us have experienced traffic and can conjure a sense of what itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like to lurch through congested streets or freeways amid a chorus of honking horns. It is common enough in urban spaces that we know to factor in rush hours when planning trips. We even learn to modify our behavior to mitigate and minimize our exposure to traffic by taking public transportation or making decisions to live closer to where we work and play. In a city like Los Angeles, which has the highest rate of congestion and total hours lost to traffic in North America, traffic has become so commonplace that it is perceived to be part of what it means to live in the area. It is precisely the perception that traffic is a normal part of everyday life in Los Angeles that signals an opportunity to understand the social, political, and economic conditions that have shaped and continue to shape this perception. By making traffic strange, we are able to uncover the hidden cultural meanings, values, and experiences that shape the construction and perpetuation of this perspective. In analyzing the particular ways that Angelenos experience and talk about traffic, we can understand how their stories correlate to the illness narratives often expressed by chronic disease sufferers.

People with chronic diseases often feel as though they have lost both their map and their destination â&#x20AC;&#x201C; stuck in transit between the realms of the sick and the well. They live with invisible and non-localizable symptoms, such as pain and fatigue, which persist beyond expected treatment times. Their suffering is frequently delegitimized by friends, family, and their healthcare providers because they often have the appearance of being healthy. Angelenos describe similar bodily and social states when discussing their experiences with traffic. They talk about the persistent fatigue of knowing, irrevocably, that they will face traffic, but not knowing exactly what the conditions will be like. They also describe the physical pain of sitting in traffic, isolated and immobile, and of the emotional discomforts of having their relationships strained by traffic â&#x20AC;&#x201C; of not being able to visit family or friends because traffic conditions would make a visit unbearable. Making traffic an even stranger object in and through a theorization of its resonance with chronic disease is not meant to diminish or trivialize the experience of chronic disease in any way, or to compare forms of pain and suffering; rather, it is to use our knowledge of the experience of chronic disease to develop a critical approach to understanding the embodied, emotional, psychological, and social challenges that individuals face in their experiences with traffic. Existing knowledge of chronic disease provides a novel analytic purchase on traffic by bringing to light its more subtle dimensions and tensions.

By looking at stories of chronic disease, we begin to give serious consideration to the idea that traffic is lived as a physical, emotional, and social experience. Like chronic disease sufferers, people in Los Angeles have lost their maps to a different future, and few feel as though they can even ask for direction. The chronic experience of traffic has greatly diminished how people imagine possibilities for improvement. Traffic is accepted as part of life in Los Angeles because the pains of this chronic experience have whittled away at the ability of Angelenos to imagine or invest in the idea that these conditions could be different. They feel stuck between a hope for improvement and the fear that traffic conditions will get worse. So what is the right treatment for traffic? Thinking through how traffic is experienced in Los Angeles, we learn that solutions for this problem require more than implementing transportation alternatives that get people out of their vehicles. This insight points to the need to consider how transportation planning might take seriously the isolating, individualizing, fatiguing, and sometimes painful chronic experiences of traffic. What would a human-centered cure for traffic look like? How can modes of transportation systems enact care for their users? How can drivers be made to feel that their painful experiences of traffic are understood? //// Dr. Melissa Atkinson-Graham is a resident anthropologist at Idea Couture.

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Re-reinventing the Digital Organization by 2020 By Gajen K a n dia h a n d Id r i s M o o t ee

This title might not make much sense upon first reading. Despite the last 20 years of effort – whether it’s been adapting to digital channels, the digitization of business processes, or rethinking what it means to put digital at the core of an organization – we are realizing that we have far more work ahead, and it greatly outweighs the number of accomplishments we’ve already achieved.

photo: idris mootee

In this article, we share a series of provocations and ideas that we believe are integral to embracing digital at any organization. This is meant to serve as an overview to inspire and promote new ways of thinking, with more in-depth explorations to follow in future issues.

Different businesses have different ways of understanding and applying digital, and how this application works has yet to be fully realized. We continue to see our enterprise customers implement digital in a very siloed way, something we like to call “doing digital” – rather than putting digital at the core, which is “being digital.” And while many companies have built out digital legacies that may be helping businesses take advantage of digital channels and networks, these same companies are actually moving their clients away from putting digital at their core because it isn’t a full-blown rethink of how to embrace and live it. In truth, there aren’t many examples of companies that have successfully become cohesive digital entities. In many cases, companies are approaching digital through the lens of “how do I take an existing portfolio of products and services and make them digitally accessible and engaging?” They create an experience or engagement around their products in order to better interact with customers, but it’s not a fundamental product rethink. Embedding and embracing digital in every function of an organization is also not just a race to get ahead; it is becoming a given.

The underlying issue here is that the very idea of “digital” has changed. Take the value chain, for example. In the digital world, the traditional value chain is completely disrupted, focusing instead on bringing together an ecosystem to deliver a service. One of the most cited case studies for this is Uber. Uber integrates services from different vendors (such as Braintree for payments and Google Maps for GPS). They didn’t build something new; they used existing technology and created a fundamentally new and intrinsically convenient experience for the customer. Uber also looks at the customer differently by wrapping their offerings and experience around their needs – which is integral to becoming digital. In addition to how we move ourselves through the world, everything from how we eat, play, and work to how we bank or stay healthy is going to change. Business leaders must ask themselves: What do your customers want in this new world? What context will they be operating in during the next two years, five years? Rather than focusing on customer experience, which implies you’re already focusing on a product they are interacting with, the customer must be put at the center of the value chain, wrapping the chain around their human needs rather than around your products or services.

learning, and artificial intelligence will make it easier for computers to understand humans and change how people and machines collaborate. Companies will need to figure out if and how they play in these uncharted territories in order to stay relevant, as they will have to understand the true impact and sustainability of these tools. However, if a company’s technology decisions and courses are charted correctly, the rewards and the potential to become an industry leader are tremendous. What’s next for businesses as we creep ever closer to the 2020 milestone? As entire organizations embrace thinking digitally, the need for a separate digital function or department will be deemed unnecessary. We will witness the rise and fall of digital as we know it; instead, we will finally witness what it means to embrace “being digital.” Previously, digital has been passive, faithfully implementing detailed algorithms based on a set of business rules. But now, digital is about to sense and understand the surrounding world, and augment those senses with the ability to learn, analyze, and ultimately understand and even control the environment. This is the beginning of the age of cognitive computing. If all this seems overwhelming – and given the scale of change, it probably should – we need to go back to the first important steps of understanding how a company can become digital: define what digital means to you as a company; understand your customers’ needs both today and in the future; reverse engineer that to who you are as a company and to your products and services; and put in place a journey map to get to this destination. Set a course for 2020 – it will be an exciting journey that involves applied science, new technologies, and – most importantly – humans. ////

think future

Next, we must consider the role of the C-suite amidst all of this change, for they are integral to executing successfully. The last two decades have not been kind to CMOs and CTOs. With the explosion of technological innovation, almost every company is now becoming a tech company, and the CTO is taking on more strategy-related responsibilities. Meanwhile, CMOs are struggling to embrace digital and recognize ad hoc marketing opportunities, with organizations still neatly divided into brand, advertising, promotions, insights, and digital. But it’s time they ask: What isn’t digital today? How is digital transforming the company into a truly sense-and-respond organization? What are the talent gaps that an organization has to fill over the next five years? How do we re-architect organizational design so that it is fully aligned with new technology architectures? Companies can no longer count on marketing to find growth. As a result, their CEOs have had to look to operations and finance to increase profitability by focusing on costs, eliminating low performance products, driving cost out from operations, and cutting niche projects. Current organization designs are unable to cope with today’s complex competitive landscapes. CEOs now have to advance on a dual mandate: to continue to take cost out of the systems by leveraging scale and operational excellence, and to develop innovation capabilities to jumpstart growth. The source of innovation has to come from new behavior powered by new digital technologies. Digital is not an end state. With cheap computing horsepower, the proliferation of sensors, accessibility to the cloud, and powerful machine learning algorithms, we have all the tools we need to reinvent digital. We might ultimately reach a steady state, but it is nowhere in sight for now. Emerging technology and human behavior-focused design will be at the heart of innovation, but the answer to achieving this is not hiring more developers or conducting more innovation labs. This may have seemed like a reasonable idea in the past, but today, having that perspective is flawed for several reasons. Firstly, it is impossible to simply graft digital expertise onto an organization that is not digitally oriented. When this happens, digital teams tend to become siloed and the “digital arm” of a business works within a box – often either a marketing box or an IT box. Second, the very digital skills these companies seek to emulate can quickly become obsolete. Third, human-centric design needs to go hand in hand with digital transformation; otherwise, it will be just another big budget IT deployment. Fourth, customers are increasingly judging businesses by the experiences they have through multiple channels, and consumers are increasingly looking for a more human approach from brands. Organizations need to be empowering employees to respond in real time and in a human manner, despite the tools being digital. Finally, many organizations are still talking about websites, mobile touchpoints, and CRM. These outdated views, even when executed correctly, only create yesterday’s competitive advantages – and as technology changes and shifts, so does the user’s experience and preferences. Enterprises will need to recognize that the next wave of digital disruption is not really a technological one – it is a human one. It’s not about adopting every new technology that becomes available; it’s about understanding what can work and finding a human language – both in terms of usability and the “humanization of technology.” Let’s take virtual and augmented reality as an example. With these developing technologies, the ways in which companies put customers at the core could involve a whole new set of possibilities. And the progress in automation, machine

Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation

The M/I/S/C/ Guide to Design Thinking

Spaces + Places of Care

Gajen Kandiah is the president of Cognizant Digital Works. Idris Mootee is the publisher and editor-in-chief of MISC and CEO of Idea Couture.

Humans and Innovation

// Enterprises will need to recognize that the next wave of digital disruption is not really a technological one – it is a human one. //

When Everything is Connected

Human Insights

Wearables

The Future According to Women

Winning the Next Game

amazon.com ideacouture.com

B y d r . K h a i r u n n i s a M o h a m ed a l i

By 2020, we will have witnessed a generational shift in the workforce. Today, millennials make up one third of the active workforce; by 2020, they will make up nearly one half. Soon after this, millennials will comprise the majority of the workforce. What does this type of generational change mean for the structure, organization, and culture of business? On the surface, this is an easy question to answer. After all, there is a slew of data and commissioned reports available on the topic. The research tells us that millennials rank development as their number one priority at work, while they consider salary and benefits to be less important. They value people and workplace environment and culture as highly as they do flexible work schedules. These two areas (workplace culture and flexibility) are not valued nearly as strongly by millennials’ boomer and GenX predecessors. Research also shows that millennials are comfortable changing workplaces frequently. According to a 2016 Deloitte study, for example, 44% of millennials anticipate having to change employers in the next two years, and an increasing number believe they will have over half a dozen employers in the course of their lifetime.

This surface information, however, only tells us what millennials want – it doesn’t tell us why. And why is the key to innovating. It takes us from being rapid responders to the coming changes to being the visionaries who both anticipate what is to come and act accordingly. Why is the key to designing structures and end-to-end processes that enable sustained, meaningful engagement with employees through workplace organization and culture – all while protecting organizational interests. To answer why, we will have to leave the digestible stats behind for a moment and dig a little deeper. A good place to begin our exploration of why is generational theory. The crux of generational theory is that historical location acts as a filter through which an age cohort’s experiences of the world are distilled into a shared consciousness and value system. This means that individuals who share a generation also share a worldview and value system. Generations, in other words, operate similarly to class or gender: they are a lived reality that shapes how an individual experiences the world and, therefore, how they understand the world. Often, individuals develop this value system in reaction to the values of the generations that precede them.

photo: Jordan Whitfield

A Changing of the Guard Millennials at Work in 2020

This is, of course, not a license to make blanket generalizations about a group of people. There is a myriad of variations within an age cohort – including gender and class, as well as ethnicity, country of residence, and so on. Rather, simply put, generational theory tells us that people are shaped by the times they live in. Historical events and crises shape a loosely shared consciousness and value system that lies at the heart of change from one generation to the next. So, what historical events and crises have shaped millennial values? Millennials grew up in a pocket of optimism and economic growth, born between the end of the Cold War and the start of the War on Terror that followed 9/11. Millennials also witnessed the rise of the internet and connectivity, and they now live in a world of rapid technological growth. These factors all drive millennials’ values. These individuals are driven by 90s kids nostalgia and bolstered by the optimism of rapid technological progress, all while tugging at the sleeves of a bewildered present with visions of what could be if only the current system – created and operated by previous generations – could be transformed. This system that, through its excesses, has made climate change a hot button topic and resulted in a global recession that hit as many millennials were entering the workforce. This tension between a flash of optimism and the subsequent reality of insecure times tells us why millennials are interested in personal growth over salary: they are actually reacting to the reality of entering the workforce during a recession. They are also reacting to coming of age during the anxiety of a post-9/11 world in which the War on Terror has made uncertainty the geo-political status quo. In the absence of certainty, personal growth is the surest investment for millennials who want to be upwardly mobile despite the unreliability of the system and the world around them. It explains the preference for flexible hours: technology and connectivity have made mobility and flexibility the norm. There is no need, in many cases, to be in the office or tied to a desk in order to be either accessible or productive. This contributes to the slow bleed between personal and professional: just as work emails can be read and responded to during non-working hours, so too can personal emails be addressed during working hours. And if availability can bleed across boundaries, so can the self: millennials do not expect the clear separation between work and play that 9-to-5 denotes. Instead, the purpose, values, and goals that drive people in their personal lives are ideally expected to be achievable in their professional lives. This tension also explains why millennials value socialmindedness, environmental consciousness, and ethical business practices. It explains the millennial trend towards valuing experiences over things. Such a value system is a way to solve for the current failures of a system whose engine of growth, from the millennial point of view, was carelessly excessive material production and consumption. Finally, the tension that sits at the center of millennials’ needs and behaviors in the workforce also explains high millennial employee turnover and perceived low levels of loyalty. In a space where the current system may not meet millennial needs in the workplace, these individuals are much more likely to leave their employer for one that does offer, for example, flexible work hours or better personal development.

How does this tension – the why – help us anticipate the generational shift in the workforce that will be precipitated in 2020? How does it help us design end-to-end processes and solutions? Here are some questions, though by no means a comprehensive list, of things to consider to kick-start our thinking:

/ How do we restructure employee development and engagement? Employee retention will not be earned through salary and benefits, but rather by providing clear and structured opportunities for growth. Additionally, employers that align on value – for example, by providing outlets for socially and ethically minded endeavors through pro bono work or philanthropic engagements – can hold the advantage over competitors.

/ How can we protect organizational culture? In the face of potentially higher turnover as a new norm, the best-prepared organizations will be those that have effective processes in place for retaining organizational culture and institutional memory through this turnover. Culture is produced and reproduced, and this is true for organizational culture, too. However, it is especially necessary to be purposeful in the production and reproduction of company culture: changes in organizational culture can often be slow and gradual, to the point of going unnoticed even when they do occur. As a result, onboarding and early training are especially important spaces for propagating a specific workplace culture.

/ How do we anticipate the evolution of flexible work hours? When it comes to flexible working hours, many companies are already attempting to leverage technology to enable mobility and fluidity throughout the workday. Providing a tablet and a mobile phone is the first step, but one that can cause backlash if the expectation that a call can be taken on weekends is not reciprocated with flexibility for personal activities during working hours.

/ How do we prepare for the future of management? The generational shift in the workforce is not simply about onboarding and satisfying millennial employees. By 2020, the majority of these millennials will be well on their way to climbing up the management ladder and entering positions with significant power to make changes in how business is practiced and organizations are run. We can already see the way the winds will blow in startups and small businesses. Workplace layout, working styles, and employee evaluations are all open game for experimenting with changing the rules of the game. How will the behemoth corporate structures created by previous generations fare in the face of a generation that is driven by nostalgia for a fleeting golden era, tech-driven optimism, and a deep malaise with the current system? Stay tuned for four more years to find out. //// Dr. Khairunnisa Mohamedali is a senior resident anthropologist at Idea Couture.

// The safest answer to the question of what business we will be in several years from now is likely “not what we are in today.” //

On the surface, this question seems straightforward for the typical Fortune 500 organization. Citigroup is in the business of banking and financial services; McDonald’s is in the franchise restaurant business; Coca-Cola is in the beverage business (or is it mostly soda?); IBM is in business services; Alphabet is in search (and some other areas that have minimal current impact on the top and bottom line); Disney is in the media and theme park business; Xerox is in document management; Avon is in the direct-to-consumer personal care business; and Ford is in the automotive business.

photo: Simon Olbach

A Constant Evolution What Business Are We in Again?

B y S c o t t F r i ed m a n n

But if you dive a little deeper, the question becomes more complex, because corporations like to think of their business in the context of their more powerful brands. Citigroup says they are in the business of “Progress informed by the past, and inspired by the future;” Coca-Cola says they are “Refreshing the world, one story at a time;” McDonalds says: “Our journey Together. For good;” and Alphabet claims they strive “to do more, and to do important and meaningful things.” From a shareholder perspective, all that really matters is that a business is growing their top and bottom lines while maximizing shareholder returns. Their brands are

important in the context of building customer loyalty and above average margins. They also hopefully drive a vision for new products and services beyond today’s business. The business they are in and their “industry” often influences their valuations and market perception. But will the business they are in today be relevant 20 years from now? Or even 5 years from now? Do corporate boards have to explicitly think about their area of business in the future instead of iterating on where they are today? Alphabet seems to at least aspire to be in many new industries and has created a structure to enable that vision. But this lack of focus

risks making them a next generation holding company – like ITT, among others – creating a hodgepodge of businesses that make no sense together and dilute capital allocations and long-term growth. Does a more focused approach to figuring out “what business will we be in” make more sense? Does rapidly evolving technology and changing customer needs even make this possible? The practice of foresight and exploration of alternative scenarios provides the first seed on how to approach the problem and begin answering the question. Ironically, the safest answer to the question of what business we will be in several years from now is likely “not what we are in today.” If history is any lesson, we know that the business of today isn’t usually the business of tomorrow. If Rockefeller didn’t buy transportation networks and build the retail channel, Standard Oil would never have become a monopolistic giant. If ATT were not in the wireless business today, it wouldn’t likely exist with any scale or market cap. If all Coca-Cola sold today was soda, growth would have been flat for the past decade or so. In some cases, rethinking what business a company is in is forced upon them or even entirely inevitable: Nokia no longer makes mobile phones, Kodak no longer makes film (or anything for that matter), Sony no longer makes Walkmans, and even Apple knows that iPhones can’t and won’t drive shareholder returns in the future. But knowing something is a dying business is still vastly easier that determining what future business a company should be in. Is 7-Eleven in the convenience store business, or the franchise business, or the real estate business, or the gas station business, or all of the above? Should they be in none of the above 20 years from now? On the surface, this question is preposterous. But on further thought, cars won’t need to fill up for gas, most consumables will be delivered directly to consumers, franchisees will not be able to make a living, and the value of the real estate will shrink. Not an incredibly glamorous growth picture for investors. For a few companies, the answer shouldn’t change; Hermès will always be Hermès. But for most companies, embracing the idea that the business of today will not be the business of tomorrow is a healthy prescription for both sustainability and growth. //// Scott Friedmann is chief innovation officer, EVP at Idea Couture.

Searching for Serendipity

Can serendipity be induced?

How Humans and Technology Could Work Together

What role can technology play in generating serendipitous experiences?

In 2011, Eric Schmidt (former CEO of Google) announced his vision to transition Google from the search engine we know to a serendipity engine. According to Schmidt, a serendipity engine is one that knows people so well it can self-generate unsolicited search results that stimulate serendipitous experiences. There were, of course, mixed responses to this idea. Some were amazed by the potential for such technological capabilities, while others were terrified by the autonomous and uncontrollable development of a seemingly omnipotent piece of artificial intelligence. And there were the skeptics who remained unconvinced about the ability of an algorithm to replicate such a fundamentally human process.

Happily for Schmidt, serendipity engines have been attempted – although, granted, not quite at the level Schmidt was proposing. Examples include Banana Slug, Prismatic, and DEVONthink, each approaching the challenge from different angles. Banana Slug appends a random word (from a chosen category) to search items before delivering the results. Arguably, this is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of serendipity, where serendipity is equated with randomness. Then there’s Prismatic’s approach, which interprets individuals’ social information in order to suggest potentially interesting content. While this may very well be exciting, surprising, and even genuinely interesting, there is no reason to think that anything Prismatic presents would be more or less likely to facilitate in a serendipitous experience than anything else. A similar criticism can be made of the powerful program DEVONthink, which acts as a personal, self-organizing repository of interesting things. Importantly, while these tremendous attempts at serendipity engines are technologically impressive, they focus on events – the content of a serendipitous experience. However, we know that serendipity is not about a set of events, but how these events are interpreted and understood by humans.

B y D r. E i ta n B u c h a lt e r and Rachel Ison

What is serendipity? Serendipity is an experience that can be explained as a chance extraction of useful information that is typically derived from an eclectic mix of circumstances. The word “serendipity” itself is a post hoc rationalization that tells the story of how a set of events came together at a (chance) point in time, and combined in a way that enabled an individual to derive specific value. Importantly, serendipity is not a set of events, but the experience someone claims to have when deriving value from those events. And for the purposes of serendipity, all events have equal potential to participate in a serendipitous

experience. In this regard, Actor-Network Theory (ANT) helps us to understand two things: how people, objects, events, language, and time can act within a serendipitous experience, and how the complex network of interconnections bind a multitude of constituent parts into what we eventually explain as serendipity. The history of science offers a plentiful supply of serendipity. Indeed, a prerequisite for innovation is that one can’t begin with a clear conception of the outcome – because if one does, then nothing new will happen. So, within this context, the crucial role that serendipity often plays in driving innovation becomes clear. As a case in point, take the wonderful journey of Viagra. The little blue pill began its life as a prospective treatment for angina before serendipitous side effects were deemed valuable enough to shift focus entirely and develop what became a blockbuster treatment for male impotence.

photo: Malik Earnest

What are the human components of serendipity? From the moment we are born, we are deeply curious creatures. Always exploring, wondering, questioning, experiencing. As humans, our curiosity can be so powerful that it drives the things we do, the choices we make, and even the ways in which we look at the world. Our tenacious desire to resolve a curiosity is what makes humans the ultimate serendipity engines. But what role does curiosity play in the creation of a serendipitous experience? Louis Pasteur famously claimed that “chance favors the prepared mind.” But what does it mean to be prepared for chance? We argue that Pasteur’s “prepared mind” is best understood as one that is open and primed to consider any event, discussion, person, object, or material as potentially useful in one’s quest to resolve a curiosity, hunch, or some kind of stubborn challenge. Crafting this preparation is a relentless sense of optimism that is immediately tempered by a barrage of unarticulated questions, aimed at quickly filtering out the useless in order to determine where the valuable connections lie. Preparation may be a beautiful mix of all these attributes, but the best outcome one can ever expect is that chance may look upon them a little more favorably.

How can technology play a role in facilitating serendipitous experiences? As serendipity is such a complex and messy human process, it is little wonder that digital tools have found it so difficult to help stimulate more serendipitous experiences. Perhaps we should be asking a more human-centered question, like “how could technology help people to become better prepared for serendipitous experiences?” Dr. Stephann Makri’s research helps us define five key areas around which we propose questions where serendipity could be facilitated through a viable collaboration between humans and technology:

01 Prepared Mind What can technology do to help us want to see the potential value in something? How can technology assist us in finding meaningful connections? In what ways can technology foster optimism or help us edit information so we see the useful connections individuals make?

02 Curiosity How can technology focus on facilitating processes like feeling the fire of curiosity and maintaining excitement around a challenge? How could technology achieve this by avoiding cognitive dissonance – a state of psychological discomfort that results from being presented with ideas and concepts that are at odds with what an individual understands to be true?

03 Visual Preferences In what ways could technology help us question and interrogate the increasingly visual world we inhabit?

04 Making Connections How can technology be integrated into how individuals connect events with the core challenges they are grappling with?

05 Memory Activation What can technology do to incorporate the voice of the subconscious? What does this mean for intuition and the retrieval of individuals’ personal memories? For technology to actively facilitate serendipity in the future, a multidisciplinary approach should be taken to develop online tools that are inspired by the human essence of serendipity. Ultimately, serendipitous experiences will be better served by technology that embraces serendipity for what it is – and not what technology might think it is or want it to be. //// Dr. Eitan Buchalter is a senior resident anthropologist at Idea Couture. Rachel Ison is an ethnographic analyst at Idea Couture.

Neuromarketing Thinking Ahead to 2020 What could be more enticing than the prospect of tapping into consumers’ unconscious emotions, drives, and desires? Access to this exclusive knowledge is precisely what the field of neuromarketing promises to companies who are willing to dish out the big bucks. And it’s no surprise that many of these companies are very willing to dole out the cash. Just like a white lab coat may invoke a misguided feeling of trust toward the person wearing it, pictures of brains and data waves can provide a false confidence in whatever research or report they accompany. But how can we know whether the big promises of neuromarketers are realistic or whether they are – no pun intended – false advertising?

photo: Katarina Radovic

B y d r . R i m m a Te p e r

As a psychological scientist with a background in psychophysiology and neuroscience, nothing excites me more than looking to the brain and body to help uncover the processes underlying decision-making. Measuring how the brain and body react to various stimuli and situations can enrich our overall understanding of emotional reactions. Looking to the brain and body can also give us a glimpse into some of the processes that we are not conscious of and can help us to uncover the literally “visceral” reactions that we, as human beings, have to certain stimuli and situations. But while this is all fascinating information, its utility almost certainly fails to live up to the promises espoused by neuromarketers. Neuromarketers claim that most decisions are driven by emotions (this is partially true) and that neuromarketing can tell you which emotions your products or advertisements evoke (this is mostly not true). Attempting to uncover the emotional underpinnings of consumer behavior is a very ambitious and exciting pursuit, but it does have its challenges. Understanding the makeup of emotional responses is the first step to identifying the obstacles and areas of opportunity for neuromarketing. Most psychologists agree that an emotion consists of three important components: experiential, behavioral, and physiological components. As an example, let’s think about the process of you buying a pair of shoes. The emotional component involves you being able to tell me about your emotional experience, like saying “I love these shoes.” The behavioral component includes the actions your emotions produce, i.e. buying the shoes. Finally, the physiological component of your shoe purchase comprises the way your body reacts; for example, you may have a quickened heartbeat or activity in a specific region of your brain when trying on or purchasing the shoes. So, while the physiology is certainly an important component of the emotional response, it is merely one of several such components. When this one component is measured in isolation, it provides a very narrow scope of information. In other words, while the various measures employed by neuromarketers may be able to reveal when an individual physiologically or neurologically reacts to a specific stimulus, these measures cannot really qualify that reaction. What this means is that a physiological reaction cannot serve as a diagnostic tool, nor can it reveal how a consumer “really feels” about your product or advertisement. In fact, measures of

// Understanding the makeup of emotional responses is the first step to identifying the obstacles and areas of opportunity for neuromarketing. //

physical reactions often cannot reliably reveal the valence of a visceral reaction (i.e. whether it is a positive or negative reaction), let alone the specific emotion being experienced. For example, if my heart beats quickly while I view an advertisement for a hamburger, this might mean that I think the hamburger looks very delicious and appealing. However, it could just as easily mean that I find the hamburger repulsive – maybe I’m a vegetarian, or perhaps I just don’t like hamburgers. Attempting to glimpse into the inner workings of the brain is also a very murky endeavor, because very rarely is one single brain region responsible for any given emotion. The amygdala, for instance, is a brain region that is involved in the processing of various emotional stimuli. This part of the brain will likely light up during an MRI scan if an individual is viewing gruesome images, but it will also light up if an individual is viewing erotic images. This well-recognized lack of emotional specificity across physiological and neurological measures implies that the results of various tests must be interpreted with a great deal of caution. In other words, there isn’t an “I’ll buy this product” or an “I love this ad” center in the brain, nor is there a bodily response that would allow one to confidently conclude that a person was positively interested in a product. So, what can neuromarketing add to our understanding of consumer preferences and decision-making processes? There are certainly advantages to measuring emotional reactions “below the skin.” Physiological measures are objective,

almost impossible to fake, and can tap into emotions and reactions that may happen beneath our consciousness. Because we are not always aware of the emotional factors that drive our decisions, we may not be able to accurately report them in an interview or survey. Physiological measures – like eye tracking (which can literally reveal which visuals catch the eye) or measures of arousal, such as skin conductance (a measure of sweat in the palms; similar to a polygraph) – are good first steps to uncovering some the implicit processes underlying our decision-making. When these measures are paired with more direct measures of attitudes and emotions, we can begin to make sense of the decisionmaking landscape more holistically. This sort of triangulation in the field of marketing research is what we should be aiming for as we approach 2020. The challenge moving forward will be to take a step back and evaluate the field of neuromarketing for what it is actually worth. Currently, the practice is new, exciting, and holds a lot of promise. Human beings are always attracted to shiny new things, and company heads and marketers are no exception. In fact, I am sure the amygdalae of these professionals would light up at the thought of using neuromarketing practices in their businesses. Neuromarketing is an exciting prospect indeed, and I truly do believe that there will be a well-carved out place for physiology and neuroscience within marketing research in 2020. However, the next four years will be critical in shaping that place. As the initial hype around neuromarketing dies down, business leaders and marketers will be better equipped to objectively evaluate the value this science could have for the business world. A more realistic understanding and assessment of the offerings of neuromarketing will be developed over the next several years, and this understanding will contribute to the refinement of neuromarketing practices and meaningful applications for these measures. As disciplines, psychology and neuroscience are ever-growing and ever-changing. With this ongoing development, the next four years are likely to reveal new and exciting insights into the brain and mind. And with time, these insights will help us build confidence in our interpretations of the brain images and data waves we see on the screen. //// Dr. Rimma Teper is a resident psychologist at Idea Couture.

Design Perspectives for 2020

B y Lee F a i n

Yeah, yeah, yeah... You’ve heard it before: “We need design thinking,” “we need new creative, innovation, connectivity, narrative, and design chiefs,” “we need to open a studio where hip, young people live to make our brands feel welcome by the next generation.” And yes, perhaps this is true and what you’ve been doing needs to be adjusted. But there are things you have been doing right too. So what are the basic fundamentals that you should still keep doing, and what are the areas of focus you should be looking to change? What will still be relevant in design as we move toward 2020? When it comes to design, you can bet that the basic fundamentals will not change. Even by 2020, these principles will remain the same as they are today. Human nature tends to be consistent and predictable, and you can design for it now with principles that will ensure you keep designing services, products, accessories, and consumables for the future. Whether you are brainstorming ideas during early research or crafting a good narrative for solutions in order to influence other stakeholders, there are certain perspectives you must keep in mind.

Now, if you’re reading this – whether because you grabbed it during a layover in the airport or because you know of the thought-provoking nature of the magazine – then you will appreciate, at a higher level, what this article is about. Design perspectives are not merely physical, but are human factor oriented or more centered on the cognitive nature of designing, not just on aesthetics (as much of the business industry likes to think otherwise). And, due to the self-evident nature of design, perhaps preaching anything else is futile. That said, design aesthetics are fashionable and are always changing based on trends, new feature sets, materials, or the latest manufacturing and software tools. They might pop one day, then fizzle out the next. You can only anticipate a revolving door of newness that is hopefully baked into your capital investments in a way that doesn’t erode your margins. If not, perhaps your brands are long overdue for a reset. You’re likely trying to find out how to innovate within your existing business constraints. But if you ask your own designers what can be done by 2020, depending on your business model, they might actually say, “We are already behind!” Or worse, they will ask for your own strategic plan. Needless to say, what is considered a self-evident innovation today will become too subtle for your company to market as anything but the next clearance item, or worse yet, the forgotten brand. Here are a few perspectives on design to help keep you focused on your plans for 2020.

photo: Sean Locke

Design Provocation Products, services, and technology have a political gauntlet to conquer before they make their first appearance in the marketplace. Often, the first line of defense in a corporate environment is the internal audience and invested key stakeholders. Developing the solution is not enough; how you communicate the idea is just as important as the solution itself. Communicating your approach at the right time with the right mediums and using the right level of fidelity to motivate the audience into action is an art. One needs to be an effective persuader. One needs to be a provocateur. Within both large and small organizations, everyone approaches the business from different perspectives, with their own views on how they define success – even beyond growth, profit, and appropriate margins. Every business needs these different perspectives. Each individual has different goals and targeted contributions – both qualitative and quantitative – for their respective function. Different departments within a business even develop their own internal cultural dominance or submissiveness based on what the organization values at large when compared to other organizations. Collaboration will always be a cornerstone of business, but the ability to elicit the right response is still an individualistic skill that every person needs to learn without compromising the teams’ integrity or turning to anger, regardless of their function. It is important to know what other departments within a business value and how they view your function. Stepping out of predefined assumptions of how you are bringing value will cause fellow collaborators to subtly or overtly express this perceived misalignment, which could be good or bad – depending on your desired end result. Knowing what the key organizational departments are and what they value will drastically improve the return on your experience or intent of advancing the design. Whether you have been within a large multifunctional organization for a while or are just starting a new career path, it is important to know how the functions of the business are weighted against each other in order to understand their value. Understanding this weighted function and, in particular, which weighted functions of the business you represent, will dramatically help elicit the right response from your audience to advance the design.

Designing the Story Successful innovations and industry makers come from individuals who have firsthand awareness of a problem or opportunity. They are either equipped to solve the problem with their trade, education, or passion, or they are at least networked with others that can help address the opportunity. It is not enough to simply have intuition or an insight. One needs to act on the intuition with a skillset that creates value from the awareness of the opportunity. If you ask a carpenter to solve a problem, he or she is going to use wood. If you ask a plumber to solve a situation, he or she will use piping. If you ask a designer to address a need, he or she will give shape, form, and/or an interface to exceed consumers’ expectations with intuitive results. Often within large corporations, those who have the insights are not always equipped to actually address them. Their role is to present the situation or findings to functions, who then need to decide how to translate the data into actionable steps. That is where corporate functions like research, development, design, engineering, and manufacturing come into play. On the contrary, within smaller organizations and startups, those who have the skillset and see an opportunity usually try to meet these needs with the tools and solutions at hand in order to scale up some type of approach. Entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs both need to tell their stories in a way that compels others to act – or at least hear what they have to say. Everyone likes a good story, but designing them is not easy – nor is trying to make connections from inspiration to new solutions when one owns a product category that is diffused into the marketplace or a brand that has an established presence. It’s necessary to be involved in order to develop an intuition for not forgetting the story, which is where inventions take place through experience. Designing the story is not about cliché images from a Google search or screen grabs from Getty Images. Designing the story is not about having the best PowerPoint slides or keynote. Designing the story is about building empathy for consumers and sympathy for competitors, so that when you connect the intuition to invention, it will be designed.

Manufacturing a Design Where’s the balance between human-driven innovation and those subtle innovations that improve your cost and quality? How can you design capital tools to avoid a cascading effect on your product development lead times while becoming more agile and giving your designers flexibility to refresh products – all while maintaining margins and increasing perceived value? And why are there so many questions? Perhaps that is something we can all do more of: asking as many questions as possible before we put pen to paper, or jump on producing a sketch for consumer research, or take on someone’s personal pet project. But the one question we should all be asking is, “Where is the product’s innovativeness?” Manufacturing and design seem to have very different functional values, but they are one and the same – especially for industrial designers. For example, that first moment of truth, usability, perceived value of a product, and how it feels and looks are in direct relation to what we tell the process to produce. You need to design for reduced cycle times, higher material yields, appropriate tolerances, sources of supply, production costs, and quality. These do not just comprise a functional mindset for a small group of people within a company – they should also become metrics that help determine the success of any positive collaboration. The designer and the manufacturer are key stakeholders in maximizing margins and producing a product that is right for consumers and that competes with other solutions. Producing those new, innovative designs and products should extend beyond design and should involve much more than just a simple research step process or technology. It should extend into how corporations innovate within a manufacturing environment. For example, if you look at the development of automobiles over the past 100 years, the innovativeness of the designs has been caused by developments in new tooling and manufacturing techniques. There are countless other examples of products where new manufacturing techniques enabled the end result to have some innovative design, like Post-it notes or Crocs. If you think about these two examples, you’ll see that the way in which the product was manufactured cannot be separated from the end result of its form and function. If you represent a manufacturing organization, learning how an idea impacts process and how process impacts the design is worth spending more time on.

// Learning how an idea impacts process and how process impacts the design is worth spending more time on. //

Designing for innovative manufacturing techniques should be at the forefront of a designer’s mind. We should always be asking how a novel, innovative process could change the products’ design. If we, as a design community, think new forms or features are all that we can bring to the marketplace, then our function will be marginalized to serving our own internal audiences, thus creating a less impactful conversation – a conversation in which the dialogue will be limited to showing ideas to the business just to get to the point of someone saying, “I’ll allow it.” Instead, let’s consider what we can accomplish if we stop asking for permission. //// Lee Fain is a co-head, design strategy at Idea Couture.

Emerging Countries Rethinking Progress for the Near Future

Case Study: Latin America

Development is often thought of as being synonymous with continuous growth, while progress is understood as a straight march forward with no glancing back. This perception is so embedded in economic thought that it has become one of the main criteria for predicting which countries will grow in importance within the economy, and economists seem to have developed an obsession with listing these predictions. There is Goldman Sachs’ list of the “Next 11” (N-11), which shows the countries the company predicts have the highest potential to become the largest economies of the 21st century (currently Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Turkey, South Korea, and Vietnam). To develop this list, Goldman Sachs uses various metrics, including macroeconomic stability, political maturity, openness of trade and investment policies, and the quality of education. There are also the CIVETS (Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey, and South Africa) popularized by Michael Geoghegan, President of the Anglo-Chinese HSBC, in 2010. These were preceded by Goldman Sachs’ well-known listing of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa).

This perception of progress misleadingly suggests that our world – and, within that world, our economy – has only been positively changed by continuous economic growth. While this article is hardly a call for a stop to, or even reversal of, growth that would return us to a perceived “good old days,” it is a critical look at what lies ahead. The future should not just be about creating a bigger, more powerful version of the status quo. What if, in 2020, growth was not measured in terms of its extent, but by how countries were advancing themselves in social and economic terms? What would it look like if we went beyond standard macroeconomic measures of GDP and foreign investment to also consider what countries were doing in terms of innovation

and local problem solving? How would this change the way the next “big markets” would be measured, and how would it impact where companies chose to invest? Reframing progress in these terms isn’t necessarily a novel idea. Tech companies have been espousing the mantra of “doing good” through innovation for years – though whether or not they deliver on that promise is another story. Even development heavyweights like the World Bank, a rather traditional and bureaucratic organization, have promoted a rethinking of advancement that emphasizes “local problems to local solutions” through innovative and thoughtprovoking research. What is interesting, however, is the continued lack of emphasis on such criteria each time these lists are made.

photo: Julien L. Balmer

B y D r. M ic h e l l e S w i t z e r

In 2001, Brazil was predicted to become one of the most important world economies. As the “B” in BRICS, it was anticipated to become a powerhouse on the international economic stage. And for a while, it did well. Under the rule of the center-left party, the economy improved, poverty levels shrank, and foreign investors flocked to the country. Unfortunately, this period of growth became unsustainable as things began to change in 2013. This is in part because the country’s growth relied heavily on traditional sources, including natural resource extraction, agribusiness, manufacturing, and foreign investment. Despite the macro-level improvements in the country, income disparities increased, as did the concentration of land ownership. Coupled with more recent challenges – including political uncertainty, a decrease in consumer and government spending, and a drop in business investment – the result has been a recession beginning in the second quarter of 2015. Furthermore, scandalous headlines have abounded about the country over the past few years, covering stories like the Petrobras scandal, charges of government corruption, the suspension of President Dilma Rousseff, the spread of the Zika virus, and government overspending on world events like the World Cup and the Olympics – which not only cost more than predicted, but have also led to social unrest. Argentina has hardly been a darling on the world economy scene following its economic crash in 2001, a result of free market reforms – including barrier-free trade that affected local industry – and the decision to peg the Argentine peso to the US dollar. However, rather than solely causing hardship, Argentina’s economic troubles led to the development of a number of creative and effective solutions, including worker takeovers of factories that had been shut down. While cooperatives were hardly a new idea, they were an effective and atypical approach to doing business in the country. In an even more radical move, Néstor Kirchner, who was sworn in as president in 2003, defaulted on Argentina’s loans to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the first year of his presidency. This made foreign loans unavailable to the country, which led economists to decry Argentina’s economic future as being even bleaker. Despite this hopelessness, however, things

improved. One key part of the country’s economic recovery during Kirchner’s tenure as president was an increase in investments in small local businesses (a strong example of which could be seen in the dairy industry), which strengthened Argentina’s ability to compete in the international market. In 2007, Kirchner’s wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, succeeded him as president and continued on with his economic policies. While a highly polarizing figure in Argentinian politics, it has to be acknowledged that she was a major advocate of supporting local industry and innovation. During her two terms as president, Fernández de Kirchner created the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Productive Innovation, and over 1,000 scientists returned to work in Argentina as a result of this ministry’s mandate. It should be noted that while this particular ministry is fairly new, Argentina has a long history of achievement in the medical, scientific, and technical fields, which allowed this mandate to flourish. This history includes advances achieved during the tech boom of the 90s – and not just through offshore Argentinian labor supplied to North American companies. Considered part of Latin America’s Silicon Valley, the capital of Buenos Aires has not only seen a number of large tech companies establish headquarters, but it also currently supports a strong startup culture. For example, Palermo Valley, which was started by a group of Argentine entrepreneurs, is a nonprofit designed to support the Argentinian tech industry. One of its activities involves helping tech startups arrange pitches in California’s Silicon Valley. And perhaps one of the most noteworthy tech business successes in the country is Extermax. Their game app, Trivia Crack (Preguntados in Spanish), had 150 million global users in 2015. Together, these investments have helped create a growing middle class within Argentina during the first decade of the 21st century, a phenomenon that is quite remarkable considering that, during this same time frame, income disparity has been growing and the middle class has been shrinking in many countries worldwide, including high-income nations like Canada and the United States. While Argentina has had its own challenges – including high inflation, high cost of living, and a strong dependence on resource extraction for the funding of government programs – it has nonetheless succeeded on these alternative fronts.

New Criteria for Defining Economic Growth But enough of looking at the recent past. Moving forward, if innovation and selfdirected solutions are to be the hallmarks of the next “countries to watch,” more specific criteria will need to be considered. Here are some of the criteria that have been missing from these lists so far:

/ Growth or maintenance of the middle class. Income disparity is considered one of the greatest threats to stability and a sustainable economy. Any country that is able to keep the gap between the rich and the poor in check has a solid advantage.

/ Strong support for innovation. What are nations doing to diversify their economies and support new and exciting business ventures? If a nation can support innovation within its borders, it can prevent brain drain and attract greater investment in its own people.

/ A culture of entrepreneurialism. This is linked to the point above; creating an environment where citizens can develop and grow their ideas is a key part of building a country’s capacity for innovation.

/ A focus on addressing local challenges. Addressing social and economic challenges within a country means that those who best understand what is happening on the ground are the ones working on solutions to these challenges. While addressing these criteria may not lead to a complete change in the countries appearing on these lists (Brazil, for example, already plays a large role in the Latin American tech boom), it would certainly adjust how success is defined. //// Dr. Michelle Switzer is a resident anthropologist at Idea Couture.

Health in 2020

“The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise or at least neglect persons of poor and mean condition … [is] the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.” – Adam Smith

B y W i l l N o v o s ed l i k

In 2015, America’s Community Health Centers (CHCs) celebrated their 50th anniversary. The community health center system began in 1965 as an experiment funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity, the agency responsible for administering programs designed to support President Lyndon Johnson’s now famous War on Poverty. The purpose of this system was to provide primary healthcare – the kind of care you would normally get from your family physician – to America’s poorest and most vulnerable urban and rural communities, whose citizens suffered from poor health, a lack of physicians willing to serve them, and the inability to pay for healthcare in general. By all measures, the “experiment” has been a great success. By 2015, the system had grown to 9,200 care sites across the United States serving over 25 million patients, making it the nation’s largest provider of primary healthcare. According to the National

Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC), their members in 2012 produced an influx of $26.5B in economic benefits into resource-poor rural and urban communities, employed over 157,000 full-time staffers, and created an additional 112,000 other local jobs. It is critical to note that over 70% of CHC patients live below or at the poverty level. A third are uninsured, and over 60% are racial and ethnic minorities. Access to CHCs is open to all patients regardless of their ability to pay. While this is seen by critics as a waste of money, health centers actually save, according to the NACHC, over $24B for the overall healthcare system by providing basic medical, dental, vision, behavioral, pharmacy, and access services. For instance, in parts of California, health center Medicaid patients have 64% lower rates of multi-day hospital admissions, 18% lower rates of emergency room visits, and 25% fewer inpatient bed days. In Colorado, health center Medicaid patients are one-third less likely to use hospital-related services compared to Medicaid patients seen by office-based providers (i.e. general practitioners). In Texas, health center Medicaid patients incur $384 less in total costs per capita/per annum compared to those served by office-based physicians. Emergency room visits for uninsured patients in Georgia occur 25% less often in counties with health centers compared to those without. And in North Carolina, health center patients generate 62% lower healthcare spending than patients of other providers. Health centers form the backbone of state Medicaid programs. As such, they are constantly threatened by underfunding – this has been especially true in the years following the passing of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). To combat this, the ACA included a Medicaid Expansion plan, which would provide extra funding to all states. The purpose of this expansion is to allow as many currently uninsured individuals and families as possible to obtain coverage.

photo: Rob and Julia Campbell

The Impact of Neoliberal Economic Policy on the Implementation of the Affordable Care Act, or, From the War on Poverty to a War on the Poor

But in 2012, ACA’s Medicaid Expansion policy was challenged. The Supreme Court ruled that mandatory state-level participation was tantamount to coercion and that individual states would have the right to decide whether or not to participate. To date, 31 states are on board. The remaining 19 are in various stages of debate, with some intransigently resisting, some working on alternative plans, and others, like Tennessee and Wyoming, rejecting expansion altogether. Meanwhile, a 2014 paper by the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University expects the demand for primary care to increase by 17% in the coming years. It also estimates that, by 2020, without Medicaid expansion, there will be a 25% decrease in the number of patients served, from 25.6 million to 18.8 million. On the other hand, if all states expand Medicaid by 2020, that number will leap to 36.1 million served – an increase of 10.5 million patients and a total of almost twice as many as would be served without it. Of course, conservative critics would consider all of the above “successes” to be abject failures. But every dollar of federal funding generates another $11 in local economic activity. And for every dollar a state spends on Medicaid, it receives $13.41 in federal funding. By rejecting Medicaid expansion, the 19 holdouts risk a loss of approximately $340B in federal funds and $3.7T in local economic activity – not to mention that taxpayers in those states are supporting expansion in other states while their own go without. Given these numbers and the many positive financial impacts cited above, any rational person might ask, why wouldn’t one want to support Medicaid expansion? In the summer of 2009, at the height of the healthcare reform debates leading up to the passing of the ACA, a commercial called “The Survivor” ran on American TV. As told in great detail by New Yorker staffer Jane Mayer in her recent book Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, the ad depicted a Canadian woman who claimed to have survived a brain tumor because, rather than die waiting for treatment from the Canadian public health system, she chose to get it taken care of immediately in Arizona. (Never mind that the Canadian health system had deemed her condition non-lifethreatening because what she actually had was a benign cyst on her pituitary gland.) The message was clear: public healthcare threatens lives, while private healthcare saves lives. That message was crafted by an organization called the Center to Protect Patient Rights (CPPR), which was launched in April 2009 by conservative political consultant Sean Noble in partnership with a very wealthy Arizona-based right wing political donor named Randy Kendrick. Like the Canadian woman in the commercial, Kendrick had suffered from a rare disorder that physicians claimed was too risky to treat. But she was then told by the renowned Cleveland Clinic that it could in fact be successfully treated, and so it was. Kendrick got a new

lease on life. Then came her “road to Damascus” moment. As related by Mayer, “Randy was convinced that if America had healthcare like Canada or Great Britain, she would be dead.” She fervently believed that Obama’s healthcare reform would “kill business, hurt patients, and lead to the biggest socialist government take-over” in our lifetimes. The commercial was funded by the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, the charitable wing of David Koch’s tax exempt, archconservative advocacy group of the same name. It was part of a large mobilization of Tea Partiers, whose primary work was to hold anti-ACA rallies and disrupt town hall meetings traditionally held by Democratic congressmen and senators in their respective constituencies during the summer months. The disruptors had been mobilized by the CPPR’s deft repositioning of the ACA as a “government takeover” designed to deprive ordinary Americans of their freedom of choice. It was an effective ploy. Right up until August of 2009, there had been a groundswell of support for the ACA. That situation was reversed by the end of the summer, thanks to the well-organized Tea Partiers, their hundreds of anti-ACA rallies, their clever handlers at the CPPR, and a firm of PR hacks called DCI, whose major client was tobacco giant RJ Reynolds. The CPPR acted as a conduit for funneling millions and millions of dollars to dozens of nonprofit conservative advocacy groups within and outside of the Koch donor system, such as the Institute for Liberty, Americans for Prosperity, and Patients United Now (an offshoot of Americans for Prosperity specifically created to fight the ACA). The money distributed to these groups is called “dark,” because the bylaws governing nonprofit organizations protect donor identities. Along with the Kochs, these donors share certain core beliefs: that taxes are a form of tyranny, that government oversight of business is an assault on freedom, and that the government’s only role should be to provide security and protect property rights. They are the billionaires who run the hedge funds, investment banks, and corporate interests that have fought hard for and benefited greatly from the last 30 years of privatization, deregulation, and globalization. These are the folks who, through credit default swaps and asset-backed commercial paper, brought us the subprime meltdown that triggered the Great Recession of 2008 – and then walked away with trillions in government handouts (aka taxpayer dollars) to keep their “too big to fail” organizations from imploding and their outsized annual bonuses from evaporating. This is the 10% of the population that owns 90% of shares traded in the stock market. Should we wonder why they so vigorously resist the notion of universal healthcare? As TIME journalist and CNN global economic analyst Rana Foroohar describes it in Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business, the trends highlighted in the previous paragraph have a name: financialization. Says Foroohar, “It’s a term for the trend by which Wall Street and its way of thinking

photo: christian richter

have come to reign supreme in America, permeating not just the financial industry but all American business.” It’s also a phenomenon that animates the global forces of neoliberal economics, which tend to favor debt over equity, reduced taxes for the rich, and austerity in the form of deep cuts to social programs. And it has extended far beyond business, as the principles of neoliberalism have imposed themselves on the public sector as well, which means that health and education are now expected to perform like businesses themselves. One of the most glaring illustrations of the extent to which neoliberal thinking has permeated American politics was the Republican shadow budget of 2011, championed by Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan. In it, Ryan proposed a $2.4T tax cut for the wealthy, as well as spending cuts of $6.2T. As Jane Mayer points out, 62% of these cuts in spending would have come from programs for the poor, aided in part by a complete repeal of Medicaid Expansion. Mayer goes on to say that had Ryan’s plan actually happened, 1.8 million people would be cut off from food stamps, 280,000 children would lose their school lunch subsidies, and 300,000 children would lose medical coverage. This draconian thinking is the legacy of the neoliberal policymaking that has characterized the last 30 years of American politics. But how exactly has financialization deprived the public sector of much-needed funding? One key cause, as explained by former British banking

regulator Adair Turner in Between Debt and the Devil, is that finance has largely abandoned its traditional role of lending to new projects that create jobs and wages in favor of securitizing existing assets, like homes, stocks, and bonds, and then repackaging those existing assets to be traded. The result of this shifted focus from lending to trading is that only 15% of all financial flows actually go to funding the real economy. The other 85% stay within the financial system, enriching the financiers, corporate bosses, and the 1% who own the majority of the world’s financial assets. This has the effect of undermining real, sustainable economic growth on Main Street. The rest of us are basically fighting for table scraps. Another key cause of reduced funding for the public sector is the structure of executive compensation. The financiers, CEOs, bankers, and other top executives that run our economy receive anywhere from 30–80% of their compensation in the form of stock options. That income is taxed at a lower rate, which, as Foroohar explains, “has the effect of dramatically reducing the public sector take of the national wealth pie (and thus the government’s ability to shore up the poor and the middle classes) while widening the income gap in the economy as a whole.” Add to that the fact that a vast amount of corporate taxes go unpaid due to the ability of said corporations to hide money in offshore tax havens, and the piece of the national wealth pie accessible for public spending is even smaller.

In these circumstances, the return on financial assets is far greater than the income earned from wages. As French economist Thomas Piketty explains in his 2014 work Capital in the Twenty-First Century, when the rate of return on income from capital is greater than that of the income from labor, the results are increased inequality between the rich and the poor, economic instability, and social unrest. This notion has been supported by epidemiologists R. Wilkinson and K. Pickett in their 2009 book, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. Studying the world’s 50 richest countries, they demonstrate that income inequality correlates with higher rates of illness, poor health, crime, mental illness, health expenditure, and reduced life expectancy. And in their charts, the United States is on the negative end of all those indicators, often by a wide margin: it has the greatest income inequality, the most homicides committed per million people, the highest percentage of mental illness, the highest percentage of health and social problems, and the lowest rates of social mobility in the developed world. So, if – as Foroohar points out – the financial sector is responsible for only 7% of the economy and 4% of jobs, but is responsible for 30% of all corporate profits, we may want to invest in riot gear. United States healthcare is the world’s most expensive. But in a 2010 study of 19 countries’ healthcare systems, the United States had the highest rate of deaths amenable to healthcare per 100,000 people. The country’s amenable mortality rate was not quite twice that of France, even though France spends roughly half of what the United States does on healthcare per capita. One of the biggest reasons for this is the failure of America to emphasize the role of primary healthcare within the overall health system. As Robert Doherty, Senior Vice President, Governmental Affairs and Public Policy at the American College of Physicians, has said, “Medicare will pay tens of thousands of dollars for a limb amputation on a diabetic patient, but virtually nothing to the primary care physician for keeping the patient’s diabetes under control.” Fifty years ago, 50% of American doctors were family physicians (primary care providers). Now that number is 33%. From 2000 to 2005, the percentage of medical school graduates choosing a career in family medicine fell from 14% to 7%. Why is this happening? The answer is simple: compensation. As Catherine DeAngelis, professor emerita at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Public Health, explains, “The average annual salary for a primary care doctor in the United States is about $180,000, in some cases one-half to one-third that of subspecialty doctors. Considering that many medical students graduate with debts from student loans of about $150,000, it is no wonder that fewer graduates choose primary care specialties.” The reason for this discrepancy in compensation can be traced to the structure of insurance reimbursement.

In a striking example of the business cliché “what gets measured gets managed,” it is easier to place financial value on something that can be counted or visualized, such as a surgical intervention or the use of an expensive instrument. Doctors are therefore reimbursed at higher rates for performing these procedures than they are for providing the cognitive (but intangible) expertise of a primary care physician. As a result, the shortage of primary care physicians may reach 65,000 full time equivalents by 2025. Given that the Community Health Centers constitute the largest delivery platform for primary care, they will feel this shortage most keenly. The sad irony is that if the ACA’s Medicaid expansion program were to be fully endorsed, it would add 32 million patients to its rosters, making the aforementioned shortfall of primary care doctors a major threat to the future of the CHC system. As described in the Milken Institute School of Public Health paper mentioned before, health centers provide a broad range of primary care, dental and mental health services, as well as an array of social and enabling services to meet the complex needs of patients in vulnerable communities. Health centers can be effective in controlling chronic diseases and medical expenditures. Their financial contribution to these communities is significant in terms of jobs and knock-on economic activity. Why is all this evidence not convincing more Americans to support the idea of greater access to healthcare for all? It all comes down to ideology. As Sara Rosenbaum, the Harold and Jane Hirsh Professor of Health Law and Policy at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, lamented in a 2015 blog post, “How much longer will policymakers remain besotted with market rhetoric? How long will the free marketers continue to assert that having ‘skin in the game’ in the form of high deductibles and arbitrary coverage limits will somehow solve the underlying cost crisis?” The classic American belief in self-reliance and individual enrichment, along with its almost religious defense of deregulated market capitalism, have pushed this great nation to extremes of private privilege and public indifference. The consequence is income inequality, which, as explained above, results in poorer health outcomes. If, as the 18th century French philosopher Marquis de Condorcet warned in the early years of capitalism, “liberty will be no more than the necessary condition for the security of financial operations,” then public health, like everything else, will be considered no more than a commercial transaction, a cost center, and a drag on the increasingly concentrated wealth of the one percent. The wealthy will be healthy, and the disadvantaged will continue to pay not with their money, but with their lives. //// Will Novosedlik is AVP, head of growth partnerships at Idea Couture.

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The New 40

An Evolving Sandwich The term “sandwich generation,” coined in 1981 by social worker Dorothy Miller, quickly became an evocative way of addressing the overlapping social changes that were emerging as a result of people living longer and requiring more care in old age, which occurred as more women were participating in the paid labor market. Specifically, the term describes a generation of people – men and women – who are pressed between the multiple social and financial responsibilities related to caring for aging parents, while still supporting their teenage or adult children. Currently, 47% of American adults in their 40s and 50s are sandwiched between a child who they are raising and a parent who is over 65 years old. Of these middle-aged adults, 15% provide some financial support to both their parents and their children, while 38% indicate that they are primary sources of emotional support for both generations. We know that women are disproportionately impacted by the increased physical and emotional labor that defines the sandwich generation. These women have higher rates of depression and anxiety, and lower rates of career success than both their male counterparts and their female peers who are not sandwiched. As women in the emerging sandwich generation, my contemporaries and I will have similar responsibilities to those of our mothers, but we will have to contend with heightened circumstances that elaborate upon and complicate our responsibilities. Medical advances mean that our parents will be older and will live longer lives with more chronic and debilitating conditions. At the same time, our children will be younger and more demanding of our time, attention, and financial support. Many of us will live in households in which two adults work full time. Others will be parenting on our own, solely responsible for organizing or enacting caregiving duties. The great majority of us will be dealing with jobs that are increasingly taxing and potentially more precarious, requiring 24-hour connectivity, continuous flexibility, or both at the same time. This future is near. Dependency ratios – the relationship between people in the full-time workforce, and those who are not – are projected to rise by the year 2020, particularly in North America and Western Europe, but also in regions of East Asia. Members of a new sandwich generation will look for new kinds of support in all areas of their lives. The following are some examples of innovative products and services that may not be explicitly designed for people who are responsible for caring for two generations at the same time, but are nevertheless leading the way in taking seriously the challenges of the caregiving role and all that it entails.

Supporting the Sandwich Generation of 2020

b y d r. m aya s h a p i r o

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Health photo: kaboompics.com

I remember my father’s 40th birthday well. My parents had just finished renovating our suburban house, and they decided to have a party to celebrate and use the new space. It was 1990 and I was ten years old. I spent the evening trying to keep up with my older sisters and taking sips of wine from abandoned plastic cups. There were hors d’oeuvres and an accordion player and my great-grandmother dancing in the living room with the contractor. I found out later that my parents were deep in debt in those years, but times were still good. They were mid-career and well into raising a family. My mother tells me that her 40s were the freest and best years of her life. In 2020, I’ll have my own 40th birthday, and it will look quite different from what my parents had. If there are renovations, they’ll likely be to divide our downtown house into more rentable units. If there are children, they’ll be babies, or hoped-for babies, imagined through the lens of fertility treatments or other reproductive technologies. My parents will be older and limited in their mobility, and I’ll be entering what will likely be the most intensive caregiving decade of my life, all in the early stages of my latest job. I’m part of a particular class and generation of women that you might have read about. We spent our 20s traveling and working abroad, going to graduate school, or obtaining professional degrees. Our careers have been complicated and personalized and have not run in a straight line. We married in our 30s, or chose to forgo marriage altogether, and we think about having children only in our late 30s or beyond. Our boomer parents supported us well up to this point, but now they’re older and will need more of our help in the many years they live post-retirement. We’re part of the new “sandwich generation,” but we’re unlike those who have come before us, and we’ll need different forms of support for our caregiving duties in the years ahead.

Designed to help older people live independently in their homes for longer, the “Smarthome in a Box” may also help solve the sandwich generation’s problem of being in two places at once. Created by researchers at the Washington State University’s Center for Advanced Studies in Adaptive Systems (CASAS), the system contains 30 sensors that can easily be installed throughout a house to detect movement, temperature, and the opening and closing of doors. This data can be accessed remotely and can detect changes in

behavioral patterns – how much a person is sleeping, how often they leave the house, how quickly or slowly they move around – to facilitate a greater understanding for elderly people, their loved ones, and their doctors of how a particular medical condition is progressing. The system also provides the possibility of creating alerts for residents – for example, to remind someone to take medication while eating, or turn off machines before leaving the house.

Finance Created with the broad goal of making everyday banking easier, Pocopay could be leveraged to streamline and facilitate the complex financial operations of people in the sandwich generation who need to move money quickly and painlessly among their parents, children, and siblings who are sharing caregiving expenses. The Spanish-based company has brought together experts in finance, IT development, and customer engagement to create a seamless and intuitive banking experience that focuses on transferring money, splitting bills, and managing savings accounts, all in the service of sharing money or expenses across different countries and currencies.

Communication Billed as the “reimagined home phone that connects generations,” the Ily phone could relieve people in the sandwich generation of their role as mediator in conversations between their children and parents. Ily is a free-standing Wifi enabled device that makes phone and video calls, simply and without a required login. The phone was built by New York-based tech startup Insensi, and was explicitly designed to connect children who are too young to have unsupervised access to a smartphone with their parents and grandparents, all without the intervention of a third party. The 8-inch touch screen incorporates a camera, speakers, wireless handset, and IR sensor (for sharing doodles and pictures), putting an end to the practice of passing around a smartphone or tablet to awkwardly facilitate a family video conference.

The Future is for Caregivers These examples are not set apart as a result of their technical sophistication, nor are they worth noting for being uniquely suitable for a distinct and as-yet-unimaginable future. In fact, these products and services address basic needs that are currently well understood, and they do so in relatively simple ways. What does put these examples on the radar is their ability to anticipate a pressing reality of 2020 and beyond; that a huge number of consumers in both the near and distant future will be caregivers, many of them doing double duty as members of a new sandwich generation. Knowing what it means to deliver social, emotional, and financial support to both parents and children at the same time, and considering carefully what needs will emerge for the people who do that work, will be central to meeting the needs of an emerging population in the years ahead. //// Dr. Maya Shapiro is a resident anthropologist at Idea Couture.

University Futures: What’s Possible?

I challenge the assumption that there will always be a future university, in my research I explore the many contested ideas now shaping the future of the university to see how those ideas both enable and constrain that future. I’m not suggesting that people aren’t thinking about the future university, because they are. Everywhere. In their work, most of these people use old thinking, old ideas; they forecast out from today, conceptualizing a university that might look different, that may do things in very different ways, but that will still have teaching and research at its core. For these researchers, the future university probably still operates on a physical campus and is still populated by managers, academics, and students. Somehow, this model of the university will continue to be funded, and the social roles supported by this model will remain strong and uncontested. Conceptualizations of this nature project an assumed linear future based on what the authors believe to be true about universities today. In reality though, there is a myriad of futures that await the university. Some of these forecasted futures include:

we have sustainable futures for individuals, societies, and the planet. Our thinking about the future university needs to be disrupted, and it needs to be disrupted soon. It needs to shift from individual to collaborative – not in the spirit of the hackathon, but in the spirt of working together to reimagine those deep systemic ideas about the university, the contested ideas that are so deeply embedded in our minds that we often don’t know we have them or the power they have. In the few years leading up to 2020, my hope is that the people who lead, manage, work, and study in universities; the policyand decision-makers who stand outside the university and decide its operating parameters; the businesses who employ graduates; and the new and emerging alternative universities can find a way to come together to think about the future university, starting from the premise that today’s university is not tomorrow’s university. If we want to reframe, reimagine, and reboot the university, we need to let go of the past. This is the only way to let the range of alternative possible futures emerge. This thinking is not about predicting another single linear future for the university; rather, it is about escaping the constraints of thinking that no longer helps us in order to build new images about university futures that are able to balance both history and future. It is about creating a university that is ready for the future – no matter what future emerges.

/ A reimagined retreat to the past in which academic work returns to the center and the university is reborn as a public space / A corporate university that is indistinguishable from other businesses

Though technological shifts will continue to have an impact on how we learn, how research is conducted, and how universities are managed, there will still be many universities in 2020 that look similar to the institutions of today. But, unless a significant reorientation occurs in our understanding of what a university is, universities as we know them today may not have a future extending very far beyond 2020. As someone who has worked in universities for 28 years, I want them to have a future. Many of us do. But what we want won’t matter if the thinking that shapes the idea of a university and what it does continues to be informed by the past rather than the future. At the core of this thinking is the assumption that, regardless of changes in other aspects of life and society, there will always be a university. However, there has never been a single idea that truly encompasses the concept of the university. Instead, thinking around this institution has been interpreted in various ways at different times. This thinking has been applied to national university systems, explored philosophically in any number of ways, and reclaimed by so many writers that there are now multiple contested ideas around what the university is. Even as the university’s ivory walls are torn down beyond repair, its knowledge monopoly is disrupted, critiques of irrelevance around the university system grow stronger, and new educational forms continue to emerge, our ideas about the university remain strong and influential.

/ A socially connected university where learning and research are co-created by learning communities to support their needs / A dinosaur university – one that becomes a historical relic perhaps seen only in museums or in very few locations These assumed futures are defended fiercely by those who believe in them. However, these narrow perspectives constrain thinking about the university and what it does, as well as about what needs to be done today to prepare for the futures that are coming. These ideas are all underpinned by the assumption that there will always be a university. This is a comforting yet dangerous way of thinking in a world swirling with interconnected, complex, and deep change that is dismantling the traditional university’s role as a social institution. In 2020, the university as we know it in 2016 will still be with us – though significant change may occur even in that short time. The university’s self-definition of its role, which is already being challenged today, may no longer be accepted as relevant or valid by 2020. To date, this self-definition has allowed the university, as a social institution, to adapt and change throughout its eight century history. But, even in 2016, it’s becoming clearer that the future of the university is being increasingly defined by outside stakeholders. While there are many competing ideas about what the university should be and what it should do today – most of which are derived from the past and the present rather than from thinking about the future – we are missing the opportunity to imagine possible futures that will help create an idea of the university that will be relevant in the long term. We need future-oriented new thinking that will assure that some model of the university continues to exist as a place for deep thinking about what’s changing in the world and how we can respond to that change to ensure

photo: freshidea/Fotolia

B y M a r ee C o n w a y

/ A digital university driven by artificial intelligence that creates a techno-learning environment whose form cannot really yet be envisaged

I don't know if the university has a future. I hope it does, but I suspect that hope isn't going to be enough to sustain the university as we know it today. I do know that, unless we can think about the future in new ways, today’s contested ideas will constrain us from exploring the many future possibilities that are now nascent. A new way of thinking about the university will acknowledge that relying on the present form of the university as a starting point for thinking about the future has little value. This way of thinking will reorient us to the future and help us loosen our grip on the idea that the university of today will be around forever. It will help us imagine what might reshape today’s university and refocus our energies on collaboratively imagining what the future university might do and what its social role might be. Only with that grounding in the future will we have the base from which to understand what the future university will need to look like, what we will call it, what it will do, and what role it will have in our future societies. Most importantly, with this forward-looking thinking, we can start working today to ensure we get the university we want rather than a broken down version of today’s university or one that is created for us by someone else’s conception of the future. //// Maree Conway is a strategic foresight practitioner and researcher at Thinking Futures.

The goal of Olympism is to create a way of life that is motivated by the joy found in effort, the educational value of setting and following a good example, and a shared respect for universal and fundamental ethical principles. The Olympic Games also present a wonderful platform for the introduction of new technological innovations.

For example, the 1936 Olympics in Berlin marked the first televised sports event in history, the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo saw the first use of electronic timing, and in 2000, virtual imaging was used at the Summer Olympics in Sydney. It is with this spirit of Olympic innovation in mind that we wanted to design a hypothetical Olympic torch model for the 2020 Summer Games, which will be hosted in Tokyo. With this design, we aim to create unity between people from all over the world by centering them around the Olympic flame, torch, and games.

image: Maxence Derreumaux and Thom Doyle

By Maxence Derreumaux and Thom Doyle

photo: Agberto Guimaraes

Raise Your Torch High The 2020 Olympic Games

// We aim to create unity between people from all over the world by centering them around the Olympic flame, torch, and games. //

allows for three to four hours of recording, an IMU sensor, a cellular module for sending the video to the cloud over LTE, and an image stabilizer. The three cameras in the torch are connected with a processor, which compresses the video so that it can be sent over the air using a cellular module. The cellular module sends the data to the cloud. The cloud handles the image processing and video feed generation. Users could connect to the server using a website or VR app in order to receive the live feed of the event. Using the events timeline, users would also be able to replay the most important moments of the torch’s journey. Because the torch will be handled by people, the video footage could potentially have some blurriness and distortion, which is why the active image stabilizer would need to be installed to ensure a clean video feed. Each camera lens will have a view ranging more than 120 degrees, meaning that there will be an overlapping of the video frames of the three cameras. The processing required to remove this overlapping will be performed on the cloud server. The goal of this Olympic torch model is to represent the unprecedented amount of unity achieved by sharing the Olympic torch relay – that is, the inception of the 2020 Games – with the world. The future of the Olympic Games is and will always be driven by innovation. //// Maxence Derreumaux is an industrial design lead at Idea Couture.

photo: Braden Collum

Thom Doyle is an industrial designer at Idea Couture.

images: Maxence Derreumaux and Thom Doyle

The Olympic flame is one of the most powerful symbols of the games, representing the Olympic spirit and values of competition, respect, and perseverance. The Olympic torch carries the flame around the world in the months leading up to the games to symbolize the camaraderie of humankind. When the torch begins its journey, the countdown to the games begins. Designing an Olympic torch is a great challenge. The torch design must represent the values of the host city and country, showcase the manufacturing capabilities of the designer, and smoothly integrate the many technical elements needed for the proper function of the flame. For our 2020 torch model, we needed to represent Tokyo, and Japan as a whole. To do this, we engraved the event logo on the three scooped details of the torch, applied a traditional Japanese asanoha pattern all around the torch, and engraved the three components of the Olympic game vision on each side of the triangular top: “Achieving Personal Best,” “Unity in Diversity,” and “Connecting to Tomorrow.” Within the torch, we have integrated three 360° cameras from which to provide live stream footage of the torch relay for viewers around the world. These cameras would allow people to follow the torch during its entire journey, and they would also expose the world to the ultra-connective features of the 2020 Olympic games by providing an extremely immersive experience. On the technical side, the primary components required to design the torch are as follows: three ultrawide cameras to create 360° videos, a GPS to locate the flame in real-time, a microphone, a battery that

A beautiful example of a tool to inspire future thinking through play is Ludic Foresight, a technique that collaborators Suzanne Stein and Scott Smith have been evolving. Used in the strategic foresight field of futures studies, it is one form of what futurists call “serious play,” because it is played specifically to learn about a real-world issue. Ludic Foresight enables groups to explore external changes and develop responses to imagined futures. As researchers at the Super Ordinary Laboratory, we were interested in using serious play to address concerns about the children’s entertainment industry. We studied the current state of the sector to understand the complexity of many issues, tracking the trends and drivers of change – those positive and negative factors that may influence the shape of the near-future world and children’s entertainment within it. It was imperative that we view the trends and drivers through a broad but structured format, so that the playful exploration would result in realistic pictures of the industry’s alternative futures. Our research did not identify one single and alarming issue, but rather a multitude of commingling factors spanning a wide gamut of concern. Particularly problematic over the near- to long-term future would be the reinforced gendering of children and stresses placed on the environment by products and their delivery. To this end, we worked with children’s entertainment producers at a conference in Miami on changing negative trends over the next four years and beyond. Engaging in Ludic Foresight play, industry insiders considered novel strategies and tactics that might be deployed to attain healthy levels of industry leadership in areas such as environmental sustainability, the digital/wealth divide, and more progressive approaches to gender. We added valuable insider perspectives to our understandings of the issues, and we were able to isolate the potentially most powerful interventions to steer the sector into a better future. We, along with the conference attendees who played with us, believe that the children’s entertainment industry must grapple with the following issues by 2020. These issues urgently signal that current collective actions – although perhaps well meaning – have the potential to culminate in a disastrous near-term future for our children.

By Rachel Noonan and Suzanne Stein

Play is one of the most important ways humans connect, grow, and collaborate. We lose our inhibitions, push boundaries, take chances, and dream of worlds unknown. As Johan Huizinga explains in his Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, we give each other license to do almost anything in a magic circle, where the rules of the ordinary are suspended. This place of new thinking and acting is where creativity can take flight. In play, actors can try things out and test them safely to see how their new ideas fare, first in a abstract and social interaction, and ultimately in the real spaces that we actually inhabit.

Children play to experiment with social interactions, learning where their boundaries lie. Adults play mostly for social connectivity and strategic exploration, sustainability writ large (financial, social, cultural, and environmental). Through the process of play, adult players learn how they may navigate into a future space, forging new strategies and tactics, exploring the contours of acceptability, and refining their operational principles. At the Super Ordinary Laboratory at OCAD University, researchers develop and test games to spur meaningful innovation. What, they ask, is our preferred future, socially and organizationally? How can we redirect the forces of change toward that preference? As Alan Kay asserted, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

photo: Marko Milanovic

Using Play as a Means for Change in Children’s Entertainment

// The average North American 14-year-old has access to technologies that could have sent the Apollo to the moon in the 60s. //

Shaping Tomorrow’s Society Today, the average North American 14-year-old has access to technologies that could have sent the Apollo to the moon in the 60s. They also have access to over 100,000 hours of streaming pornography and to an extensive media diet that is eroding their attention spans and ability to focus. Some believe that these trends contribute to what Bill Eddy’s research describes as the year-on-year growth of narcissism in society. The current obsession with one’s own image, for instance, is disturbing. Socially acceptable narcissism among adults and children sets up a feedback loop in which products come out to satisfy egotistic tendencies and further reinforce self-centric habits that can negatively affect children’s capacity to learn, reasonably address life challenges, and engage in real-life social interactions. Certainly, these products do not serve to heighten understanding, empathy, or compassion. While the future is not a completely lost cause, we do face a world where, as our kids become adults, many will lack a game plan, be ill-equipped to act in real life, and have no idea how to avert – or even recognize – the daily media assault shaping their behaviors and worldviews. According to studies conducted by Ipsos, the Nuffield Foundation, and the National Research Center for Women and Families, we are seeing increasing levels of depression and bullying in teenagers, a growing gender divide, easier onset of both puberty and consumerism, and a rapid conversion of today’s toys into tomorrow’s landfills. Decreasing technology costs allow toy and game manufacturers to bring products to market faster than watchdogs can keep up with the shifting vulnerabilities to physical and emotional safety. Equality among socioeconomic groups is eroded by the app divide, IT poverty loop, and even the “girl tax.” As technological devices and apps get faster and more pervasive, the need grows for open and free platforms – that is, if the goal is to stem a still widening digital divide. Such ubiquitous technology also erodes many of the rituals of in-person interaction that help bond people and communities. The age-old desires for profit and for more/better/ faster toys drive most of the current trends affecting the future of children’s entertainment. They result in such recalcitrance as resistance to packaging reform, premiums on “female products,” indulgence of interest in narcissistic activities, and the intensely consumerist messaging aimed at our youth. Academics and industry leaders can work against these destructive trends to promote positive change. We believe that, equipped with novel strategies and harnessing the positive energy that is bubbling up globally (despite so many negative trends), we can redirect the future of children’s entertainment to support individual health and societal wellbeing.

Mitigating against Desensitization There are social costs of refusing to confront the unintended negative forces in the children’s entertainment sector by 2020. We could be raising a generation with views of personal identity, sexuality, privacy, and intimacy shaped mostly by media companies much less concerned with nurturing healthy children or a democratic society than with earning profits. Alternatively, these characteristics can be key building blocks in young people’s development into dynamic, thoughtful, capable, and principled adults who could lead themselves and this society in healthy, sustainable directions. If we allow revenue and convenience to drive industry trends unimpeded, and are not active in co-creating our preferred future alongside those of our favorite brands, media outlets, and communities, adults run the risk of letting our kids down. Through passivity, adults risk complicity in the desensitization of an entire generation, who will very likely normalize further desensitizing behaviors in the following generation. So play, we urge. Play light, play serious – just play. Think of the future you want for yourself, for your kids, for your friend’s kids, and for the communities – both local and global – in which you and they dwell. Help create that future with a little foresight, strategy, optimism, and the confidence that, with intent, you can change change itself. //// Rachel Noonan is a senior marketer at OCAD University and an MDES graduate candidate. Suzanne Stein is an associate professor, Strategic Foresight & Innovation/ Digital Futures at OCAD University and the director of the Super Ordinary Lab.

Drivers Ubiquitous Tech The decreasing cost of hardware and software has opened up the ability for toy manufacturers to bring new trinkets and toys to market much faster than watchdog legislation can keep up. “Kojak kids” who take on a monitoring role and demand for open access to networks are two trends that are driven by this fevered pace of development. Loss of Ritual As interactions that were traditionally in person and took place in large social groups continue to move online, we have lost many of the rituals that helped bond people and communities – leaving both parents and children looking for ways to connect. Class Divide We have come a long way in democratizing education and providing access to many who couldn’t afford the hardware and software to keep up with their peers. But, as the tools get faster and more pervasive, the need for open and free platforms is more relevant than ever. Over-Consumption Negative outcomes of this trend include lags in packaging reform, taxes on products exclusively due to their “female” color and story, and the hyper-consumerism promoted by global brands to keep kids wanting more, better, faster, and newer products than the other kids in the chat room.

UNLEASH YOUR CREATIVITY.

Narcissism A young artist in a room filled with artists painting pastoral landscapes over and over again is more likely to paint a pastoral landscape than a still life. Children in a world filled with people taking pictures of themselves over and over again are more likely to take pictures of themselves than of the world around them.

// Through passivity, adults risk complicity in the desensitization of an entire generation, who will very likely normalize further desensitizing behaviors in the following generation. //

www.roland.ca/getinspired

Technology and Religion: Prayer in 2020

New Methods of Proselytization As the story goes, one woman discovered she was pregnant based on the maternity ads being fed to her while browsing the internet; Google knew before she ever took a pregnancy test. Behavioral analytics and driving online advertising is making its way to adjacent verticals. Political campaigns utilize a voter’s search history to make assumptions about receptiveness to their platforms. Is it that large of a leap for a faith organization to take that same data to drive outreach? Imagine an analytics engine configured to assess various states of spiritual receptivity. News articles you are reading, videos you consume, music you are listening to, and friends you engage with could all be inputs to assess your level of adherence to a faith (or lack thereof) and emotions you may be feeling at the time. That would determine your sensitivity to spiritual messaging. The output would be digitally orchestrated moments of revelation. Enhanced outreach can be augmented by better funnel management. Applying the learnings from enterprise sales with enhanced communication technologies can create a huge net in which to gather up potential converts. Machine learning combined with A/B testing will also improve the effectiveness of those undertaking missionary activities. The conversion process involves expressing ideas and responding to objections. With proper tracking, it will be easier to deliver the right responses. Outreach is not simply a matter of gaining converts; it’s also a matter of access. Most major religions have an open door policy to their places of worship. Using VR or live streaming, a charismatic pastor could directly address a gathering in Nunavut while standing in a Boston pulpit. Individuals praying in homes, offices, or hospitals can virtually join the congregation of a nearby mosque to pray in real time. Technology can be used to extend the walls of the temple beyond borders.

Rise of Animism

Religion has always capitalized on technological shifts to drive adherence and converts. The astrolabe (think GPS for medieval explorers) was developed to help traveling Muslims face Mecca at prayer times. The first use for the printing press was to make copies of the Bible; the dictionary helped preserve our understanding of the Torah and Talmud. Technology shifts the dynamics of religion by allowing the faithful to connect with their creator, spirit, and others of their faith in new ways. What would it look like if patterns that are apparent in the digital space were applied to the religious? There are emerging trends of user behaviors that are consistent across religious groups:

01 Increased insularity enabled by social networks 02 New methods of proselytization 03 Rise of animism 04 Commercial technology to aid observance

“We see things not as they are. We see things as we are.” —Babylonian Talmud

Increased Insularity Algorithmic curation has replaced natural discovery as the primary avenue of content consumption. Content delivery platforms (like Facebook’s news feed) monitor content you read (and avoid) in order to feed you more of what you like and less of what you don’t. This exacerbates the echo chamber effect that naturally occurs in faith-based communities. The echo chamber is the process by which ideas get amplified and reinforced within a closed system, which religion tends to be. Facebook’s news feed is literally built to preach to the choir. Without active efforts to drive exposure to new ideas, the opportunity for the radicalization of religious thought arises. The counter-trend is the ease of availability of ideas and the lower barrier to entry into new communities. If an individual is curious about alternative faiths or ideologies, it is much easier for them to get up to speed and join a community than it was in the past. As curation engines advance, do we enable ourselves to build more intense echo chambers? Or do we configure these engines to help us amplify and appreciate entirely different worldviews?

photos: Jon Flobrant

B y J a r ed G o r d o n a n d A q ee l W a h a b

Technological advances have always taken physical forms that were recognized and understood by the general public. With wind-powered grain mills, for example, you can see the rotation of the blades translating into the movement of the millstone. With the internal combustion engine, you can hear the combustion of the gasoline generating the movement of pistons. The cause and effect is clear. Technological development has increased the abstraction of progress. The growth of mobile has enhanced this disconnect. While technology is increasingly present in our lives, its presence is felt less and less. Functional literacy is commonplace, but engineering literacy is rarer. This creates opportunity for the growth of animism toward technological change and development. The most obvious example is why something is working one minute, broken the next, and working again shortly thereafter. There might be an explanation as simple as packet loss, but what is driving the loss of that specific packet? What is a packet? In the 1960s, John Glenn coined the term “glitch” to describe inexplicable changes in voltage. Since then, artists have tried to encourage glitches to create computer-generated art. Are glitches evidence of the supernatural in computers, or a naturally occurring phenomenon? If a glitch is driven by the afterglow of creation, by the cosmic background radiation that was generated by the big bang and still surrounds us, how does that extrapolate into what the glitch produces? People in the past have looked to the stars and tea leaves for guidance. It is likely they will look to glitches as the fortune-telling medium of the future.

Commercial Technology to Aid Observance Increasingly, religious groups will stop seeing technology as a threat and more as a way to aid observance. Already, there are popular Quran, Torah, and Bible apps being used by millions to support and guide their implementation of religious ritual. Looking forward, there is an opportunity to mix data scraping and religious prophecy to validate religious belief. It would be a powerful affirmative tool to be able to “see” how your religion was right about certain topics or outcomes. Imagine relating current events or a scientific discovery to passages from prophecy or scripture in real time. There is already a thriving community of religious conspiracy theorists who post videos about current world events, connect them with passages of religious eschatology, and, at times, connect this to an e-store where followers can buy supplies to prepare for Armageddon. There will be increased internal religious conflict when it comes to the application of technology to elements of practice. The Jewish concept of the Sabbath is especially under threat by automation. Will it still be considered a day of rest if all the tasks you were normally forbidden from doing are now done autonomously, driven by algorithms you program on days when work is permitted? With religious groups traditionally being strong organizers of charitable contributions, there will be a shift of power from the pulpit to the smartphone. Crowdfunding and peer-to-peer transactions will supplant the traditional infrastructure requirements that maintained the place of worship as the primary center of donation.

Implications Religious activity can be a proxy for other high conviction beliefs. The shifts we are seeing here will be reflected in political communities, and even extend to challenge brand communities. There are obvious analogies to be drawn with crossfit aficionados, Porsche owners, and sneakerheads. Religion is only a portion of a person’s identity, so the opportunity lies in drawing inspiration from its developments to remain relevant to the rest of a person’s identity. Religious adherence will also frame a person’s response to technology in ways that are often overlooked. Adding this lens to research will create more empathetic products and experiences. Religion has grown, adapted, and thrived through the emergence of technology – from electricity, to modern medicine, to telecommunications. There is no reason to think it will not survive the current technological evolution. Where this shift differs is in the fact that it will create a more personalized experience around religion because the power of knowledge and data is now concentrated in the individual versus the community. For religious authorities today, there is a strong first mover advantage to be gained – because technology is not going to leave the church, mosque, or synagogue alone. //// Jared Gordon is a senior strategist, financial services at Idea Couture. Aqeel Wahab is a senior innovation strategist at Idea Couture.

B y D r. M e l i s s a At k i n s o n- G r a h a m

Anthropology is, by definition, the study of humans. As such, anthropologists have developed methods and modes of attention to help analyze and understand the values, practices, and relationships that humans cultivate to make their social lives and cultural worlds meaningful and habitable. The near future of anthropology and its continued relevance to innovation depends on our ability to critically and radically reimagine our present conceptions of what it means to be human.

A Web of Culture The careful and critical stories that anthropologists have learned to tell about human life often invoke the idea of a web as a way of troping the concept of culture. Clifford Geertz, a prominent 20th-century anthropologist, held that “man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun,” and he believed culture to be those very webs. This idea of culture as a web – that is, an interweaving of people, social structures, objects, and ideas – continues to shape contemporary anthropological thinking. Alberto Corsín Jimenez recently added to this idea, stating that by looking at spider webs, anthropologists might find a metaphor for “the world that holds itself in precarious balance, that tenses itself with violence and catastrophe but also grace and beauty.” Paul Stoller has also argued that when anthropologists “set out to describe social relationships among a group of people, they must also build a complex web of relations between themselves and their subjects.” Within the metaphor of the web, anthropologists have found a pattern and a means to categorize our accounts of culture.

By conceiving of culture as a web and building more webs to explain the cultures we study, anthropologists have rendered culture a fiber of human production. Our stories propagate culture as a singularly human effort; the human serves as the focal point from which the threads of the web stretch and connect. As anthropologists, we have all but forgotten the very spider whose work and modes of living inspired our model in the first place.

The Non-Human Perspective Catalyzed by recognition of this ellipsis, there has been a movement in recent anthropological scholarship to consider the human exceptionalism that shapes how we make sense of culture. Taking a multispecies approach to anthropological study encourages a decentering of the human from our field of focus, allowing us to refocus our attention on the many other creatures and critters that populate our cultural webs. This approach asks us to recognize the relationships we have with non-humans – including the microbes that live within our own bodies, the animals meant to represent us during our testing of the efficacy and safety of our medicines, and the plants

photo: Paul Edmondson

Anthropology of Non-Human Design

// Our stories propagate culture as a singularly human effort; the human serves as the focal point from which the threads of the web stretch and connect. //

whose photosynthetic energies we rely on to fuel our many ways of life. By taking a multispecies approach to anthropology, we can begin to understand that we are human only in and through our relationships with non-humans. Feminist scholar of science and technology Donna Haraway has deeply influenced this turn in anthropological thought. She urges us to refrain from treating non-humans as alienable others and to move instead toward treating non-humans as our kin. Much of her thinking has been influenced by indigenous knowledge systems that have never distinguished or removed human life from animal, plant, and even geological life. She invites us to consider how non-humans are active in producing and spinning the very fibers that constitute the web of human culture. This perspective helps us to understand that we cannot have culture without non-humans – these beings are inextricably tethered to every aspect of our experiences and social lives. More than just creating a theoretical shift in thinking, cultivating a regard for multispecies relations helps us to destabilize the very category of “the human.” We can see this happening with advances in understanding the human microbiome. The discovery that human bodies are composed of more bacteria, fungi, and viruses than “human” cells poses a challenge to conceptualizing the human as a distinct organism. These microbes do more than simply inhabit the human body – they influence and direct some of its most vital systems, including the regulation of the immune system and the distribution of nutrients throughout the body. We are learning that our health and behavior, including our ability to participate in and reproduce culture, are contingent upon our interactions with non-human forms of life. The multispecies lens invites us to think about the limitations of the current conception of the human as bounded and distinct from all other forms of life; this conception keeps us from really understanding the complexity of our interaction with other forms of life. A multispecies lens invites us to think of the human as a composite – a symbiotic clustering of lively entities collaborating together to inform and function.

A Multispecies Future The multispecies shift in thinking not only destabilizes the human exceptionalism that has framed our notion of culture – it also unsettles the very concept of “the human” that has organized anthropological thought to date. If humanness is indeed a multispecies condition, it seems that we do not yet know what it means to be human. By rooting anthropology in the gossamer knotting of both human and non-human life, we can find an opportunity to reimagine the kinds of stories we want to tell and the knowledge we want to develop. What does the near future look like when we understand that it is not ours alone? Moreover, what kinds of innovation are possible with

multispecies insight? What forms might innovation take when we work with a multispecies model of cultural life? The near future of anthropology depends on our willingness to reckon with these complexities as they are being revealed in the present. Indeed, we are being presented with an opportunity to redesign our thinking and a chance to decenter the human in order to expand our conceptions of culture. We need to return to the web itself, not its weaver, in order to understand that we become human in and through our relationships with our multispecies kin. //// Dr. Melissa Atkinson-Graham is a resident anthropologist at Idea Couture.

Why Family Businesses Don’t Care About 2020

Not only are some of the most innovative companies family businesses, but family businesses also make up the majority of businesses and provide the most jobs around the world. According to research conducted by KPMG, family businesses account for 70–80% of the world’s GDP and for 35–70% of job generation globally. While the “family” aspect of these businesses is often overlooked, the principal ways in which family businesses are owned and operated could be extended to non-family businesses as well. In today’s modern landscape, organizations are talking about the intersections of time, generations, and business strategy; businesses should look to the factors that allow these organizations to innovate across generations. Strategically, family businesses are already looking beyond 2020 and toward the future of the next generation. This is something that all businesses could benefit from doing. The following are some of the factors that enable family businesses to be more innovative than their non-family-owned counterparts. These factors exist not despite family ownership, but because of it.

01 Dynastic Will Since the age of 12 – that is, the age at which I was old enough to attend my first shareholders’ meeting – I have been taught to not only celebrate our company’s heritage, but to continue to think ahead and plan for the next 100 years. I have been encouraged to think about what this business could mean for my children and even my children’s children. The desire for a family business to continue to be owned and operated by the same family for generations to come is known as “dynastic will.” Because this continuity is the primary goal of most family businesses, these organizations are mandated to withstand the test of time. Family businesses focus on the future, including the needs of the future generation and the companies’ future return on investments. This allows these businesses to think more broadly about business strategy so that they may create strategies that go beyond any one individual – or even one generation.

By Alexis Scobie

It seems these days that every business is speaking in terms of generations. The baby boomers are beginning to retire, millennials are becoming parents, and Generation Z is changing the way the world uses technology. This “generation speak” has become the core of business strategies, the center of marketing campaigns, and the basis on which business leaders build their ideas about the future.

I will be the first to admit that I am a yoga-pant-wearing, essential-oil-spraying, iPhone-loving millennial. But this generational comparison is not the one that I have been subject to my whole life. Instead, within my family’s business, Mason Companies Inc., I have always been referred to as “sixth generation.” This title has been associated with generational comparisons, business strategies, and much more. While you may have never heard of Mason Companies, let me assure you that family businesses extend far beyond the mom-and-pop shop stereotype that they are commonly associated with. In fact, some of the most innovative and successful companies in the world started as family businesses, like Louis Vuitton, Lego, Siemens, and Tata Group, while some remain family-owned to this day, like Walmart.

photo: Joshua Clay

02 Mission Statement Missions are often engrained in family business culture as clear strategic forces for the business. Family business mission statements are unique because they are often tied to the values, ethics, and even religion of the family. These mission statements are often passed down from one generation to the next, thereby fostering the cohesion of the family and highlighting the core competencies of the business. The values and competencies tied to a family business’ mission statements are important to the success of that business. Clan-like values can foster strong communities and culture, as they encourage collaboration and innovation among the business and the family. Multigenerational collaboration is inherent to family business; each emerging generation brings new ideas, opinions, technologies, and processes to the organization, creating a natural push for something new. Further, the strong connection between families and the core competencies and missions of their organizations allow family businesses to pass their experiences and specializations from one generation to the next. Family business leaders stand on the shoulders and knowledge of the generations that came before them, allowing families to become experts in their respective industries.

03 Leadership Family businesses also tend to run differently than other kinds of organizations. They tend to have a much more personal and hands-on approach to operations and decisionmaking. In a family business, decision-making is often concentrated to one person, or perhaps to a few individuals. Shareholders of family businesses tend to be less demanding, allowing the executives to make decisions more freely. The strategic outlook and executive tenure in family business is also unique. The average tenure for a non-family business CEO is six years, and during that time, CEOs typically invest and operate only within the six-year window of their own tenure. They are offered compensation packages that are contingent on short-term successes and wins. In contrast, the typical tenure for a family business CEO is 20–25 years. This not only allows the CEO a longer period to find success, but it also provides a longer trajectory on which to base strategy and consider return on investments.

04 Relationships It is often said that success in any business is all about whom you know and how well connected you are. Family businesses are often able to foster relationships over time, creating strong ties between the family, the business, the shareholders, the suppliers, and their communities. Family business experts Danny Miller and Isabelle Le-Breton Miller explain the importance and nature of these relationships, stating “many great [family businesses] cherish enduring, open-ended, mutually beneficial relationships with business partners, customers, and the larger society. These relationships vastly exceed the time span, scope, and potential episodic or contractual transactions.” Strong, lasting relationships not only lead to goodwill and happy stakeholders – they can also pave the way for future partnerships and ventures outside of the core business. I can honestly say that some of these factors have allowed my own family’s company to survive for over 100 years, and these principals form the foundation for some of the strategies that will move Mason Companies into the future. But, they are not things that are or should be unique to our company. Looking toward the future with a dynastic will, tying the business back to its mission statement, mandating leadership with a long-term vision, and maintaining lasting relationships are principles that can be applied across industries and ownership structures. Family businesses and non-family businesses alike could all benefit from looking beyond 2020 to solve their business problems – considering, with a strategic eye, the next generations. //// Alexis Scobie is an innovation strategist at Idea Couture.

The Future of Financial Crime

With 48% of the world’s population now using the internet, there is no doubting that the world of financial services will continue to evolve as we move toward 2020. The 2015 EY FinTech Adoption Index identified that, of the 10,000 digitally active people surveyed, the US has the second highest adoption rate (16.5%) after Hong Kong (29.1%), with the UK (14.3%) and Canada (8.2%) also in the top six. The majority of those surveyed also realize the consumer benefits of new payment, transfer, savings, and investment solutions. In 2015, a number of fintech CEOs shared their predictions for the future of financial services with eFinancialCareers.com: “The blockchain is going to change everything, especially financial markets. If done well, the development of a financial-grade ledger could fundamentally change the very fabric of the financial services infrastructure. These technologies could transform how financial transactions are conducted, recorded, reconciled, and reported – all with additional security, lower error rates, and significant cost reductions.” – David Rutter, CEO of R3 “A generation who are used to ‘mobile first’ will kill the branch banks and will cause those banks who don’t have a good online presence to bleed customers. Fintech startups will eat the overpriced bank services for breakfast.” – Andrew White, CEO of FundApps

A Changing Risk Landscape

The past century has seen a huge shift in the financial services landscape – from the growth of retail banking (as we know it) in the late 1800s; to Diners Club developing the first credit card in 1950; and the elusive Satoshi Nakamoto’s invention of Bitcoin, the world’s first fully virtual currency, in 2008. The evolution in financial services has been complemented by the rapid development of enabling technology, the internet, a huge growth in connectivity, and the successful emergence of mobile and flexible payment channels. Collectively, these exciting developments are opening up financial services to new markets and users, as well as offering customers better value and more choice.

photo: Beatrix Boros

B y R o be r t E v a n s a n d G e m m a R o ge r s

With such developments – which are often rapid and occasionally chaotic – the risks and opportunities for both legitimate consumers and financial criminals have evolved and expanded. Take bank robberies, for example: once prevalent in society (and the subject of many a Hollywood blockbuster), the number of physical bank robberies committed in the UK was reported in 2013 by BBC News to have dropped by 90% over the previous decade. That trend can be explained by a number of important phenomena, including the improvement in physical security systems and cash management, reduced usage of cash by customers, and better investigation by law enforcement. However, there is an argument to be made that bank robbery has simply changed in appearance from masked raiders to complex technical attacks. As technology has evolved and more systems have gone online, electronic attacks on financial institutions have increased and are now commonplace, as demonstrated by the 2015 Dridex attack on UK banks where customers lost £20M, and the 2016 theft of $81M from the Bangladesh Central Bank in a hack of the global SWIFT payment system.

Card fraud, on the other hand, is in its heyday, with rising numbers of card-not-present (CNP) frauds taking place each year with no immediate sign of that abating as we move toward 2020. As Financial Fraud Action UK reports, card fraud in the UK alone was valued at £568M overall in 2015, with £398M attributed to CNP fraud. Through this rise in CNP fraud, combined with the decline of cash as the payment method of choice (it is predicted by Consult Hyperion to represent just 27% of total transactions in 2025), we see an indication toward a growing trend of cybercrime combined with more traditional fraud methodologies, with cyber criminals using stolen credit or debit card data to facilitate fraudulent online payments. As Limor Kessem, an Executive Security Advisor for IBM, notes in her article for Security Intelligence titled “2016 Cybercrime Reloaded: Our Predictions for the Year Ahead,” cybercrime groups are now well organized and operate “like startup companies;” this makes them highly adaptable and dynamic, allowing the criminal groups to take advantage of the rapidly evolving financial services and technology landscape. With the advancement of Bitcoin and other virtual currencies, as well as the increasing use of prepaid card programs, the financial crime risks associated with these payment mechanisms cannot be underestimated, nor can the criminals’ awareness of their vulnerabilities. Indeed, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) – an intergovernmental body developing and promoting policies to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, and one of the world’s leading authorities on financial crime – has concerns about the use of virtual currency given its associated weaknesses. These include its lack of customer identification (one of the key tenets of financial crime prevention programs is the clear and full identification of a customer) and its inability to link transactions to real world identities. This makes virtual currency an ideal platform for a cybercriminal who already operates in a world of avatars and codenames and wishes to remain anonymous while transferring funds internationally and instantaneously. Moreover, the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) – a market estimated to include 20.8 billion connected devices by 2020 – presents a further opportunity for criminals (largely cyber-based ones) to exploit. Gartner, a leading technology research firm, predicts that more than 25% of cyber attacks will involve the IoT in 2020. With more and more personal data online, multiple connected devices, the increased use of biometrics as an identification verification tool, and the establishment of private, permission blockchain-based payment systems gaining in traction, as well as state sponsored virtual currencies, the possibilities for criminals to exploit each of these grows accordingly. When this is combined with the increased political instability we are currently seeing across both the developed and developing world, it is possible to paint a gloomy picture of the world in 2020.

20/20 VISION

Building a Positive Future However, the world has faced threats, political precariousness, and rapid innovation before: the post-war period is the preeminent and most recent example of this, and the Industrial Revolution before it – while not without its issues – represented one of the most significant leaps forward in the history of human innovation. As such, it is highly likely that in an ever more connected but disrupted world, and one in which data has primacy, there are more opportunities than threats. Take, for example, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning as a fraud, cybercrime, and money laundering detection tool: instead of systems relying on a series of static rules to detect suspicious transactions or patterns in an account (as they do now) – which often throw up huge volumes of false positives, leaving an analyst overworked and blinded by too much data – imagine a tool that intelligently learns individual customer behavior, tuning its controls and limits according to the patterns noted in the account over time. Not only would this significantly reduce the resources required to monitor the transaction alerting tool, it would also lead to a deeper and better understanding of the customer and their needs, as well as building a more accurate and targeted picture of transactional activity, leading to better insights about the motivations behind customer behavior, whether licit or illicit. These improvements in financial crime detection are predicted by the Centre for Economic and Business Research (CEBR) to result in efficiencies gained by businesses in the region of £290M between 2015 and 2020. Such benefits, combined with the growth of mobile-based banking, could begin to address the problems of financial inclusion. Already, the World Bank has highlighted a dramatic reduction in the unbanked population globally, falling from 2.5 billion adults with no access to banking services in 2011 to 2 billion in 2014, representing a 20% drop over three years, and leading toward a reduction in poverty levels globally. Improvements in anti-fraud and money laundering detection services will directly contribute to a more nuanced understanding of customer risk, which, in conjunction with the newer mobile-only challenger solutions, will allow more customers access to banking and financial services while also bringing down the rates of fraud. The additional understanding of ongoing financial crime typologies learned from intelligent systems will also contribute to a deeper understanding of criminal activity, allowing more focused and tailored controls to be deployed in a proactive format. Using technology such as mobile-based banking is a particularly strong opportunity space for challenging traditional norms and increasing security. “When you have a huge branch network, each branch is a network port and the attack surface is massive,” says Tom Blomfield, the CEO of an emerging UK-based challenger bank. “We have no branches so our attack surface is much smaller.” The other advantage of mobile-first banking is that GPS location monitoring makes it easier to identify potential fraud, where the phone is in a different location to that of the card being used to pay.

// Card fraud is in its heyday, with rising numbers of card-not-present (CNP) frauds taking place each year with no immediate sign of that abating as we move toward 2020. //

There is no denying that the financial crime landscape has – and will – become more diverse for customers and businesses as we continue toward 2020. It is highly likely that the downward trend in crime conducted in the physical person will continue, but, as shown above, this will continue to be replaced by criminality exploiting online and connected channels. Many industry commentators call it a cyber arms race – one that we are probably not yet winning. For the benefits of this rapid fintech evolution to be truly recognized, there is still a lot for the industry to do in order to build customer trust so that consumers believe that they can protect their data, money, and interests. From our experience, the industry and regulators see this as a critical responsibility that they are working hard to address head-on. As such, our vision for 2020 is one of optimism and excitement. Are there challenges to be overcome? Of course. But as long as consumers are vigilant, providers continue to drive forward solutions that build trust and protection, and regulators develop proportionate regulations, we can derive both commercial and socioeconomic benefits from the rapid evolution in financial services as we move toward 2020. //// Special thanks to Resma Gandesha and Onesimo Hernandez. Robert Evans and Gemma Rogers are co-founders of FINTRAIL Ltd., a provider of financial crime risk advisory services.

by Oltmans van Niekerk

Trendresearch / Consumer insight / Strategy / Product directions / Materials & Colours Oltmans van Niekerk is a trend forecasting agency specialized in futures studies on lifestyle and design. Their goal is to identify key directions and shifts in society to create a clear picture of emerging behavioral and attitudinal lifestyle trends and aesthetics. Published once a year, consumer insight trend book 20/20 Vision offers an insightful and well-organized overview of worldwide cultural, technological, economic and social trends. An essential source of information and inspiration for anyone involved in long-term product development, marketing and strategy. Understand people, create the future! For more information please visit WWW.OLTMANSVANNIEKERK.NL / For US inquiries please contact WWW.ESPTRENDLAB.COM

How the Aging Urban Population Will Shape Industry Design in 2020 and Beyond

People around the world are flocking to the city as quickly as they are turning gray. By 2030, two thirds of the world’s population will be living in urban areas; in high-income societies, one quarter of these inhabitants will be over the age of 60. In response to this aging urban population, there is currently a global call to action for major cities to commit to “age-friendly” city designs by 2020. This call for change marks the beginning of what the World Health Organization (WHO) has deemed “The Decade of Healthy Aging.”

photo: Joselito Briones

Opportunity in the Graying City

By Ginny Miller

While the clashing trends of urbanization and aging pose new challenges for society (such as increased spending on public health and social services), the evolution of major cityscapes is also unlocking opportunities for the design of communities that are more socially inclusive and sustainable for all members. Industries need to consider how they can embrace opportunities for innovation over the next decade in order to set themselves up for success within the “graying” urban landscape. The WHO’s Age Friendly Cities and Communities project has already built a global network of over 250 cities, and this network continues to expand. As these cities begin taking active roles in the development of seniorfriendly communities, new entry points from which industries can drive technological innovation, social connection, and reimagined infrastructure – think anything from a senior-centric driverless car program to new co-op housing models – will be created. Further, a cross-industry look at innovation within graying cities reveals that age-friendly design also aligns with the trending needs and interests of younger generations, meaning that various industries have even more reason to become active players in “The Decade of Healthy Aging.” Here, we look at four different verticals – housing, healthcare, work and volunteering, and transportation – to understand how age-friendly design is taking form and what this means in terms of alignment with cross-generational trends and needs.

// There is currently a global call to action for major cities to commit to “age-friendly” city designs by 2020. //

Housing “It’s important to help people live independently for as long as possible and to design that in from the beginning rather than make adaptations later on.” — Susanne Clase, Swedish architect Housing communities for the elderly were once designed to provide physical and social isolation from the outside world. However, more seniors are now planning to age in place – according to a 2010 AARP study, 92% of adults over the age of 65 want to remain in their communities. As such, age-friendly cities are reconfiguring housing structures to accommodate seniors’ desire for independence and integration within society. There are several models that may result from this new approach to housing for seniors. / Open-door housing London architect Stephen Witherford argues that in order to combat social isolation, senior housing should be designed to invite the outside world in, rather than shut it out. He is currently developing a complex of affordable housing for senior citizens in Bermondsey, London, that offer public cooking classes, performances, workshops, and craft fairs, positioned just off a bustling street. He states: “The public can come in and get involved.” / Multi-generational space According to Pew research, the population living in multi-generational households has doubled since 1980. In response, Lead 8, an architecture and design studio, is working on residential complexes that aim to strike a balance between independence and support among families. These complexes have floors with dynamic walls that can be used to interconnect and separate space as needed. / Affiliation communities Across cities, housing complexes that connect seniors according to their common interests or associations are emerging. The Town Hall apartments in Chicago offer 79 units for seniors in the LGBTQ community. As The Atlantic’s CityLab reports: “Town Hall is more than a place to live: it’s a physical hub for social and recreational services targeting LGBTQ seniors.” / Beyond seniors As homeownership continues to decline among younger generations, co-op models are becoming increasingly attractive as long-term housing solutions. Companies like Common are tapping into this interest by creating hip “co-living” spaces that encourage new social connections and collective collaboration on things like cooking, security, and upkeep – a model in line with emergent senior housing developments. As such, investment in more dynamic, shared spaces for urban housing aligns to both senior needs and millennial interests.

Work and Volunteering

Healthcare

Transportation

“The whole community benefits from the participation of older persons in volunteer or paid work and civic activities. The local economy [also] benefits from the patronage of older adult consumers.” — WHO

“Nursing homes will become like the poorhouses of yore as technology makes living at home easier.” — Laura Carstensen, PhD, Director of the Stanford Center on Longevity

“Younger people may have had smartphones in their hands first, but it’s the 50-plus consumers who will be first with smart cars.” — Joseph Coughlin, Director of MIT AgeLab

While some fear that graying cities will cause a reduction in economic productivity, an alternative way of thinking about this phenomenon is to consider the notion of a “longevity dividend,” which considers that the elderly are living longer, healthier lives, and can therefore continue serving as productive contributors to the workforce and community for longer than ever before. For this dividend to be realized, flexible employment opportunities and structures for active collaboration must be built. / Virtual villages These are examples of how seniors living in cities can band together to remain active and engaged in a community for longer. In these “villages,” members pay a small annual fee to receive access to peer volunteers, member-referred services, and social events. These self-sustaining villages facilitate independence and provide seniors with a renewed sense of purpose. There are currently 190 virtual villages in action and 150 in development. / Part-time employment As seniors continue to express their ability and interest in maintaining roles in the work or volunteer force, cities will benefit from the expansion of part-time employment options, such as TaskRabbit, which leverages the sharing economy to offer flexible job opportunities. / Beyond seniors Seniors becoming critical consumers in urban markets also points to broader employment opportunities. WHO research found that seniors are looking for more resonant and intimate service engagements than those currently found in cities. This unlocks a job market for service providers, so long as these providers can transform transactional interactions into personalized experiences.

To accommodate the increase in urban aging, healthcare delivery may become increasingly decentralized and home-based. Sensor technology has enabled the design of services that provide formal and informal caregivers with remote access to live health information and alerts, and telehealth makes it easy to connect with doctors at the touch of a button. Configuring healthcare services to meet seniors where they are also resonates with the millennial call for on-demand, preventative services, thus extending value into a broader market. There are many opportunities for new health models to emerge. / Smarthomes Services like Lively deploy networks of sensors in seniors’ homes to allow for unprecedented ways of tracking and monitoring the health of the elderly more passively and remotely. This allows more seniors to remain independent with the support of an unobtrusive built-in safety net. One Lively user describes it as “quiet care.” / In-home care As more seniors age in place, the need for reliable, affordable in-home care is becoming even more critical. Startups like Hometeam are committed to offering in-home caregiving that is highly personalized. Each caregiver has an iPad that tracks visits and health and allows for photo sharing and remote connection with families. / Decentralized care The physical proximity of health facilities plays a huge role in seniors’ ability to readily access care in a city. Corner store models that have many distributed hubs for primary care visits, like One Medical, cater to age-friendly cities by reducing the burden and effort of getting to a hospital. / Beyond seniors The past decade has seen a boom in health technology. However, while many early players were mobile-based or remote, these services are increasingly becoming more high-touch – shifting from mobile-only options, like Doctor on Demand, to in-home visits, like Heal. Highly personal, on-demand health experiences will continue to gain traction among markets beyond just the elderly.

Effective transportation is a critical factor to active aging; it dictates the way in which many seniors interact with the city around them. Designing transportation for an age-friendly city means offering accessible, affordable, and reliable options that make it effortless for seniors to get out of their homes. Transportation options that meet such needs will unlock benefits for everyone by building a more connected and efficient system for interacting with what the city has to offer. / Ridesharing WHO research has found that, in many cities, public transportation was perceived to be a safety concern for seniors, as it is often crowded and poorly configured for comfort. Ridesharing programs, like Sausalito’s CARSS (Call a Ride Sausalito Seniors), present an affordable alternative that is more convenient and reliable. / Autonomous vehicles Google has targeted the senior population as potential early adopters of driverless cars, as this technology could provide mobility and safety to those who can no longer or should no longer drive. This is particularly important because fatalities are highest among drivers aged 85 and older. / Compact cities With one of the oldest city populations in the world (26% of its population is over the age of 65), Toyama, Japan provides a glimpse into the future of city transportation. Toyama adopted the structure of a “compact city;” that is, it was configured via centralized services to avoid urban sprawl entirely, and there it has a reliable social tram that circles the city. This not only improves accessibility, it also encourages seniors to walk manageable distances as a deliberate preventative health measure. / Beyond seniors The utilization rate of automobiles owned in the US is about 5%, meaning that most cars sit idle the vast majority of the time. This inefficiency has sparked discussion among many regarding the fraught future of car ownership. Autonomous vehicles and ridesharing would allow for much more efficient car use. Thus, in order for city infrastructure to align with the needs of seniors while also preparing for the next wave of automobile transportation, it needs to optimize for shared commutes, faster routes, and efficient exchanges.

// Configuring healthcare services to meet seniors where they are also resonates with the millennial call for on-demand, preventative services, thus extending value into a broader market. //

By 2020, industries will need to commit to designing experiences that fit within the changing expectations, needs, and infrastructures of aging cities. Rather than seeing these changes as a hindrance to business, this necessary adaptation should be viewed as an opportunity ripe for innovation that is heavily aligned with the emergent needs of the general population. By embracing this opportunity, designers have a chance to create a more inclusive, productive, and secure urban environment for generations to come. //// Ginny Miller is an innovation strategist at Idea Couture.

B y Ud i t V i r a

In May, the world’s largest crowdfunding campaign to date successfully came to a close. Over 10,000 people anonymously poured $168M into a new online project, called The DAO, which hopes to be a revolutionary venture capital organization allowing ordinary people to pitch projects and anonymous account holders to vote on where this hefty capital should be invested.

However, unlike most such firms, The DAO doesn't have a board, a CEO, or even any employees. It runs autonomously, executing software code to enforce smart contracts, make decisions, and complete transactions. The DAO is the most prominent Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) currently in existence, and it indicates an interesting future ahead. If at first glance, autonomous organizations seem like nothing more than science fiction, think about how comfortable we, as humans, have become with machines making our decisions. From putting

photo: stokpic.com

DAOs: Can You Run an Organization in Code?

autonomous cars on the road to letting cellphone apps set up romantic dates for us, we're becoming more at ease with passing the buck to our electromechanical brothers. Familiar apps like Uber are already mostly autonomous; these apps delegate specific tasks to human contractors while leaving the decision-making to code. But autonomy can only go so far without trust. Uber has done well because people trust the brand to write good code that makes smart decisions and doesn’t steal money from customers. Decentralized automation, on the other hand, embeds the trust right into the code. You can call it the blockchain revolution or Crypto 2.0; whatever name you use, the technologies heralded by Bitcoin-like cryptocurrencies have spurred on this new wave of trustless automation. There’s no doubt that machines are better than humans at performing intensive labor, and they also successfully replace humans at tasks requiring computation and logic. However, the ability to govern and be trustworthy isn’t a skill that many would attribute to machines. Decentralized automated organizations hope to change just that. Managers, bankers, and lawyers beware: robots are coming for your jobs next. At the core of automated organizations is the blockchain, a distributed database algorithm. Originally conceived as the transactional ledger for Bitcoin, computer scientists and futurists are buzzing with excitement over possible uses for this algorithm in other domains, especially because the blockchain solves the problem of forming consensus in a distributed system without the need for a central actor. Throughout our day-to-day lives, we encounter all sorts of situations where we place our trust in a centralized system. When you pay for your groceries, you and the storeowner both rely on Visa to be your trusted intermediary; while proving your identity at the airport, you and the ground staff hope that the government has done a good job in giving you a unique passport. Conversely, the blockchain is a trustless database – there need not be a trusted intermediary. There is no central being that is responsible for the data. Instead, each device on the network maintains a copy of the blockchain. The distributed nature of the system makes it nearly impossible to cheat or shut down. One would need control of more than 50% of the network to tamper with the database. Moreover, since the

code for the blockchain is publicly auditable, the entire system is transparent. DAOs can have a tremendous impact on the Internet of Things, paving the way for the “Economy of Things” by 2020. With everyday objects getting access to web connectivity, these objects can be uniquely identified, traded, and rented. DAOs are ideal for overseeing human interactions with these objects. You could share your internet-enabled bike with your neighbors, charging for the time they use it through a smart contract managed by a DAO. You could rent out your airspace and wifi for delivery drones to use, and a DAO would enforce the payment for the amount of time the drone was over your apartment. Slock.it, a startup in Germany, is working on a web-controlled lock, the idea being that any item that can be locked can now be leased out through a smart contract. These amorphous organizations residing online could take all kinds of forms. One can imagine a virtual nation state where a DAO manages governance for its human and artificial citizens. Bitnation 2.0 is an ambitious online project approaching this territory. They're looking to provide traditional government services, such as dispute resolution, healthcare, pension, basic income, and education. One of the first systems they set up was their notary service, which relies on their blockchain. One can notarize a certificate of birth, marriage, or really anything, and store a unique immutable record on their blockchain. In fact, the government of Estonia has now partnered with Bitnation to offer blockchain-based notarization as part of their e-Residency initiative. DAOs present many interesting legal challenges. As they run in a distributed fashion, there is no single entity responsible for their actions. Every device that is a part of a DAO’s network is equally complicit. It might prove to be almost impossible for law enforcement to shut down a DAO, as everyone who is running the DAO code will need to shut it down. Cryptocurrencies – those co-habitants in the ecosystem encompassing smart contracts and DAOs – have already had a difficult time shedding their association with money laundering and the black market. Criminals immediately realized the value in trustless systems, where they don't need to trust each other or any intermediary. It is partly for this reason that governments and the public have yet to warm up to these systems.

// The ability to govern and be trustworthy isn’t a skill that many would attribute to machines. Decentralized automated organizations hope to change just that. //

The most famous DAO, The DAO, has had a rocky start. With security vulnerabilities found during a public review of the code, as well as a couple of serious hacking attempts, the fate of The DAO is uncertain. One attack siphoned off currency worth more than $60M dollars into the attacker’s account. Supporters of The DAO argue that these sorts of attacks are just growing pains; human nature is fallible, and centralized systems where some have more power than others are worse than systems in which this power is evenly distributed. With serious money on the line, the technology community has a difficult job ahead to ensure there aren’t any holes in future DAOs. The exercise of codifying corporate governance patterns traditionally carried out by humans could in itself be a hugely rewarding task. By formalizing these patterns into code, one could simulate, test, and iron out inefficiencies in the system. The DAO might not survive the next few months, but we're sure to see many new DAOs in coming years. //// Udit Vira is an electromechanical designer at Idea Couture.

Do Not Play With Monkeys or Eat Plums Bitten by Bats

photo: Allie Witek

B y D r . Ted W i t e k

Looking back at recent events in medicine and public health that have led to calls for change, the Ebola crisis in West Africa is one of the first to come to mind. While several similar epidemics have occurred in recent years, including SARS and MERS, something about the latest Ebola outbreak seems to come with a warning about our stark vulnerability. It is for this reason that the first recommendation from the UNâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s High Level Panel for the Global Response to the Ebola Health Crisis is to be in full compliance with International Health Regulations (IHR) by 2020. The IHR are legally binding regulations regarding the implementation and development of minimum core public health capacities to prevent, protect against, control, and respond to the introduction and spread of disease while avoiding unnecessary interference with international traffic and trade. The same call for IHR compliance regarding Ebola regulations was made years ago; as of 2016, only one third of the 196 state parties were in full compliance. Will the Ebola virus and the regulations written to control its spread be taken more seriously following the most recent outbreak, or will the majority of countries once again fail to comply? We will know in 2020.

The Ebola crisis of 2014 and 2015 was mishandled on many counts. Most of this mishandling was not related to the virus itself; rather, it was caused by a lack of appreciation of the history, geography, and culture of the regions affected by the outbreak. In a New York Times investigative report published in December 2014, WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan summed up the story as it unfolded: “Old disease in new context will bring you surprises.” Coupled with these unforeseen but powerfully impactful cultural and historical elements was a woeful medical and public health infrastructure that made a terrible situation a devastating one. What has since been acknowledged as poor communication and coordination between authorities was compounded by a lack of caregivers when they were needed most. In Guinea, for example, there were ten doctors per 100,000 persons; currently, in the US, that ratio is 242 doctors per 100,000 persons. Among the most significant cultural aspects impacting the spread of the Ebola epidemic was the danger involved in washing and dressing the bodies of the deceased, which is an important part of the burial rituals of many tribes. Because these rituals are considered essential for the dignity of the dead, they were carried out by members of the community, who handled the bodies of Ebola victims without using personal protection. Ebola virus levels peak near death, and those who were in contact with the bodily fluids of the moribund or dead were at very high risk of contracting the disease. The UN reported that one burial alone was linked to 365 new cases of Ebola. It was important for the UN to reduce the spread of disease caused by burial practices, but this also had to be done in a respectful manner. Tackling this issue required a serious and deliberate undertaking focused on increasing community acceptance of safe burials. The geography of West Africa also played a crucial role in how the crisis played out. The importance of this factor was somewhat underestimated, as previous outbreaks had been more central to the continent. Specifically, this crisis occurred at a dynamic intersection of Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia. An infected patient could travel from one of these three countries to another – countries with the world’s poorest and most under-equipped healthcare systems – in a matter of hours.

Different Approaches to Disease Management Are Needed Allocation of resources is always difficult, particularly when there are always pressing issues “closer to home.” Dr. Rob Fowler, a critical care physician at the University of Toronto and Director of the Clinical Epidemiology and Health Care Research program, helped provide clinical care during the West African Ebola crisis on behalf of the WHO in 2014. He came away from the experience with a very clear conviction: “For me, a focus during the outbreak was to emphasize to stakeholders (i.e. governments, clinicians, the public) that there is no ‘your outbreak’ in 2014, or 2020 for that matter. All outbreaks of this nature are ‘our outbreaks.’” Fowler further stresses two overlooked aspects that are dependent on deliberate attention and funding. First, infection control, while perhaps not as innovative as a new drug or vaccine, can have a much larger impact on disease prevention. He notes, “preventing two infections saves a life with a virus of such virulence.” Second, by applying acute and critical care to support most people through critical illness, disease can be demystified as mortality rates fall. In response to the crisis, efforts to control the spread of the Ebola virus were intensified. Local health authorities cautioned citizens of affected areas against interacting with monkeys and bats. While this may seem like sensible enough advice to prevent the spread of a dangerous virus, it was yet another of the many misfires in controlling the deadly Ebola outbreak. By using public health services to educate villagers on other potential forms of virus transmission, authorities took attention away from the critical need to control human-to-human transmission, which began in late 2013 after the index case of a little boy in Guinea. One factor fueling the difficulties authorities had interacting with the ill and their families was citizens’ genuine lack of trust. This distrust was caused by years of armed conflict in the region related to a civil war that National Geographic described as “climaxing in horrific bloodshed.” War was not something that had played a role in previous outbreaks. This situation caused many tense situations for international health workers. Workers were sometimes pelted by stones, and according to the New York Times, a Doctors Without Borders treatment center was sacked, forcing its closure for a week. Citizens even hid corpses from health workers out of distrust.

An Opportunity to Improve

photo: Allie Witek

The Many Factors that Make up a Disease

In a critical editorial published on October 16, 2014 in The New England Journal of Medicine, physicianscientists Dr. Jeremy Farrar and Dr. Peter Piot remind us that there will certainly be more epidemics – maybe not in Africa, but in New York, Geneva, or Beijing “with a different pathogen and different transmission route.” Our response can no longer be “slow, cumbersome, poorly funded, conservative, and ill prepared.” The West African Ebola crisis shows us what can happen when our luck runs out. While the Ebola crisis is under control, a new epidemic has already emerged; there are already similarities between the recent Ebola crisis and the current Zika outbreak. Understanding the similarities and differences between these two epidemics can help strengthen our approach to the Zika virus as we move forward, but, according to a recent STAT report, CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden points out that his organization is

“using borrowed money [from Ebola] on borrowed time to support a comprehensive Zika response while keeping a watch on Ebola and other threats to public health.” Not comforting words, nor is it reassuring to hear that Congress left for a seven week summer recess in 2016 without passing a bill to fund the Zika fight. Frieden also points out that the practice of shifting funding from existing epidemics can take its toll, noting, “more people died because of Ebola than from Ebola.” Programs for other illnesses, including malaria and tuberculosis, were derailed in order to shift the funding and focus onto Ebola. Will we have another chance to be fully prepared for future crises? We will know in 2020. //// Dr. Ted Witek is a professor and senior fellow at the Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health, and serves as senior vice president of corporate partnerships and chief scientific officer at Innoviva in South San Francisco.

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MISC presents eight magazine covers from the future, each with an accompanying work of future-fictional journalism.

72 SEPTEMBER 2/3 2020

FT Weekend Se p t e m be r 2 / 3 2 0 2 0

Playing catch-up, Bridgewater doubles down on AI

FT Weekend Magazine

The Costs of Deep Trading

DEEP TRADING

This Human-Computer Duo Banked Billions in 2019. Can the high-growth-hybrid-hedge-fund maintain advantage over imitators?

MIT Tech nology Review J a n u a r y/ F eb r u a r y 2 0 2 0

Life Logic: the Personal Systems Thinking Startup

Anticipatory Systems Deliver the Goods

FedEx’s Fleet of Autonomous Networked Trucks

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VOL 145. NO. 8 | JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2020

Life Logic in Mind A Personal Systems Thinking Assistant Enters the AI Wars, Bringing Logistics into Everyday Life

NON-FRICTION by Va l dis Sil in s

Smart Systems and Mobility Smart ecosystems are a fact of life. When the smartphone market peaked at the end of 2016, all that remained was the gradual equalization of developing markets in India, Indonesia, Brazil, and elsewhere. In mature markets, everyone who wanted a smartphone already had one. With this in mind, tech companies looked to grow by fostering an emerging IoT system of smart objects. These companies competed to find which smart objects could find their way into the home the fastest. It’s difficult to recall now, but the only limited sensors we had access to back then were the ones in our pockets and the low-resolution wearables of early adopters. Today, almost every device we interact with has an intelligent component to it. Diverse sensing technologies, from spectrometers to accelerometers, feed data back to manufacturers, service providers, and users ubiquitously across domains. In this exponentially connected world, people, objects, and infrastructure have been connected in what security expert Bruce Schneier calls the “world-sized web.” No longer is the digital separate from the physical – the web is the world. Actuators continuously reshape our environment based on the data collected, whether we’re aware of it or not. These adjustments can take the form of something simple, like a door unlocking upon our approach, but they can also be more complex; businesses can anticipate our needs through analysis

of geolocation, behavioral profiles, and past purchasing decisions. What connectivity has enabled is a life spent on the go in ways we might not have anticipated. Now that objects are traceable, the early rumblings of a sharing economy are taking off, as these objects are retrofitted with smart capabilities and blockchain-derived ledgers. Fleets of driverless cars are slowly transforming cities by reducing the need for parking, while access to shared kitchens and office space is changing how we live and work. Underutilized assets are being unlocked, making dynamic management of these assets significant, as their exchange becomes more complex. While past accounting practices statically represented assets as fixed numbers, today, increasing complexity can be accounted for by algorithmic representations of obligations and dependencies. That’s where Life Logic steps in. A dynamic systems thinking assistant, Life Logic promises to simplify day-to-day management of everything from health, to finances, to mobility. Life Logic has an open structure that allows for future integrations. Past life management approaches have been dominated by simple causeand-effect relationships and based on paperware metaphors. The diversity of life’s many domains has been kept separate. In these systems, money was deposited into and withdrawn from bank accounts; health information was entered and revised by doctors; and nutrition was often addressed using a series of endless quick fixes. But these areas interact and impact each other in emergent ways – they can’t be treated in isolation.

The World Just Got Smoother. Frictionless Logistics At Last. New Levels of Efficiency Could Grow Global Economy 1.5X IDEA COUTURE FORESIGHT STUDIO

These images are a work of parody and may contain copyrighted material and trademarks which may be protected under copyright laws and international treaty provisions, the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright or trademark owner. All trademarks, services marks, trade names, logos and icons are proprietary to their respective owner. If you believe material has been used in an unauthorized manner, please let us know.

// No longer is the digital separate from the physical – the web is the world. //

Billboard O c t o be r 1 4 , 2 0 2 0

Dylan Goes Digital! 60 years after Newport, Bob Dylan is embracing cognitive computing to compose new album

2022:

SUPER-RAPPING:

Kendrick Lamar to battle IBM’s Watson

The Year of Machine-Made Music Creative Professionals Face Economic Uncertainty

Dylan Goes Digital

B y R o b e r t B o lt o n

LOOKING FOR THE PERFECT BEAT:

Legendary record producers displaced by machines

OCTOBER 14, 2020 www.billboard.com www.billboard.biz IDEA COUTURE FORESIGHT STUDIO

These images are a work of parody and may contain copyrighted material and trademarks which may be protected under copyright laws and international treaty provisions, the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright or trademark owner. All trademarks, services marks, trade names, logos and icons are proprietary to their respective owner. If you believe material has been used in an unauthorized manner, please let us know.

On July 25th, 1965 at the Newport folk festival, Bob Dylan “went electric,” scandalizing his stature as America’s folk revival torchbearer in favor of a full force rock sound. Audiences were split. There were those who embraced Dylan’s new bag, which applied technology to art. It was, after all, a way to amplify his message, literally turning up the volume and figuratively appealing to the mainstream sonic styles of popular rock acts like the Beatles. The new sound was noisy and rebellious, a better reflection of the social upheaval of the time. And rather than carrying on tradition, it sent a signal of youth, innovation, and a different future. For purists, whose folk values – grassroots idealism, hope, community, freedom – were encoded in the genre’s acoustic conventions, there was no distinguishing music from morals. Dylan had betrayed both. When it comes to popular music, technology can often seem at odds with authenticity. Lines are drawn in the sand with the advent of each new tool, from player pianos, to synthesizers, samplers, and the softwares that replaced tape machines. Fans decried Britney Spears for

using auto-tune to correct her pitch in live performances. Kanye West was lauded for his innovative applications of the same technology. “The loser now will be later to win, for the times they are a changing,” said Steve Jobs, quoting Dylan, as he introduced the Macintosh at a 1984 shareholder meeting. Next week, the bard will present his latest offering exclusively on Apple Music. The new album, entitled This Machine Kills Fascists (a nod to Woody Guthrie), takes a clear stance on the major technology trend reshaping how music is made today. While fans, artists, and critics argue about the virtues and creative costs of the various AI technologies being used to generate music, Dylan, now 80 years old, unabashedly makes a point of exploiting artificial intelligence to maximize the quality of his creative output. “These are the new tools of revolution,” he says, with the faux-underdog swagger that’s so emblematic of Apple’s marketing. “We’re just beginning to learn what they’re capable of.” Indeed, the process of creating this album is unlike any we’ve seen before in the history of pop. Dylan worked closely with a designated team of computer scientists, developers, and creative strategists to develop a new set of tools and experiments.

Machine learning algorithms were used to recreate the creative forces of some of Dylan’s favorite old contemporaries who he’d missed the chance to collaborate with. It was how INTELENNON was born: a machine learning system that writes new melodies according to the musical sensibilities of John Lennon. Dylan feeds it lyrics and INTELLENNON spits out an appropriate tune. Dylan then gets the chance to make edits, and loops back feedback in a cyclical creative process. To guarantee his lyrics are of his highest caliber, the team has built “Bob-Bot,” an artificial mind that is based on Dylan’s output, interviews, and other archival media from his creative prime. It mimics not just his style, but also his taste, as it pores over pretty much the entirety of human knowledge to locate just the right references. In his lyrics, Dylan borrowed freely from diverse literary sources, ranging from local news stories to ancient Chinese poetry. Bob-Bot does the same, but covers a vastly wider body of literature. It suggests selections to Dylan as he writes. The more he writes with the machine, the better it gets at finding what he’s looking for. The musicality and sonic qualities of the album are anything but ordinary too. Though technically Dylan recorded all of the songs, you won’t hear his voice on the album. Instead, a style transfer program transforms the vocals to the singer of his choice. “I know I can’t sing,” Dylan says matter-of-factly, so after he records the vocals, the software makes it sound like someone else. The plan is to release four versions of the album, each with a different vocal styling. You’ll be able to buy versions of This Machine Kills Fascists as sung by Prince, Michael Jackson, David Bowie, and Kurt Cobain. For Dylan, the album marks his return to pop culture relevance, but for music nerds everywhere it’s a chance to argue about the nature of art and authenticity, and, of course, who sang it better: The Bot Formerly Known as Prince or Robo-Bowie? //// Robert Bolton is head of Foresight Studio at Idea Couture.

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The New Era of Personal Computing

APPLE & SAMSUNG

RACING TO BRING QUANTUM PRODUCTIVITY TO THE MASSES

The Endless Potential of Quantum Computing

OPERATOR COPIER: Quantum computing will run software that stands in for you in conversations and takes meetings when you’re not available. pg 34

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QUANTUM COMPUTER

THE LOCKET: Quantum-Chip-on-a-Necklace to

Power up Your Personal Connected Environment

IDEA COUTURE FORESIGHT STUDIO

These images are a work of parody and may contain copyrighted material and trademarks which may be protected under copyright laws and international treaty provisions, the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright or trademark owner. All trademarks, services marks, trade names, logos aand icons are proprietary to their respective owner. If you believe material has been used in an unauthorized manner, please let us know.

By Brandon Smith

Moore’s law has literally come to an end. We’ve finally reached a point where the exponential growth of transistors on microprocessor chips can no longer continue. We always knew this time would come – even before we hit the limitations of thermodynamics and heat transfer back in the early 2000s. But this doesn’t mean that technological advancement has been halted. Moore’s law still lives on, in spirit, through the continued growth it provides in user value. Until now, this growth has relied on us getting creative with technological advancements, but with the recent developments in quantum computing, we can begin exploring new possibilities.

Quantum computers are finally beginning to reach the proficiency level of classical computers, leading many the excited engineer to wonder about the impact this development could have on people’s everyday lives. What would it would mean, for example, to have a personal quantum computer in the palm of your hand? Classical computers were reduced in size from their original massive mainframe forms to the much smaller and much more efficient mobile phone in under 30 years. With quantum computers, such progress will occur over an even shorter period of time – so much so that many are already imagining being able to carry their own quantum computers in their pockets. But before exploring the implications of pocket-sized personal quantum computers, a quick reality check is in order. For years, quantum computing has been hailed as the future of the tech industry – and it is. But we’ve quickly fallen into the common fallacy of over-promising. For quantum computing to continue developing, the fundamental needs of creating a consumer-facing quantum computer must first be understood. What challenges must be overcome for the creation of the personal quantum computer?

Storing data using the spin of electrons is no easy task. Electrons can spin up (1), spin down (0), or do both at the same time (1/0). It’s this (1/0) state of spinning both upwards and downwards that has created so many stability issues in quantum computing. This instability must be countered by keeping the system supercooled at -269˚C, which is just 4˚C warmer than absolute zero. In 2013, a quantum computer could work at room temperature in a stable state for just 39 minutes. Over the past seven years, great advances have been made. With quantum computers now able to operate in a stable state at just -20˚C – the same temperature of a regular freezer – many corporations are using these devices for their daily operations. Do you remember joking about how unreliable the weather report was? Most people suspected that the report was created by someone spinning a wheel to see what it landed on. Well, now companies like Pelmorex are leveraging Google’s quantum computing capabilities to make three-day weather forecasts with nearly 100% accuracy. This same quantum computing capability has made Google Now a clear leader in the mobile AI industry, dominating traditional AI tech like Siri and Cortana, which still solve problems in progression using the classical computer approach. Government agencies are also using quantum computers as state-of-the-art encryptors to generate security keys so complex that it would take even the most powerful classical computer thousands of years to decrypt them. But these advancements pale in comparison to the potential impact quantum computing may soon have on biomedicine. Five years ago, we were struggling to develop new treatments for every disease

suffered by the human race, and discovering new molecule combinations was a laborious process that often did not yield useful results. Now, quantum computers are providing us with the ability to perform simulations that literally occur simultaneously. Thousands of molecule combinations can be formulated at the same time, and these combos are more likely to be successful than past treatments. As a result, the number of phase one clinical trials has doubled in the past year alone. Only time will tell how effective these “quantum molecules” will be compared to our past attempts. The greatest advantage of quantum computing is its ability to calculate extraordinarily difficult problems at immense speeds. This speed isn’t accomplished by performing classical computing at a faster speed; quantum computing takes an entirely different approach to solving problems. Remember the state of being up and down at the same time? This complex state is what allows quantum computers to perform calculations simultaneously instead of in a specific, linear order. This simultaneous problem-solving is exactly what will allow quantum computers to unlock new ways of fixing issues currently plaguing the Internet of Things (IoT). Mobile devices have long been considered the center of the IoT universe, but these devices have their limits. Considering the limited computing capabilities of the typical mobile device, how could such a device control so many components all at once? Quantum computing could be the solution the IoT has been looking for. With the power and speed of quantum computing, a handheld computer responsible for all other connected devices is conceivable. Each person’s personal quantum computer would simultaneously control all

// For quantum computing to continue developing, the fundamental needs of creating a consumer-facing quantum computer must first be understood. //

// Quantum computing could be the solution the IoT has been looking for. With the power and speed of quantum computing, a handheld computer responsible for all other connected devices is conceivable. //

devices belonging to that person, including sound systems, connected vehicles, temperature control, lighting, and more. You might be thinking that all these things are already being done, and, to some extent, you’re right. Today, your connected devices process information themselves and communicate small bits of that information to your mobile device. Your device only has to manage small doses of data at a time. While this is fine for today’s IoT, it severely limits the potential of IoT technology. A quantum computer would allow your device to not only interpret and synthesize the raw data from your various connected devices, but it would do so simultaneously, thereby making automatic adjustments that a classical computer would never be capable of. With a quantum computer-enabled mobile device, you would have a truly smart device in the palm of your hand for the first time. This device would process a great deal of data and control all of your devices without you ever having to sacrifice the performance of your regular mobile device usage. Everything would happen in the background, and you wouldn’t even be aware of it. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Though there have been incredible advances in smarthomes and quantum computing, there is still much progress to be made. Right now, the closest thing we have to a personal quantum computer is the “cloud quantum computer”

that was released at CES this year. Without some incredible advancements in wireless data transfer, these cloud quantum computers won’t be able to provide much value to the individual. Instead, this technology will continue serving corporate users. The aforementioned weather forecasting, as well as AI predictions and biomedical advances, are just a few examples of uses for cloud quantum computing. Though it may not seem like it, this delay is actually a bit of a blessing in disguise. Even if personal quantum computers were available right now, it would not be possible for us take full advantage of the unique capabilities of these devices. We have time now to consider what we could actually do with the power of a quantum computer in our pocket. There are no limits to how this innovation could be applied to our existing technology. Maybe we could finally power AI-assisted exoskeletons and enhance our ability to perform physical tasks, or maybe we could change the way we interact and connect within large cities. The options are endless, but until we develop a better understanding of quantum computers and have the opportunity to experiment with their capabilities, we will never truly be able to harness their full potential. //// Brandon Smith is an innovation strategist at Idea Couture.

NanoTech transparency + traceability solutions The food industryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s waste-fuelled energy play 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 Urban meal sharing 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 Death of a billion dollar black market: illegal fishing is over MARCH 12TH-15TH 2020 Economist.com T h e E c o n o mi s t m a r c h 1 2 t h -1 5 t h , 2 0 2 0

Farm Fresh

By Stephanie Kaptein

With extreme and unpredictable weather putting crops in jeopardy, Safeway is taking food production to the next level by providing neighborhood-specific aquaponic fish delis and produce aisles nationwide.

Traditional Farming Becomes Increasingly Unreliable Advances in precision farming have more than doubled crop yields and revenues in the last five years. This technology provides farmers with an abundant amount of information on traditionally unknown variables, including moisture levels, soil nutrient content, and threats caused by weeds, pests, and diseases. Even though these advances have helped farmers optimize outdoor growing conditions, crops are still subject to the extreme and unpredictable weather caused by climate change, a problem which is only expected to get worse. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the commonly occurring heat waves and large storms of today are likely to become more frequent and more intense. Extreme temperature conditions are already the norm, as shown by last summerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s record-breaking high temperatures. Because of these shifting weather patterns, some areas are experiencing less precipitation, even though the total annual amount of precipitation has increased in the United States. Widespread droughts are putting stress on both crops and the farmers tending them, while intense single day precipitation events often damage crops more than they help to counter the effects of these droughts.

The end of waste How the Internet of Food (IoF) makes treasure out of trash IDEA COUTURE FORESIGHT STUDIO

// With a current global population of 8 billion and a projected population of 9.7 billion by 2050, food security is paramount. //

In-Store Aquaponics: A New Take on an Existing Approach With a current global population of 8 billion and a projected population of 9.7 billion by 2050, food security is paramount. Instead of relying on outsourced food production provided by traditional outdoor growers, Safeway has partnered with Pentair Aquatic Eco-Systems to develop an in-store aquaponics system that provides neighborhoods with access to fresh fish and leafy greens. Access to a secure produce source has already paid off. After Hurricane Wendy, Safeway was able to continue selling produce through their aquaponic pilot stores when surrounding local crops were heavily damaged by high winds and flooding. Safewayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in-store aquaponics system will provide all regions across the United States with access to fresh, organic food. Fish, served the day it comes out of the water, will be accessible to millions of inland residents who previously had to rely on frozen fish imported from afar. A wide variety of produce options, from herbs and leafy greens to eggplants and strawberries, will be harvested and sold the same day to ensure the fullest flavors and to reduce spoilage.

How It Works The produce aisle and fish deli work together in perfect harmony. Fish waste is converted into vermicompost using microbes and red worm composting. Vermicompost provides an organic food source for the plants, while the plants provide a natural filter for the water that the fish live in. Produce is grown using the nutrient-rich water provided by the resident fish in combination with natural and artificial lighting. Transparent solar-powered windows provide natural light to the plants on sunny days while collecting enough energy to power artificial lighting when the sky is overcast. Both the fish and plants, along with their environments, have been engineered for optimized growth and development. The artificial lights have been specifically designed to emit the color sensitivity and light intensity required for plant development. Tilapia, supplied by AquaBounty, are the fresh fish of choice because of their fast growth rate, their resilience to disease and parasites, and tolerance to water quality and temperature changes. Back in 2013, Earth Policy Institute reported that fish became the animal protein of choice over beef largely due to its sustainable farming methods.

// Safewayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in-store aquaponic farm reconnects the consumer to the source of their food by placing them directly in the farm. For the first time, consumers will truly understand where their food comes from. //

Meeting Specific Customer Needs As Safeway rolls out their nationwide program with Pentair Aquatic Eco-Systems, consumers will be able to take virtual reality tours of the proposed retail store for their specific neighborhood. Each location will be equipped with an aquaponic system customized to the demographic needs of each particular region. Safeway will be conducting consumer surveys to determine what produce and fish to offer at each location before construction begins. Because select herbs and greens will be handpicked by the consumer, each location will require a membership that includes an educational introduction to sustainable harvesting. Harvesting in this manner will allow the plants to be collected while they continue to flourish. More labor-intensive plants will be picked daily, while fish will be caught and cleaned behind a traditional deli counter. The entire ecosystem will be monitored and cared for by a small team of Pentair Aquatic Eco-Systems experts.

Consumers have long been disconnected from their food source. In the past, this has caused distrust in large food corporations, as unethical shortcuts have made food affordable and accessible to the masses but have seriously compromised its nutritional quality. Safewayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in-store aquaponic farm reconnects the consumer to the source of their food by placing them directly in the farm. For the first time, consumers will truly understand where their food comes from. //// Stephanie Kaptein is a design strategist at Idea Couture.

Fa s t C o m pa n y Se p t e m be r 2 0 2 0 Op-Ed

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FOREIGN MANUFACTURING COMES HOME; Creates ZERO New Jobs

Artificial Boss 5 Tips to Get the Most Out of Your Robot Employees

Treat Them Appropriately

B y S h a n e S a u n de r s o n

So you’ve made the leap to automating part or all of your workforce with robotic employees or “roploys.” Congratulations, you are at the forefront of the robotics movement and are leading the charge towards a new era of workplace operations and productivity. However, this change in the type of employees you surround yourself with necessitates a change in how you, as a manager of your new robotic workforce, must lead and guide your team of roploys toward prosperity.

First and foremost, you must understand that a roploy is very different from a traditional human employee and, as such, requires a different managerial style. All but the most experimental, high-end roploys are programmed without compassion, guilt, or fear, so your historical necessity to consider empathy and emotional intelligence when managing your workforce can go right out the door. Remember that the word “robot” is derived from the word slave and you will have an easier starting point as a boss. Kindness, courtesy, and emotion only dilute and confuse your directive to the roploy and lead to potential misinterpretation. Clarity of task is paramount, and while your roploy is designed to interpolate sub-steps of your higher-level tasks, specificity will be key to avoiding default assumptions that may go against your wishes. Don’t bother giving them feedback, just make clearer demands. Don’t ask your roploys to do things; command them.

WHISPERER LEARNING TO SPEAK MACHINE: COLLABORATING WITH YOUR AI TEAMMATES

THE GENERALISTS: Flexibility, Uncertainty, and the New American Work Force IOE DILEMMAS Google and X-Core Battle to Be the Backbone of the Internet of Everything. Fledgling startups are making their bets. With two credible visions for a connected future, find out why some IoT unicorns refuse to choose.

IDEA COUTURE FORESIGHT STUDIO

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the job than you. Beyond to remember in this new organizational claim 99% error-free operations, that pesky 2020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 unbiased machine whose consistency and obvious things like numerical calculations, structure is that although you are in control, it is little 1% is enough to warrant your attention. 0202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 2020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 perfection are core to its being, the saying is chess games, and driving, the list of functions typically your roploys who are in charge. Though these platforms are superior to 0202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 more important now than it has ever been. where robots are outperforming humans is Though settings can be adjusted, the default traditional employees in many ways, they are 2020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 0202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 With natural human skepticism towards robotic already staggering and growing by the day. for most roploys is to engage them in full not without their bugs and quirks. As such, 2020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 workers and growing support for the People Specialist roploys are now better accountants organizational autonomy based on your mandate. most current models are supplied with a kill 0202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 2020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 First movement, many of your customers will than humans. Novel logic engines and In short, you set the high-level objectives and switch to temporarily disengage your 0202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 be wary, suspicious, or even downright hostile unstructured data analysis are slowly making your team takes care of the rest. roploys in the event of catastrophic failure. 2020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 0202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 to your roploys. This is understandable as lawyers obsolete. Even the US military is As such, a common pitfall for most new Since the human tendency for these kinds of 2020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 people rightly consider robots to be lesser forms currently experimenting with an AI general, artificial bosses is to become power hungry and accessories is to toss them in a drawer and 0202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 2020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 of being, and, as we have not quite crossed whose compassionless calls have been micromanage aspects of day-to-day operations. forget about them, most manufacturers have 0202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 the Uncanny Valley, the humanoid presence dominating human counterparts in strategic While the roploys are indeed yours to control, offered their “little red buttons” through a 2020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 of your roploys generates an expected war simulations. becoming too involved in operational managevariety of wearable formats – necklets, bracelets, 0202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 2020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 mistrust of something that feels human, but The point is, there are going to be a number ment can disrupt the optimized structure belt clips – to ensure that you keep them 0202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 not quite. of times in your role when your roploy will and workflow the team has generated. There close at all times. While it will hopefully be a 2020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 0202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 Though your tendency will be to immediately correct you, undermine your authority, or make will always be moments where your roploys rare occurrence that these buttons ever 2020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 side with your roploy and its patented decisions you disagree with. The key is to will come to you for help and guidance, however, need to be pushed, you don’t want to be the 0202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 2020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 Contextual Instant Replay functionality, take a remember that this is not being done out of it is best to realize that your main task is to person with their kill switch in their other 0202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 moment first to assess the situation and malice, political motive, or a desire to marginalize become the trustworthy, human figurehead of pair of pants on the day the robots rise up, 2020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 0202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 understand how it could escalate. Even in the you, but simply because it is the right call. your organization. do you? 2020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 face of alleged poor service, broken Void yourself of emotion in these moments and Just kidding. But not really. //// 0202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 2020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 merchandise, harassment of your roploy, or realize that jealousy is simply an archaic 0202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 theft, your customers are warranted in response to a system that is trying to help you, Shane Saunderson is the co-head of 2020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 0202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 their unease and should not be called out or sometimes in spite of yourself. IC/Things at Idea Couture. 2020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 chastised for risk of spreading negative 0202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 2020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 sentiments or reviews around your business. 0202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 Remember, your roploys are designed 2020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 to take the abuse, so don’t be afraid to let a 0202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 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020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020

The Customer is Always Right

Don’t Get Jealous

Remember Who’s in Charge

Keep the Little Red Button Close

THE DESKTOP BIOTECH BRAND DISRUPTING BIG PHARMA PAGE 56

F o rt u n e J u ly 2 2, 2 0 2 0

The Synbio Boom

b y d r. m a r c l a f l e u r

The synthetic biology (synbio) boom continues to reshape the pharmaceutical landscape, recasting the David and Goliaths of that world in what has seemed like a constant upheaval in the industry since synthetic interventions in biology became accessible and affordable a few short years ago. For those of you not up to speed on the newest developments in biotechnology, synbio is the culmination of the entry of electrical and chemical engineering into the spaces of biological materials. Existing at the intersection of design, nanotechnology, and molecular biology, synthetic biologies are the products of a new perspective and expertise that sees biological materials as interchangeable, modifiable, and endlessly reusable. Synthetic biology takes a fundamentally different perspective on the nature – pun intended – of the biological itself, a shift that is elemental and profound. Instead of seeing organic materials as parts of biologically interconnected wholes that are never less than the sum of their predetermined parts, new biological engineers are using synthetic processes to cast biological materials into endlessly reshapable spare parts that can be purposed and repurposed; these spare parts are essentially readily available tools that have limitless potential. The profound implication of these developments is that we now have organic materials – so-called “biobricks” – at our beck and call. This can impact a great variety of things, including, but not limited to, changing the ways pharmaceutical molecules are developed and manufactured thus redefining the very foundations of life itself.

THE SYNBIO BOOM // The synbio boom seems like one of the last nails in the coffin of universal and equal healthcare systems. //

Genetic

Synbiota Design®

JULY 22, 2020 FORTUNE.COM

THE BEST BIOINNOVATIONS OF 2020: IN MATERIALS, FOOD, AND FUEL PAGE 23

ADOBE LAUNCHES CREATIVE SUITE FOR GENETIC DESIGN PAGE 46

BIG BIO BRAIN DRAIN: TOP TALENT LEAVING THE LAB FOR GARAGE STARTUPS IDEA COUTURE FORESIGHT STUDIO

PAGE 79

// Given the ability it provides to easily manipulate biological materials, synbio has allowed for the development of a truly personalized approach to treatment. //

96 THE VOICE OF AUTO | JANUARY 28 2020

TESLA’S MID-LIFE CRISIS

Adweek Ja n u a r y 28, 20 20

THE AUTOMAKER’S STRATEGY TO WIN NEW CUSTOMERS, 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 ONES THAT AREN’T SO… 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 OLD, MALE, AND PALE.

Apple Leaves Advertising

THINK SMALL:

iRide

The Industry Giant Goes All In on Customer Experience and Owned Channels Instead

RETURN OF THE MAC! APPLE CLAIMS 60% SHARE OF PREMIUM ELECTRIC AUTO MARKET. by Carson Marks

This past week, the industry received its biggest shakeup as Apple CMO Philip Schiller announced that the iconic brand will no longer invest in any above-the-line advertising from this point forward, including television, OOH, print, and even online. Instead, that capital and its corresponding resources will be reinvested in “building the brand through the customer’s experience of our products, services, and owned media channels.” If actions speak louder than words, then the world’s most iconic advertiser has made a bold statement: the brand is the experience you offer, not the marketing you push. The controversial decision from the influential company has sent shockwaves through the industry, leaving experts to pontificate, imitators to debate following, and agencies to anxiously wait and see which way the wind blows (before stating that they were there all along). Across all of these parties one thing is absolute – this decision will undoubtedly have an impact that will ripple through the marketing community. While the influence will be enormous, don’t count marketing as down and out. As Tim Cook said to The Wall Street Journal after the decision was made, “Let me be clear: this in no way diminishes Philip Schiller’s role or the role marketing will play within Apple. Quite the opposite – this makes marketing’s role more important than ever. These are the stakeholders most focused on the brand and its strategy – and in true Apple fashion, the [marketing] team has begun to innovate on the traditional way a brand’s value is created.”

Schiller explained the reason behind the bold decision: “In a time where information moves so freely, the difference between what a brand offers and how a brand is perceived is virtually seamless.” The statement seems to resemble the company’s viewpoint toward marketing during Apple’s heyday, when Allison Johnson, former VP of Apple’s Worldwide Communication, claimed that the two words Steve Jobs hated were “brand” and “marketing.” As Johnson explained in a 2014 interview, “Because in Steve’s mind, people associated ‘brands’ with television advertising, commercials, and artificial things.” It’s quite a bold statement from the company responsible for iconic TV commercials like “1984” and “Think Different,” as well as campaigns like “I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC” and the silhouetted figures that danced with white earbuds. But to those who have been closely watching Apple’s marketing activities, this change doesn’t seem like such a surprise. Ad legend Lee Clow (who is responsible for many of the campaigns just mentioned, and was a close personal friend of Steve Jobs) remarked back in 2009: “The Apple store was probably the best ad we ever did!” and now that seems so telling. In recent years, the brand has been slowly decreasing its spending not only on declining mediums like TV and print, but also on OOH, pre-roll, and online. Zenith Media estimates that in the past three years, Apple’s investment in media spend has declined 50%. Apple’s total global spend sat at approximately $1.1B – until today.

GOOGLE TAKES A PAGE OUT OF DBB’S

VOLKSWAGEN PLAYBOOK.

THE MOBILILTY ISSUE

IDEA COUTURE FORESIGHT STUDIO

020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 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020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 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020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 So with $1.1B freed up from advertising, where will ideals in ways that cannot fit within the experience of 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 marketing reinvest? The answer is both simple and a product or service. For such content, we can rely on 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 complex. “Apple’s strategy is to reinvest marketing in our own media properties.” 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 the brand experience,” says Cook. It’s a concise The owned media properties that Schiller refers to 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 statement that can be interpreted in endless ways. include iTunes, Apple’s website, the digital signage 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 Schiller described the strategy in greater detail: in Apple stores, AppleTV, Beats 1 Radio, special events 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 “The Apple brand has never been stronger,” he said. like their annual keynote, and countless other 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 “We took a step back and looked at all of the inputs properties. All of these, and many other platforms, will 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 and factors that go into how people perceive the brand, continue to feature original content from the Apple 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 and we quickly found that our advertising was one brand and will continue to come from the brand’s 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 of the smallest factors when compared against all other long-time advertising partner, TBWA\Media Arts Lab, 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 touchpoints – but was costing us a great deal. We who declined to comment. Others are more vocal 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 Strategic planning and traditional The contemporary sense of an 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 saw that it was the touchpoints outside of advertising of their disapproval of solely leveraging owned media. competitive intelligence are therefore no 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 accelerated velocity of change is that were building our brand’s value instead; these “This gamble to remove paid media will be disastrous 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 longer sufficient. The executive radar 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 are the experiences that constantly amaze people.” in the long-term,” says WPP CEO Martin Sorrell. a well-documented phenomenon. needs to be augmented, to move from 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 The fact that Apple’s new strategy is to take these “Gen Z and those younger will grow up without Apple’s 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 focusing on what has happened to focusing Technological innovation, 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 products and services – which already deliver seamless devices and the brand’s awareness levels will plummet.” on what is happening and the potential 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 dynamic competitive landscapes, and amazing experiences – and invest more can Sorrell may have a slight bias, however, as his 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 futures that are unfolding. Strategic foresight 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 only mean trouble for its competitors. holding company’s large collection of media buying evolving consumer expectations, – a discipline for sensing, understanding, 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 For example, the Apple store (and now dealership) agencies currently accounts for nearly half of its profits. 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 anticipating, and exploring potential change and the emergence of radically 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 – a store that is continually reinventing itself while He may be turning a blind eye to all of the toddlers – provides such a radar. 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 new and potentially disruptive paving the way for all retailers, not just competitors – that play with iPads, the schools that use Macs, the 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 The preceding magazine covers and 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 is now bringing the ingenuity of its computer products pre-teens that stream AppleTV, the spectrum of ideas are staggering forces – and articles from the future represent just some 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 into the automotive space with its latest innovation, young to old that listen to Apple Music or Beats 1 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 of the possible scenarios that could take are unsympathetic to the time the iRide vehicle. By featuring the electric car directly in Radio, and let’s not forget – the iRide: the car that 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 place. Think of them as provocations or and consideration they demand 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 Apple stores everywhere and by blowing up the typical 5-year-olds dream of driving as soon as they are old signposts from which more questions can 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 from executives. test-drive experience, they’ve broken away from the enough. So Sorrell may disapprove, but he has every 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 be asked. What might an alternative 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 unapproachable and antiquated dealership model. This reason to – he needs this to fail. Because if Apple’s bet scenario look like? Where does your 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 play has not only contributed to Apple’s 60% market succeeds, other brands could follow suit, requiring 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 organization fit in? How could you plan to 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 share of the electric car market, but the crowd-drawing less from media buyers and costing WPP billions. build a more preferable outcome for 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 car has boosted same-store sales by an unprecedented The industry’s leader has made a decision. How will 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 yourself, your business, and society? If things seem to be moving faster, 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 20% year-over-year. the industry respond? Will ad agencies prepare to Questions, elaborations, suggestions, it’s because they really are moving faster. 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 While a case could be made that they might be work in a small box as content creators? Or will they 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 illuminations, connections, and all varieties It’s no longer enough to stay up-to-date. 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 over-investing in brand as experience, you can’t argue continue to play both partner and champion of the of marginalia are invited. Connect with us Innovation efforts are undifferentiated and 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 with the fact that it’s this very strategy that has taken brand – and if so, where will that lead them? Agencies 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 on Twitter @misc_mag using #futureheadlines outmoded before they get to market. 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 Apple to these heights. The brand, viewed so clearly in that are willing to adapt will have to prepare to and visit www.miscmagazine.com to External change is not only rapid, it’s 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 the minds of millions of consumers and envied and understand the complex space of experience design 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 continue the conversation. //// multidimensional and multidirectional. 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 emulated in the boardrooms of thousands of executives, through products and services in a brand-led manner – 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 has been built up not by advertising, but by carefully this is an established competitive space with players 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 thought-out experiences. who have been there for years. Agencies that aren’t 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 However, as many have always argued, advertising willing to adapt will have to prepare for the smaller 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 content always plays some role, however small, in box. //// 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 shaping ideas. And Apple has stated that the content 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 will still be around. Again Schiller elaborated: “There Carson Marks is an innovation strategist at Idea 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 will always be a place for Apple to communicate its Couture. 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202 202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202

Conclusion

100

101

Making Magic, Designing Delight

What do we value most in brands that we’re attracted to? Quality? Certainly. Value? Absolutely. Delight? These days, yes. It’s not hard to imagine how everyday experiences can be accompanied by a sense of delight. Technology amplifies these brand values because it offers a way to better control the basis on which we build customer experiences. Consider Disney World’s MagicBand. It “speaks” to you, leads you, guides you. It creates a frictionless experience of not just the park, but the entire vacation.

Brands are too easily dismissed as slogans, catch phrases, taglines. But in practice, brand is shorthand for the promise a company makes to its customers. It’s a vessel, a symbol that takes on meaning only insofar as it signals the strength of a reciprocal relationship – between companies bringing something to market and people who see value in what they sell. Brand experiences are what technology enables us to do, as consumers, as buyers, as clients and customers of companies, as we engage in the most elemental of transactions: buying and using a product in the way it was designed, or benefiting from services we purchase. Digital design – basing products on a sense of human empathy, designing services with the needs and wants of users in the foreground – will allow products and services to operate seamlessly alongside our lives. It creates a pleasurable, frictionless experience based on preferences, driven by adept and powerful algorithmic analysis. In time, technology becomes invisible – but the customer experience does not. This has implications for businesses from product conception, design, and testing, through sales, marketing, and service. Emerging companies and those with portfolios of esteemed global brands are reconceiving, redesigning, and reengineering how they bring products and services to market, creating frequent-use platforms with an equal sense of how benefits can be delivered to customers and how value can return to them. At the core is a differentiated interaction with a brand that meets people “where they live.” It knows where they are; it understands their individual likes and dislikes; it tailors experiences specifically for them.

In turn, brands can create forms of delight, value, even wonder. While an enhanced customer experience is happening, customers won’t even think about it. They’ll opt in, and experience that delight. But they’ll also remember an outstanding experience. The future is never here; it’s always only a day, an hour, a minute ahead. What’s your platform? Not the program to promote your brand, but the platform you rely on to engage, interact with, and retain your valuable customers? How companies architect brand experiences by leveraging digital thinking will define a new age of contextual, interactive brand management. We call it digital empathy: designing experiences for people living and working in a data-driven world. ////

It’s not about a device; it’s not just software. It’s a thoughtfully designed, unbroken digital chain that delivers vastly enhanced value and a better experience in the park. For a parent coping with eager and excited children, it must also feel like a blessing. It’s digital thinking: rethinking business from start to finish. From sensors and communication devices to cloud-enabled data gathering and rigorous algorithmic analysis, digital thinking creates vastly improved experiences for people. Happy faces, indeed. photo: Ronald Yang

What is the nature of delight? A principle of pleasure. Perhaps a sense of mystery unfurled. A tinge of magic.

Consider this: today your vehicle alerts you when the oil needs to be changed, the tires are low, or it needs service. But in tomorrow’s world, the onboard computer sends an alert to the dealer and a text to you. (Unhappy face?) The vehicle makes an appointment electronically, enters the date on your calendar, and drives itself to the service bay. Its sensors reset when service is performed. Then, it drives itself home – and probably texts you when it’s on its way. (Happy face.) Useful. Practical. In a way, wondrous. To the generation before us, it will appear almost as an act of magic. To the generation that follows, it’s a viable future. And it’s the future of successful brands.

Accelerating Brands, Eliminating Friction

Have you landed and found your luggage? Walk downstairs to exit door four: The Disney bus will pick you up. Lunch? The restaurant you chose is on your right; your meals will be served in ten minutes. Kids ready for splashy fun – and some singing puppets? It’s a two minute walk to Splash Mountain (you can turn left now). We’re expecting you, and the line is only three minutes!

The Soul in the New Machine? Try Delight

B y T h eo Fo r b at h

The Brand Promise: Unmatched Experience

Theo Forbath is global vice president, digital transformation at Cognizant Technology Solutions.

102

103

The Rental Revolution, the Sharing Economy, and the Briefness of Loyalty Toffler believed in the spread of “rentalism,” or “a characteristic of societies rocketing towards super-industrialism.” He points out how disruptive the entry of the auto rental industry was to traditional car manufacturers in 1970, and he believed this trend would continue. Today, we have startups like Airbnb, and we’re able to rent anything, including our bedrooms, cars, boats, clothes, equipment, and toys. Toffler theorized that this emphasis on renting would reduce the sentimental attachment and relationship we have with our products, reinforcing a culture of throwaway items and decreasing brand loyalty. Although it’s undoubtedly still popular today to borrow all sorts of items, ultimately, people crave having something that they can call their own. The sharing economy might ultimately be a brief phase in time, a trend that attracts attention like wildfire only to burn out by 2025 when a new wave of ownership and desire to brand our items with our names becomes the “it” thing. While his prediction is valid, we can expect to see a reverse in this trend once millennials reach a certain age and income level and start to debate between owning a Tesla or a Porsche.

The Prosumer

Alvin Toffler’s Future How the writer and futurist predicted some of today’s biggest trends.

B y J a r a a d M o o t ee

When change happens too quickly, when society confuses itself and decision-makers falter in rapid change, when we don’t know what’s going to happen – that’s when we get a sense of “future shock.” Alvin Toffler was a futurist known for writing the book Future Shock in 1970; Toffler co-authered the book with his wife. Together, they painted a picture of what the future may look like. The book was immensely popular in its time, but what people didn’t realize for another decade was that the Tofflers’ predictions were actually coming true. In 2000, Business 2.0, the once popular but now

defunct magazine, dedicated an entire issue to exploring the future. Toffler was interviewed in the issue, and he spoke about his predictions from Future Shock and offered new ones for the year 2000 and onward. Toffler foresaw many changes, including the emergence of the internet, YouTube, cloning, homeschooling, social media, and instant celebrities. Let’s take stock of some of the things Toffler predicted in both his Business 2.0 interview as well as Future Shock, keeping in mind that his ideas were initially published in 1970 and that he was projecting 30 years into the future. Here are three things that Toffler got right that we should be keeping an eye on as we move toward 2020.

According to Toffler, the customer would become increasingly involved in the production process. He called this kind of consumer a “prosumer” and explained that they would provide information to companies in exchange for products that would be increasingly more customized for them. He outlined how, with the growth of the internet, people would be buying products from small, isolated places that couldn’t supply the entirety of the United States but could easily supply a small town, a phenomena that he calls “microtrade.” This strategy is based on the idea that we don’t always need mass markets; many successes today are based on high customization and specialized, segmented marketing on a mass scale (we’re looking at you, Etsy). This strategy also works for microbreweries and farms that sell locally grown produce. However, consumers becoming part of the production process is currently under development as mass manufacturing still dictates the economics of production. 3D printable goods, for example, are still niche. Toffler’s prediction is therefore correct in terms of how we want to customize products, but beyond customizing our cars, notebooks, or sneakers, we still have a long way to go.

Wearables + Pharma + IoT At the turn of the century, Toffler predicted that we would be moving toward something called the “bioweb,” a mash-up of biotechnology and web technology. He discussed the potential for monitoring vitals using technology that communicates with people, services, or even other devices over the web. 16 years ago, Toffler predicted what some of the most innovative companies like Google are doing today: creating wearables using IoT to push the frontier of pharma tech. Toffler said that we would have sensors in everything from our food, to our homes, to our people. We already use many of our sensor-packed devices around the clock – like smartphones, smartwatches, and Fitbits. Toffler’s predictions even jump to Jetsonian societies and prenatal enhancements, but overall he’s not too far off from where we are today. His predictions around connectivity will remain valid for decades as we advance sensing technologies powered by AI and IoT. By far, the most important prediction that Toffler left us is this: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” —Alvin Toffler Toffler ultimately wrote more about the human condition than the advancement of technology. How we use his ideas in the coming years to model our own behavioral rate of change and how we, as humans, relearn and adapt to technology’s fast pace is what will set the future of foresight. This is how Toffler, the father of foresight, passes the mantle to us. //// Jaraad Mootee is a technology trends analyst at Idea Couture.

// Sixteen years ago, Toffler predicted what some of the most innovative companies like Google are doing today. //

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By Shannon Ashley

Communicative imagery and icons, in their many forms, have been present in modern society for many years, from the brash yellow “smileys” of noughties chat messengers (remember MSN and AIM?) to the emojis that we now know and love (or hate). The emoji has flourished since the rise of the iPhone, and these small symbols have had a greater impact on our lives than many care to admit. These pictograms have evolved from a simple conversational embellishment to fully-fledged communicative tools often used to replace language – or, in some cases, to offer completely new meanings altogether (we’re looking at you, smiling poop emoji). In the developed world, pictograms can offer a new depth of communication that words simply cannot provide. These images can help express an emotion, a

history, an identity, or even a meme. This cultural transformation has filtered through from the phones of millennials to infiltrate the business sector in the form of an evolving branding movement: the icon. But the icon (in this context, a concentrated logo in picture form) is no new phenomenon. From the famous Apple logo to the “golden arches” of McDonald’s, pictogram logos have always been solidly embedded in our society – so what’s the difference now? The “App Age,” as well as the digital space and opportunities that accompany it, have led to an increasing number of companies, brands, and institutions reducing their well-established and often typographical logos into a cluster of pixels. These companies are aiming to claim the all-important real estate space of their consumers’ iPhone screens, a claim that has moved to the forefront of importance, often overtaking even the history of the brand.

photo: Brian Powell

The Icon Revolution: Simplified Branding by 2020

A brief glance at branding history prior to the digital age will reveal a plethora of iconic and artistic logos. When brands had no digital presences to manufacture, their logos needed to tell bigger stories than they do now; the logo needed to explain everything about the company behind the product. A prime example of this is the infamous Jack Daniel’s logo and its corresponding brand architecture. This logo depicts the brand’s location of origin and its founding families, and it also provides a brief insight into the history of the product development. In today’s contemporary dual world of physical and digital dimensions, a logo no longer has to tell the entire background of a brand or product, as there are now exclusive apps, interactive websites, and sponsored YouTube influencers to do that. The full digital crossover for many brands is nearing completion. With this crossover comes the unearthing of a slightly arrogant and maybe even self-diminishing trend. Companies are burning their existing brands into the ground and rebuilding themselves from the ashes as shiny, home screen friendly pictograms that can easily be downloaded from the App Store. For some, this process is painless and smooth (partly thanks to the original brand’s design) – but for others, it can be like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. The restrictions of the handheld screen are not kind to all designs; tight size limitations and online readability rules can quash a cursive typographical logo in its tracks, but they can also bar a seemingly suitable logo from success. Netflix recently released a succinct pictogram version of their retro cinema style banner – or, as their US Twitter account described it, “[a] piece of statement jewelry, if you will ;).” In this version of the banner, the “N” in Netflix is featured in the company’s on-brand red; however, it is written in a completely different visual style than anything they have released before. This new and deviating approach could be an indication of the road that logos may be headed down in the future. Should we expect brands to begin developing twin personalities? With this approach, brands could retain the formal “full face” logos we know and recognize while also developing a more mischievous side of the brand – a younger sibling sentenced to a life of swiping. It seems like a logical compromise between new and old approaches to branding, but will the average consumer accept and understand this approach? The answer is most probably yes. Coca-Cola once ran an ad campaign with a cutout hint of their typographical logo that was undeniably recognizable from a mile away. Most recently, credit card behemoth MasterCard unveiled its new pared back logo and typeface. The logo was created by Pentagram, a studio that has continued to define this new minimalist era of design. While keeping true to the company’s identity blueprint, the new design presents a simplified and almost primary approach to the MasterCard brand. The brand’s visual identity now consists of two separate entities: the Venn-style circles and the accompanying typographical logo. The company will now focus on

driving the brand’s digital presence solely with their red and yellow icon; this icon will be presented without the company name. This is a brave, effective, and confident move that will help cement consumers’ recognition of the MasterCard brand. While this approach may benefit large brands like MasterCard, it may have had a different effect for the lesser institutions of the world. Will this assuming alter ego be welcomed with the same knowing affection, or will the integrity of these brands be lost in the horizon of the digital spaces of the future? Technological advancements have shifted branding from table monitors to handheld phones, and again from phones to screens on wrists. Soon, this will shift once more to projection in the eye, and with this shift will come new, special restrictions. With this advancement in mind, how much further can this branding revolution go, and where will the line be drawn? How will the evolution of the pictogram – both in emoji and icon form – continue to impact branding by 2020, and what changes can be made to ensure small brands aren’t lost in the mix? //// Shannon Ashley is a graphic designer at Idea Couture.

// From the famous Apple logo to the “golden arches” of McDonald’s, pictogram logos have always been solidly embedded in our society – so what’s the difference now? //

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B y D r. S c o t t P o b i n e r, w i t h D r. M i t c h e l l J o a c h i m

Manufacturing innovations fundamentally change the way we produce things. Innovations, such as pulley and lever systems, assembly line production methods, and supply chain distribution networks, have each had an outsized impact in the years following their broad adoption; the most common result is significantly greater output at significantly lower cost. For generations, this has been the common ideal held by industrialists. Today, we find ourselves on the verge of another transformative period that will be led by a shift in the scale of manufacturing technology.

Dr. Mitchell Joachim, Associate Professor at NYU and Co-founder of Terreform ONE

3D-printing technology (also known as additive manufacturing) is a process that applies small amounts of a material to a surface in a repetitive manner, so that a form can be built up. The most common material is a polymer that is melted and forced through a small nozzle at exact locations and in precise quantities. The low cost and broad versatility of 3D printers affords a complete manufacturing system to a broad cross section of companies and individuals who would have previously relied on contract suppliers. Much like the mini mill of the mid 1970s highlighted by Clayton Christensen in The Innovator’s Dilemma, the quality and applicability of this technology will vastly increase in the coming years as more specific applications lead to new technical innovations. Similar to prior manufacturing revolutions, the direction of these innovations will be led by market demand – leaving a small window of time to influence the primary innovators and early adopters who will create the dominant narrative of utility for many more that follow. With this in mind, I sat down with Dr. Mitchell Joachim, Associate Professor at NYU and Co-founder of Terreform ONE, a nonprofit architecture group that promotes smart design in cities, in order to co-create an alternative vision for democratized manufacturing.

photos: Mitchell Joachim, Terreform ONE

On Makerbots and Garden Plots Manufacturing and Innovation in 2020

Dr. Scott Pobiner: For years, a growing number of companies, each pushing their own 3D-printing system, have been claiming that a manufacturing revolution is taking place. With broad adoption, this could mean the dawning of a third industrial revolution. What do you think the future of 3D printing and at-home “mini factories” will look like? Dr. Mitchell Joachim: Ironically, many of the same trends in computing and technology that will drive this revolution afford us a glimpse at our environmental future. A business today that does not pivot its first principles to tackle environmental issues like climate change will undoubtedly suffer, or worse, cause root suffering to others. As with prior industrial revolutions,

we appear to be standing at the threshold of a period of creative destruction. In short, change will have to come from the market. I think technology is going to play its most critical role to humanity’s benefit yet in the realm of manufacturing and environmental impact. Computation, for example, can now be used to support ecologically sound business cases. Rather than dumb, number crunching slaves, computers are becoming partners, solving problems that humans really can’t do alone. I’m going to take it to the next level by saying this: computers will become independent agents within the next decade – and we desperately will need them to be if we are going to address the very real existential risks that we will confront in the near future.

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The natural world functions in 1000-year time frames and humans appear to be driven by 140-character comments – that leaves humans at quite a disadvantage. It’s sad to think that we could be stuck, by our own volition, in a closed, self-serving network, leaving us cut out of the greatest benefits of the natural world. What can we do to try and rectify this for future generations? We definitely have the chance to change this trend. The equipment we use to make things – the multi-axis mill, the CNC lathe, the 3D printer – all sit at the threshold between the digital and physical world. The value proposition for these devices is skewed because most people think of them as devices to produce more artificial things. This is a woefully myopic way to look at something that can take inputs from a simulation and manipulate real, physical matter as an output. Better source material is crucial. Right now, the focus is on plastics because they’re cheap and easy to manipulate – all it takes is a little focused heat to mold plastic. But 3D printing can create “connected metabolic streams.” Instead of plastics, we can print living, actively performing, organic materials that fit in a web of life. Not plastic performing in a way because of how it was extruded, but things that are living and can use nutrients to evolve and grow after they are printed. This is a much more sustainable and cyclical approach – it’s an industrial ecology.

So what you’re saying is that even though the human body is made of many kinds of organisms – for example, our guts are composed of entire colonies of things – we still think of our corporeal selves as a singular “being.” So it’s logical to assume that the capacity for microorganisms to work together reflects a will to survive that computers can take advantage of, and that we need to recognize? Yes, but take that thinking a step farther and consider that, in terms of survival, microorganisms might be much more well equipped than our own individualistic, species-centric approach. We need to recognize that flora and fauna have been successfully working in concert together much longer than humans have; there’s good evidence that trees actually communicate with one another. Our actions as humans are actually undermining the possibility of having a better system for survival.

photo: Mitchell Joachim, Terreform ONE

We’ve all seen the movies – HAL 9000 kills the astronauts, Skynet kills us all, and Terminator kills everyone before us. But you’ve got a more practical stance. What are independent computers going to offer us that guided ones cannot? With sentience also comes the possibility of deeper relationships. The idea of a global mind is something that’s philosophical for humans, but for computers it’s not only obvious, its requisite. Interdependent computer systems can have a more organic connection to the world simply because of their scale – certainly something capable of calculating impact, if not taking active concern for it… and here’s where plants come in. I think that we need to recognize that plant sentience, as in plant neurobiology, is a nascent but really important field; scientists are realizing that plant fungal communities have totally active breathing, thinking, intelligent brain-like structures. But we don’t realize that these structures are huge – entire forests, maybe whole hemispheres of the earth – and we can’t visualize these systems because we’re looking for one singular organism. We’re so centric in our thinking that our sense of “being” is limited to the singular person. For computers, and for the rest of the natural world, it’s just not that way.

But even when computing is ubiquitous, it’s still a mechanism, it’s still a tool. Won’t we still need an operator, and won’t the technology therefore not be entirely autonomous? It’s hard to think of a tool as a living thing when it’s more convenient to use a tool in the way that we already understand it. But maintaining this limited understanding means we’re not taking advantage of all the available resources. It is incumbent on us to learn to create the tools that will afford a much broader scope of interaction with living things. How will the next generation of tools for production resolve problems introduced by the last generation? Bill McDonald once said, “waste equals food.” He was a strong proponent for not throwing stuff away, contending that often there’s a lot of good other materials you just don’t recognize. Then, 20 years later, he altered his saying to be “everything is food” – meaning that everything, everywhere is a nutrient. The act of “printing life” is therefore problematic, because you are deciding what is useful and what is not. In reality, the whole thing is useful – you just need to figure out how to use each part effectively. So maybe it’s not useful for you specifically, but it’s useful for other organisms once its purpose is complete. But how would that purpose be defined? States and phases are cyclical conditions triggered by environmental changes. The point at which a phase change occurs is where a 3D printer is best located in this context. A printer that’s using oil-based plastic is creating a proper environment for that plastic to form

a structure by heating it, moving it precisely, and then allowing it to cool. It's not simply a matter of computing power; it requires the state change and manipulation of a physical medium. A more complex organism might need multiple environmental triggers in order to maintain a state, but each can be codified and executed. The process is almost plant-like. By 2020, we can have a networked garden. That garden will tell you what should be planted, when it should be planted, how it should be planted, and sensors in the ground will be able to request new plants, saying: “we’d really like a hydrangea in here because a hydrangea will help us grow and give us the nutrients we need globally.” We don’t need a model for an individual plant or tree, we need a general context model. It’s about pulling together resources that are already present to grow a tree, not mashing up bits of plastic to make a tree. It would be the same process for a teapot, or a building. Resources are no longer limiting factors if we can avoid implementing our systems with non-renewables. Like tourists in a city, though, we’ll need a local guide to show us around. We could be on our way to a sustainable future. So in four years, let’s say, we will begin to see the instantiation of product systems that harness a new approach for consumers. Where does nature come in? We still need to let nature do its thing. We’re never going to be able to escape nature’s fundamental paradigm. The spider, for example, is a natural 3D printer. It knows that as it’s printing a web from food it has just consumed, it’s doing so in order to procure more food, to eventually die off, to decay back into the soil, to feed other things so they can grow. The spider knows that a moment of production is just a phase; the spider itself is just a phase. We’ve been existing in the current model for way too long. One indicator of this is the fact that the way we’ve taken advantage of state change is affecting things on a global level. The way we use plastics, for example, is accumulating in very visible ways. Our create and waste model is not working; we’re killing the earth. We’re starting to undermine the systems that are supposed to be useful. We have a very dysfunctional system because its components are not fundamentally recyclable. So we need to work in a system that is not endless in growth? We can even call it “unprinting.” Unprinting is good. That way, we’re not creating, we’re not printing, we’re not doing additive manufacturing – we’re just sculpting existing resources and matter. Unfortunately, there are only a few people who are doing this right now and everyone else is working toward constantly making new things and more people. Maybe we need to unprint people? You just might have a good idea there. //// Dr. Scott Pobiner is VP of design at Idea Couture. Dr. Mitchell Joachim is an associate professor at NYU and the Co-Founder of Terreform ONE.

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Shifting Priorities A Glimpse Into the Minds of the Class of 2020

What are the issues on the minds of the next generation of leaders and entrepreneurs? Kaospilot, an international creative business school, asked their applicants to list what they felt were the three most pressing challenges the world faces today. Here’s what they had to say.

Earlier this year, we gathered 72 young people from all over the world in an abandoned warehouse at the port of the Danish city of Aarhus. On this cloudy Scandinavian spring morning, they set out to join a three-day workshop prepared by our school, Kaospilot. This was the second step for the applicants, who were each vying for one of the 37 places in a program that trains leaders and entrepreneurs to have a creative outlook on the challenges, processes, team dynamics, and business plans that they will face in their careers. The first step had been a thorough written application, which included an assignment asking applicants to identify and describe three societal challenges that they felt were important. Through this, we hoped to learn more about the thinking of this new generation of future leaders. By asking them to choose a challenge and come up with examples of proactive responses, we would get insight into what occupied their minds and what they considered the most urgent topics. Cathrine Engelberth is one of the students who made it through the application process, having commenced her studies at Kaospilot this fall. Engelberth remembers spending a lot of time considering which challenges to choose for her application. “At first I thought it was really difficult,” she says. “I had to explore which challenges really matter on a large scale and not just in a privileged world such as my own.”

What she finally came up with was an issue that affects everyone who own’s a smartphone: “My idea was ignited by a bit of a wake-up call that I experienced. I was biking through Copenhagen on my way to work with headphones on and Katy Perry booming in my ears, and I didn’t hear a truck that almost hit me in the intersection.”

photo: Kaospilot

B y L o t t e R y s t ed t a n d C h r i s t e r W i n de l ø v - L i d z é l i u s

The incident made her think about how much attention people pay to their phones instead of traffic or the people around them – and how that behavior is so widely accepted. “So I did a small experiment and walked through the main shopping street looking at my phone the entire time,” she explains. “People spread before me like I was Moses parting the Red Sea. Not until 15 minutes had passed did a guy say to me, ‘look up!’ That little experiment proved my point perfectly.” Engelberth was not the only young applicant who was occupied with the question of how technology and social media affect our everyday lives, relationships, and mentalities or moods. Among the 37 new Kaospilot students, 13 had included the challenge of balancing technology and social media with the rest of their responsibilities in their applications. Other general themes were the refugee crisis and the need for a reformation of our educational systems. The topic that was discussed the most, however – by an overwhelming one third of applicants – were the challenges we face around sustainability, with the main focus being on the food industry. Kaospilot student Morten Vejrup Hansen was one of the applicants writing about food, a passionate topic for him. “I have worked as a chef for five years and have seen how we conventionally work with food,” he says. “I thought it could be interesting to break down the supply chain and look at how production impacts society.” He explains that he found the topic of food inspiring because it has an all-encompassing impact on society, affecting both individual health and global environmental issues. “Even a minor change in the way we tackle sustainability around food could trickle down and become quite important if it latches on at a global level.” Hansen has a bachelor’s degree in sociology and hopes to learn how to combine theory with more practical knowledge. “During my undergraduate studies I developed a critical awareness of different topics. Now I want to learn how to utilize it because I wish to make a bigger impact,” he says. At the admission workshop in the abandoned warehouse, the applicants were divided into groups of 12. Each group had to choose one challenge and find possible solutions for it. In Hansen’s group, they came up with an educational platform that teachers could use to show the implications of food production. “We formulated a ‘meat-o-meter’ that shows how much food,

water, or other resources have been used to produce a piece of meat. We wanted teachers to be able to teach their students how to be more conscious about consumption while also having fun,” Hansen explains. In Engelberth’s group, they chose her challenge, which they called “cell-awareness.” “We all agreed that technology gives us amazing new opportunities, but we need to debate as a society how we use technology and what it does to us in terms of things like our mental health, relationships, and infrastructure,” says Engelberth. When she tracked her phone activity through the Moment app, Engelberth discovered that she used her own phone for four hours a day. “That scared me, actually,” remembers Engelberth. “But the group turned my own apocalyptic fear into a light and humorous approach to the challenge.” The goal of the campaign and event they invented was to make people less “cell-aware” and more self-aware. During their presentation – which included live Tinder swiping – the audience laughed often and there was an undoubted sense of recognition and resonance. “I would like to explore this field further, but I am also excited to see which other challenges the rest of the new team of Kaospilot will come up with. I look forward to learning how to go from an initial thought to having the courage to work and act on the idea,” says Engelberth. The Kaospilot program is three years long, and by 2020 these young people will be at the beginning of their careers. What was very clear in this application process is that we are now seeing a generation that has a great desire to act on the challenges that they see. They won’t necessarily wait for politicians or society to come up with solutions; instead, they will be entrepreneurial themselves. //// Lotte Rystedt is a journalist and the communications officer of Kaospilot. Christer Windeløv-Lidzélius is the principal of Kaospilot.

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But Can I Have Sex with It?

Technology continues to play a part in human sexuality, and there is no shortage of products that aim to increase sexual satisfaction – but the star of the show is the internet, which has changed the way we consume sex entirely. If you know where to look, then the internet is like a well-lit path to a bounty of niche indulgences, and digital tech has come a long way since Al Gore’s “information superhighway.” Now we have data collecting vibrators that teach you how to “optimize” your orgasms, tampons with sensors, and virtual reality sex. It’s a no-brainer; the more technologically advanced we become as a society, the more technology will enhance our sex lives. People will always be titillated by the possibilities – but will this be changed by robotics?

Silicone Shaped Women In the late 90s, RealDolls gained notoriety as the most anatomically correct sex dolls. A sex doll is a life-like, human-sized figurine with a posable skeleton, covered in high-grade silicone “flesh.” Reviewers online write things like “the torso just fell down into place, almost before I was ready!” Other dolls on the market even come with a motor in their chest that not only simulates a heartbeat, but also pushes hot air through its internal structure, making its skin warm to the touch. Make no mistake, the RealDoll and its counterparts are just overpriced sex toys. The experience they provide is a simulacrum of the traditional sex act, devoid of the emotional context. While RealDolls Quinn, Natalie, Olivia, and Brooklyn might look like real women, their appeal for some people actually stems from their innate inhumanness. Their companionship is free of judgment and obligation. Sci-fi geeks and wild-eyed futurists alike can’t help but assume the inevitability of a future where humans will fall in love with advanced machines. They’ll point to Quinn and say, “What if this buxom blonde with a C-cup, permanently flush lips, and a magic bullet for a heart could have her own thoughts and feelings?” I’m ecstatic that we live in an enlightened era where people are unashamed to talk about their alternative sexual interests. Arguably, everyone benefits from ensuring their needs are met, and this probably results in satisfaction and self-fulfillment for all. But maybe it’s time to sit back and admit to ourselves that we have been a bit overzealous with our Spike Jonze-induced sex robot predictions.

For most of the last 50 years, technology has become enmeshed in human sexuality. Unprecedented access to cars gave teenagers privacy and freedom at a time when premarital canoodling was frowned upon; contraceptives gave us control over conception and helped popularize casual sex; and reproductive technologies like in vitro fertilization have challenged traditional family structures. These technological advancements have driven further social changes and revolutionized the way we experience love, sex, and intimacy.

illustration: jen backman

B y E l i n o r Ke s h e t

// For those who see the coming of sex robots as a possibility, the question is more when, rather than if. //

Engineering Companionship For those who see the coming of sex robots as a possibility, the question is more when, rather than if. The ingredients are already here. Just take one part sex doll, two parts cam girl, and a dash of artificial intimacy created by the company Invisible Girlfriend/Boyfriend, who sends love letters and texts tailored to you and your life. The hope is that an artificially intelligent version of Quinn would be more than just a sex toy – she would be a companion with a distinct personality. AI Quinn’s mood could change from one day to the next. Maybe she’ll have a pre-programmed time of the month, so that when she gets sad because the drawstring fell out of her sweatpants, you’ll know why. It all seems very life-like until you realize you can just flip a switch and reprogram her the minute she gets on your nerves. We’re already living a reality where sex robots are plausible. The technology exists, the know-how is there – we’re just making it feel a lot less like Siri is asking you for a massage through a loudspeaker under a blonde wig. The part of this whole sex-robots-future-narrative I have trouble with is where humans completely abandon love and sex with other humans in favor of these robot companions. When you look hard at the defenses for the sex robot revolution, you begin to wonder: why are we going to all the trouble of making something that can do almost everything a human can do, when there are still actual humans who can do it?

The Paradox of Artificial Intimacy Vibrators controlled by a long-distance lover, asking a cam girl to take her underwear off, and signing up for a service where struggling novelists send you cutesy text messages are not replacements for real human connection. However, at the center of these scenarios is a common fantasy that most of us share – a desire for intimacy to be borne out of will rather than programming. We want to believe that the other has a choice, even if that choice is feuled by capitalism. Of course, there will always be people who find the idea of a machine that talks and feels like a real woman exciting, but those people are likely to remain a minority. While advances in technology have created a substantial digital presence in our romantic relationships and sex lives, technology isn’t the goal of the pursuit. We’ve come full circle in our efforts to design an artificial companion. The fact that we are trying to create sex robots that are so smart that they might actually reject our sexual advances after a long day of pattern recognition is evidence of this. Tech offers up a chance at intimacy and closeness with another human being, but it doesn’t replace these things. If 2020 is when we see a fleet of sex robots that are more human than sex toy, we should also expect that they’ll be able to weep actual tears after they realize they’ve been robo-raped. We’ll see a robot Erin Brockovich or Johnnie Cochran type who bravely stands up for robot rights, and we’ll all have the same inappropriate thought when they get up on that stand: “But can I have sex with it?” //// Elinor Keshet is a senior innovation analyst at Idea Couture.

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B y At u l Pat i d a r a n d O m i d R o s ta m i a n fa r

Behind every successful workplace is a group of hardworking employees and a team of managers willing to adapt to and invest in innovative technology and solutions. And things sure are changing quickly. In the early 2000s, all office work was done manually; even meeting invitations were posted on noticeboards. Desktop phones were everywhere, and smartphones were hardly used for emails, let alone for instant messaging within the workplace. Even for major businesses, social media was rarely considered, while communication among employees was incredibly structured and rigid. But with continuous advancements in technology, what might the average workplace look like a few years from now?

To understand how the workplace will look in 2020, we must first understand how it has already advanced in recent years. To keep up with the rapid technological growth of today, organizations have been changing how they function. Tasks that were once complex and difficult are now simple and easy. Even processes which previously required multiple steps and manual entries can now be completed with ease by the average worker. Scheduling meetings takes no more than a few seconds, and employees don’t even have to be physically present to attend these meetings thanks to instant online methods of communication. Meanwhile, organizations are doing away with hierarchy to take on flat structures of interaction. These new structures are enabling more dynamic interactions across various disciplines, as organizations are utilizing technology toolkits to facilitate global

photo: maxuser

Beyond Nap Pods and Standing Desks: The Workplaces of 2020

collaboration. Content and information is produced and shared at a higher rate than ever before, which allows ideas to be cultivated and developed more quickly and efficiently. With all this change in mind, how will technology continue to shape the workplace in the coming years? The most interesting effect technological growth may have on the future workplace could be the elimination of the physical workplace in favor of virtual spaces. In these online spaces, employees could conduct activities like meetings, discussions, and presentations; even having a cup of coffee with a colleague could be an activity that occurs in a virtual environment. The next generation of new technologies, including developments like data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning, will be capable of performing not only repetitive tasks, but also tasks that were once solely dependent on human intelligence. Both workplaces and employees will need to adapt accordingly, and this will include the implementation of innovative and dynamic workplace strategies. When it comes to mastering a task, practice used to make perfect – but this will not necessarily be the case in 2020. By this time, AI will be able to monitor employees as they complete a task; the AI will then learn how to complete the task from this observation. This will remove the need for people to continue performing repetitive tasks, like customer service or basic software development, maintenance, and monitoring. Additionally, digital assistance machines will be intelligent enough to come up with ideal solutions for ordinary problems. Rather than just transferring their knowledge to machines, humans will need to improve their own creativity in order to make AI self-sustainable and enable machines to learn and function with minimal human supervision. The two major creative abilities that employees should focus on improving are agile learning and hybrid skills. The first skill – agile learning – refers to employees always being ready to continuously learn new information, forget the things they know that are no longer relevant, and then learn more about emerging technology tools and skillsets. This includes a person’s ability to implement advanced algorithms developed by machines during his or her own thinking process. Though machines may be taking over many major tasks within the workplace, people can still be superior to machines if they refine their uniquely human expertise in critical thinking, sense making, social intelligence, and transdisciplinary skills. The second important creative ability – hybrid skills – refers to an amalgamation of the human brain and machine intelligence. Both humans and machines will require continuity in their tasks, and it will also be important for everyone, humans and machines alike, to be able to work together seamlessly. There are several benefits of humans and machines working together, including the fact that people can make use of the infinite memory and giant processing power of computers while contributing their own human critical thinking and decision-making skills. Rapid changes in technology certainly affect the workforce, but these changes also impact workplaces, which face arguably more challenges as a result of innovation. The three most important factors companies must cope with in the face of technological change are innovation, reorganization, and change enthusiasm. Innovation, in this context, refers to the continuous implementation of disruptive technological advancements to business activities; it applies most strongly to the development of employees’ capabilities and the integration of external innovations to generate fresh ideas within the organization. Reorganization is an iterative process used to focus on collaborative efforts for expanding intraorganizational cooperations; it enables

smaller and more focused groups to come together to work as larger teams for specific projects. Change enthusiasm refers to employees’ willingness to integrate such innovation and reorganization changes into their workplace cultures, policies, and roadmaps. Workplaces that are agile in all aspects of management and development can surf the change waves and can therefore survive more easily than larger and older organizations. As companies shift toward the use of expertise centered on the human brain in combination with AI advancements, the need for a physical meeting place for work will be eliminated. This enables wider collaboration among a larger group of people. For example, “digital pods” equipped with telepresence capsules and located near transportation hubs could facilitate global virtual collaboration between employees. One major challenge companies may face without a physical workplace is keeping employees connected and engaged with one another. To encourage socialization between employees, planners will need to link conscious workplace strategies with social technologies and work policies. These companies will also need to create virtual environments that are able to maintain the necessary emotional connection between employees; examples of such environments could include a virtual reality bar or a virtual patio for workers to spend time together. This development will facilitate the growth of industries currently focused on virtual reality and connected workplace platforms, as virtual office architects and designers will continue to collaborate with software engineers to provide different platform options. So, what does the future workplace of 2020 look like? It may very well be a scene of digital pods within transportation hubs that aim to provide employees with more convenient means of digital collaboration. The most important thing most workplaces will need to do to stay in business in 2020 and beyond will be to inherit and adapt technological, cultural, and organizational advancements, allowing employees to continuously reinvent themselves while developing hybrid skills. Think this feels far off? Well, if history is anything to go by, 2020 will be here sooner than we think. //// Atul Patidar is an electrical designer at Idea Couture. Omid Rostamianfar is hardware lead at Idea Couture.

// The three most important factors companies must cope with in the face of technological change are: innovation, reorganization, and change enthusiasm. //

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Preparing for the Unknown: Anticipating the Future Economy

B y D r. A n d y H i n e s

The Houston Foresight program has been tracking the emergence of new ideas, concepts, and explanations for the next economy since our 2012 annual gathering, which explored “After Capitalism.” We anticipated sorting through a few concepts and then focusing on how they might be implemented, but we quickly learned that there were far more than “a few” – and we’re not yet close to implementation. But this cornucopia of interesting and often radical concepts does portend significant change ahead, so the advice for 2020 – in keeping with the spirit of this issue – is to take the time to prepare now. Develop, build, or enhance your scanning capability now to track these (and other) emerging changes, as change is indeed brewing on the economic front.

I’ve been informally collecting next economy concepts, as opposed to searching them out or screening them rigorously. Admittedly, my current count of 35 concepts is a bit of a grab bag (subject to debate); nonetheless, I’ll sort them into four categories to be more helpful. / Umbrella concepts are the broadest type in that they attempt to characterize a new economic system or era at the highest level. They seek to explain the new economic order. / Sources of new value are narrower in that they explain an important new economic development, but don’t necessarily address the entire system – it’s a key piece of the puzzle, rather than the whole puzzle. / Sustainability and moral imperatives are a hybrid of the first two, in that they address the motivation of a new economic order in terms of environmental or moral stewardship as both the source of new value and the overall economic order. The sheer number warranted a separate category. / Drivers, enablers, and mechanisms describe key features of the new economic order without characterizing the overall system.

Next Economy Concepts Umbrella

Sources

Sustainability

Drivers

Collaborative Knowledge Post-Capitalist Post-Industrial Second Sharing

Artisan Attention Betterness Experience Leisure Metaspace Relationship

Circular Conscious Ecological Green Local Post-Growth Purpose Regenerative Resilient Soft Path Steady State Sustainable Wisdom

Automation Blockchain Co-Creation Frugal (Peer-to-Peer) Gift Gig Open Source Slack Zero Marginal Cost

The lines between the categories are admittedly blurry – I confess to shifting some more than once. Don’t get caught up too heavily in where a particular concept fits, but rather focus on the implications of the overall list and the four categories. It is worth noting that these concepts raise the question of whether or not it’s really just a new economy that we’re talking about. I would argue that they are really suggesting a new paradigm in the sense that they cover not just economic questions, but social, political, and environmental ones as well. For instance, while I did not specifically call out the idea of a guaranteed basic income, it is a key component of several of these concepts. It clearly raises social and political questions – in fact, Switzerland recently had a national referendum on a guaranteed basic income and rejected it. And the fact that the single largest category of concepts was around sustainability and moral imperatives suggests that a fundamental rethinking of our approach to environmental stewardship is under consideration. Some of these concepts have been with us for quite some time. For instance, the dot-com boom of the 1990s spurred several new economy ideas, such as the attention, gift, open source, and relationship economies. Otto Scharmer’s eco-economy was preceded by Lester R. Brown in a 1991 book with the same name. I wrestled with whether the post-industrial or knowledge economy even fit as new economy concepts – Peter Drucker spoke about the knowledge economy way back in 1959 – and the notion of a leisure economy has long been proposed by futurists, among others. A cautionary note is to be aware of those who may propose a new economy concept as a means of driving their speaking or consulting business. It is difficult to infer intent, so we won’t name names here, but rather suggest performing due diligence in analyzing these concepts and any new ones that might emerge in the next few years.

So what? Futurists routinely scan for weak signals of change. We get really interested when these weak signals start to coalesce around larger themes, which we typically refer to as emerging issues. One might say that the 35 individual concepts in isolation are equivalent to weak signals, although one could argue that some, if not most, are already reasonably strong. What’s suggested with this piece is that our four categories are akin to themes or emerging issues. The 13 concepts around sustainability and moral imperatives are telling us that sustainability is demanding attention, so to speak, in our economic future. Sustainability is hardly news, but the fact that concepts are emerging with it as the center of a new economic order is a development worth attention. It suggests that sustainability is not just a nice or responsible thing to do, but will be increasingly central to one’s business model. Is your business engaging any of the proposed new sources of value? Blockchain, peer-to-peer, and open source may seem fringy or not applicable to us, but they may be key drivers of the next economic order. What would that mean to the current way you operate? As these new concepts ferment and develop, there is time to expand your scanning and monitoring capacity to track them, and to begin developing strategies, contingencies, options, experiments, and pilots to prepare for the new economic order – whatever it turns out to be. //// Dr. Andy Hines is program coordinator and assistant professor at the University of Houston’s graduate program in Foresight.

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Speculating on Speculation: Science Fiction in 2020 B y S h a n e S a u n de r s o n

But what does this mean for those whose minds live on the bleeding edge – the creative thinkers and artists? Fifty years ago, while the rest of us were marveling at microwave dinners, these innovators were imagining interstellar travel. Today, while we’re busy devouring online cat videos, they are envisioning alternate universes. What then of tomorrow’s dreamers? When technologies like autonomous vehicles, smarthomes, bodily-embedded sensors, and artificial concierges become commonplace, what will the world of speculation and science fiction look like? Digging deep, I’ve tried to situate myself in this future scenario with today’s breakthroughs as commonplace and ask myself, with these surroundings as my daily inspiration, what would I dream of next? The following are a synopses of hypothetical science fiction novels that could potentially be seen on the shelves in 2020 – or, perhaps more accurately, within the apps of retailers.

illustration: Jen backman

If literature has taught us anything over the past few decades, it’s that science fiction doesn’t simply predict technological advancement – it determines it. That being said, the sad reality is that if we look at the technological and even societal landscape of 2020, we’ll see that it probably looks a lot like today. Today’s bleeding edge technologies, like wearables, IoT, and AI, will likely be more mainstream. Today, we have self-driving cars in research labs; tomorrow, we’ll have them on our roads. Today, only some of us have a handful of smart gadgets connecting our homes; tomorrow, many of these gadgets will be part of the backbones of our buildings. Today, we laugh at awkward chat bots being led astray; tomorrow, we’ll carry on long conversations with these same bots.

illustration: Jen backman

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Almost 3,000 litres of wAter is used to mAke A single

illustration: Jen backman

cotton t-shirt

www.kaospilot.dk

“I don’t feel comfortable wearing the slow destruction of our ecosystem. That is why I have created my own brand that aspires to slow down fashion and not mass produce clothing. My t-shirts are made of hemp that requires less water and doesn’t need pesticides.” - Otto Kubista, kaospilot

Nurture your response-ability

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How does your artwork navigate the divide between science and art? My artwork lives at the intersection of science, art, and technology. Connecting these communities has given me so much joy and enabled me to challenge how so many people looking at disease from various perspectives see themselves, their work, and their community. I am inspired by the brain’s ability to change and adapt; I aim to expand the conventional definition of portraiture by challenging viewers to

question what it means to be flawed, what it means to be human. This quest to understand the brain was inspired by my diagnosis with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 1991. Undergoing numerous brain scans to track the progression of my disease, I initiated a deep fascination with the architecture of the brain and began focusing my art practice on reinterpreting these frightening yet mesmerizing images. My images serve as a starting point to describe the everchanging experience of living with a progressive disease.

Tell us about your experience with patienthood. How has art helped you throughout your journey? I have progressive MS and I am currently a quadriplegic. I have found that the experience of being a patient can diminish one’s sense of self. My goal with this artwork is to help reverse this marginalization that is both self-imposed and reinforced by society at large. This year, I am exploring how technology and design principles ignite conversations among patients, healthcare professionals, scientists, and caregivers.

photo: Elizabeth Jameson

by mira blumenthal

photo: Elizabeth Jameson

Create/ Elizabeth Jameson

As someone with a degenerative disease who has spent countless hours in waiting rooms, I am familiar with the feeling of being alone in a room full of people. There is such untapped potential for building community in those long, drawn out moments. In my past career in healthcare law, I also worked with medical researchers and health providers; I have come to understand and appreciate their perspectives. My current vision combines patient-centered design, evocative artwork, and powerful narratives. Art has the unique power to restore compassion and bridge connections between

people who do not have opportunities to engage with one another. Tell us more about your goal of creating a “visual language of illness.” How can visual arts impact how healthcare is practiced in the future? Art installations in healthcare settings, teaching universities, and research centers can connect people, and, at the same time, improve the overall quality of life for people living with disease. Integrating the visual arts into healthcare settings contributes to a greater understanding of our shared

sense of humanity, and the inevitability of disease within all of us. My visual vocabulary has been generated by my own experiences with progressive MS. Through the utilization of imagery, the “visual language of illness” can only grow more expansive and nuanced, allowing medical professionals to gain a better understanding of the people they care for while also providing a space for patients to find compassion for themselves. //// To learn more about Elizabeth Jameson, visit jamesonfineart.com Mira Blumenthal is an editor at Idea Couture.

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Create/ Pinar Yoldas

Why is it important to you to think about and imagine the future through art? It feels very natural to me to imagine possible futurities through my work. I love the following Alan Kay quote: “If you want to predict the future, you have to invent it.” I invent futurities, and to narrate them I take the position of a storyteller using a diverse spectrum of media. We need creativity and imagination more today than we have at other time in our known history. This might sound like a bold claim, but the issues we are confronted with are very complicated and require networked creativity. Moreover, we are dealing with highly complex phenomena that possess a certain kind of invisibility, such as climate change. Art is the perfect channel to render things visible. At the age of the anthropocene, imagining the future is not about fantasy fiction, such as what will we be wearing on Mars, or how will our relationships change when we all live up to 200 years. It’s more about extrapolating from the facts in hand, a kind of critical exaggeration. The main challenge for a concerned artist is, how can one effectively inform and trigger behavioral change without being didactic or dark? In short, if we keep doing what we have been doing, there will be no future left to imagine. How can art help convey the multifaceted complexities of our present and potential futures we are headed to? How can art help shape an ecologically harmonious future, a future driven by curiosity, creativity, innovation, and freedom? How has/does scientific research inform your artistic practice? Science has always been a crucial part of my mental life. My mother is a physicist, and I attended a science college for gifted kids where I focused on chemistry. I have always been very interested in biological sciences as well, reading as much as I could on ecology, molecular biology,

neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and marine biology. Today, most of these fields converge as much as they diverge, and I try to maintain a basic knowledge base of the fields I am interested in. To accomplish that, I have acquired degrees, certificates, have taken coursework as much as I could, and have stayed in touch with scientist friends. Today, I have reached a point where I get invited to scientific conferences and find opportunities to collaborate with groundbreaking scientists.

At times, a designer or an architect has to push herself out of her disciplinary comfort zone to understand the language of science. It will always pay off. Science can feed artistic creativity both literally and metaphorically. I refer to scientific papers or scientists in my work, but I also find inspiration in scientific imagery. Science also influences the ontological dimension of the work, giving me a theoretical directionality.

Can you briefly explain what the term “speculative biology” means to you and what inspired your interest in it? What role can it play as a critical art form? Speculative biology is a multidisciplinary, multimodal, multilayered, often multinational knowledge production system that lies at the intersection of speculative design, synthetic biology, and cultural criticism. Speculative biology involves the design of tissues, organs, organisms, biological systems, ecotypes, and ecosystems in order to catalyze creative critical thinking. Most importantly, speculative biology is an artistic research practice that aims to extend beyond the relatively narrow scope of the contemporary art world. Speculative biology simulates futurities. My work Fool’s Fowl, for instance, is a purely speculative biological being. It’s a bioengineered chicken-based organism, which will sit in your kitchen next to the toaster or kettle and deliver fresh eggs every 28 hours. A vastly diminished animal, Fool’s Fowl is practical and customizable; Fool’s Fowl is ethical and simple; Fool’s Fowl is a synthetic biological manifestation of form follows function; Fool’s Fowl is biological minimalism; Fool’s Fowl is an ovarian tribute to modernism. By proposing Fool’s Fowl, not only can we develop a critical eye to turn our gaze to industrial chicken farming, but we are also forced to think about alternatives to the norm. That’s how speculative biology works.

photos: Pinar Yoldas

By Laura Dempsey

How will we shape the natural world in the future? Do you think it’s possible to reverse the damage we’ve caused? We have already shaped the natural world, and in the future we will be dealing with this very form we have given. Reversing the damage? I am optimistic. Yet, I believe it will require the conscious effort of multiple generations and solid steps in progressive policymaking. Here’s a 20-second exercise to rethink the future: Imagine that all anthropogenic action stopped right now, for the next ten years. All transportation, construction,

industry, farming, fishing, energy consumption, all things human, just stopped. You are very much alive, but you have zero impact on the world; you can’t use your iPhone, you can’t use your laptop, you can’t drive, you can’t buy food from a grocery store. Will the earth’s ecosystems recover in a decade? Will we get the big fish, 90% of which are gone, back? Will we get the rainforests we cut down back? Will we see the blue sky over China again? Will we get plastic-free oceans? Will depleted soil replenish and find balance? Will climate change stop or change? Now, the answers to each question will be different – air pollution is more likely to be cleaned faster than microplastics in the ocean; climate change might not change; soil might recover, but forests might take longer to grow again, etc. The next part of the exercise is this: What would you do to get your iPhone, laptop,

and car back while preserving zero impact? I believe the answers we will provide to this question will determine our common future, and I’m excited about those answers. Whose work do you admire most? If I were to host a dinner party with all the people I most admire, it would consist of Rachel Carson arguing with Ray Kurzweil; William Gibson, Ursula Le Guin, and Elizabeth Grosz talking about post-internet gender; Zaha Hadid, Tadao Ando, and Lebbeus Woods practicing French with Paul Virilio; and Darwin and Freeman Dyson talking to Jacob von Uexkull, all while Robert Sapolsky and Frans de Waal help David Cronenberg and Alexander Sokurov film the whole event. //// To learn more about Pinar Yoldas, please visit pinaryoldas.info Laura Dempsey is a foresight analyst at Idea Couture.

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We are excited to announce the acquisition of Idea Couture by Cognizant. This combines our world-class insight, foresight, design, and prototyping capabilities with Cognizant’s leading technology expertise at scale. As future-oriented organizations, we have a shared purpose of helping some of the most well known brands in the world – in industries such as banking and insurance, consumer technology, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, and retail – to rethink and reinvent the future. cognizant.com ideacouture.com