Month: September 2014

On September 25, the ITU Telecom World Young Innovators Competition launched a challenge in partnership with the IEEE IoT Initiative, looking to work with our community to co-create ideas for new startups using the Internet of Things for social good.

Once the internet used to be all about connecting people to other people. Now the advent of the Internet of Things, or IoT, has moved the focus from human communication to connecting machines and devices, enabling billions of physical objects around the world to interact digitally – creating an enormous new market and radically transforming industry sectors from healthcare to transportation, energy to agriculture.

The IoT brings together sensing, communications and information infrastructures on an unprecedented scale. Connected devices generate data; that data is rendered actionable through big data analytics; the results of that analysis are used to change processes and, as a consequence, improve peoples’ lives.

According to speakers at the Internet of Everything panel session at ITU Telecom World 2013, the total market value of IoT is estimated at over USD 14 trillion, representing between 15 and 25 billion connected devices by 2015. With this prize in mind, most IoT developments to date have been commercially-driven. The heavy demands on infrastructure, costly technology and need for strong, widespread connectivity have also largely limited IoT systems to the developed world.

But IoT has tremendous potential to be harnessed for social change in developing economies in particular, such as amplifying the effect of limited resources in healthcare, revitalizing agriculture to reduce risks from natural disaster and famine, or enabling smart grids to improve the efficiency of electricity production and consumption. IoT solutions and systems are a hugely exciting prospect for driving social good in developed and developing markets alike, vastly improving the lives of people all over the world.

Which is why we’ve launched our latest ITU Telecom World Young Innovators Challenge on exactly this theme: using the Internet of Things for social good.

We’re looking for the best ideas for new businesses or innovations that can take advantage of the IoT’s potential for the greater good. This could involve methods for spreading or expanding access to existing technology such as near field communication, sensors, RFID or QR codes in emerging or developing countries. It might focus on the application of IoT technology to issues and fields of particular interest to emerging or developing economies, such as agriculture, water management, transportation, or predicting the outbreak of disease. And we’re particularly keen to welcome ideas on an “Intranet of Things” – local networks of IoT devices functioning on a smaller scale to serve a concrete social purpose.

We’re particularly delighted to be working on this challenge with the IEEE IoT Initiative, which aims at driving the evolution and deployment of successful IoT solutions in academic and industrial environments. In addition to a vital role in the expert facilitation online, development of ideas and selection of the winners, IEEE IoT Initiative chairman Roberto Minerva will be speaking at panel session on the Internet of Things at ITU Telecom World 2014.

This is a co-creation challenge, meaning we’re asking you to submit ideas, discuss, exchange ideas and contribute in a collaborative process through our crowdsourcing platform at ideas.itu.int. The ideas with the greatest potential will be developed into concepts under the guidance of expert facilitators, before being whittled down to two winning finalists. Those winners will join ITU Telecom World 2014 in Doha this December, where they’ll pitch their ideas before industry and government leaders, benefit from workshops and ongoing mentoring, and win up to USD 5000 in seed funding.

We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

The exponential growth in technology we are currently experiencing heralds a radical restructuring of our societies, businesses and economies. One area where governments and citizens alike can expect technology to make an enormous impact is taxation.

As new technologies emerge and converge, new ways of accessing or applying those technologies are also appearing. From open source technology to the Creative Commons and shared economy apps, the shift is towards making more data more available to more people. It’s a bottom-up, technology-driven empowerment of the people that has already hugely changed creative industries, and is moving to embrace professional services and manufacturing too.

Once writing, sharing and printing your opinion was in the hands of a distant, qualified, expert elite; now everyone can blog, post comments, create webpages or news sites, share pictures, print out documents or leaflets in high quality at home. The advances in technology that made this possible are continuing apace, enabling citizens to do more and more themselves.

A huge range of home-grown services and products will include DIY energy through solar power, DIY healthcare through in-body sensors, DIY education through on-line courses, DIY insurance, even DIY real estate through 3D printing. As technologies ramp up and to scale, prices will fall within reach of more than just new adopters – already, a 2 000m2 3D-printed concrete build costs no more than 50 000 USD.

As individuals increasingly do so much more for and by themselves, roles in society as it stands will come into question as the responsibilities and duties of citizens, governments and businesses towards each other are reshaped. A data-based, more democratized society where more people create and produce rather than merely consume will lead to civic engagement and organization at the local level, empowering local communities. Shared economy apps will enable a similar or greater sense of well-being and purchasing power, but at a reduced cost within the traditional economic framework. This will have a knock-on effect of lowering prices in general, reducing the number of government employees – and resetting expectations in terms of the tax burden.

Any renegotiation of the taxation status quo will shake governments, creating serious debate or even protest, with power is at stake and the whole top-down dynamic under threat. Citizens will demand changes in how much tax is paid and how it should be spent to reflect better the new ordering of responsibilities and roles. The public use of algorithms, big data in the hands of the people, will force governments to be increasingly accountable for optimized spending, for transparency and justifiable levels of taxation.

Open data initiatives, cameras, sensors and drones will enable citizens and consumers to scrutinize the behavior of corporates and governments alike, establishing a fairer balance of power than the current asymmetric set up. So government must prepare for a transition to a smaller, more efficient role with a different scope, facilitating and enabling citizens rather than driving and organizing structures and solutions as at present.

In emerging markets, this can be of enormous benefit to governments able to skip over whole chunks of the evolutionary trajectory of developed markets towards swifter innovation, unencumbered by the deadweight of historic, increasingly redundant legislation, technologies or incumbents.

If governments must change to be more responsive to exponential change, in particular given radical shifts in civic engagement and the taxation base, then so must private sector organizations. New models for the new era involve dramatic decentralization of employees, crowdsourcing, flexibility and scalability of assets, data algorithms and collaborative, bottom-up approaches.

The big challenge lies in making organizations, whether corporate or public sector, exponential. That means responsive, flexible, transparent, decentralized, experimental and collaborative. It calls for engagement and involvement with and by citizens. It calls for a radical repositioning of the main stakeholders in society, government, business and individuals, with major economic implications including an overhaul of tax structures. The importance of going exponential will be my main message at the ITU Telecom World 2014Leadership Summit on the Future this December in Doha.

The world has changed, and so should our business theories, strategies and underlying assumptions. Easy to say, perhaps, not so easy to execute. But the basic premise, that stability is the norm and upheaval intense but brief and infrequent, no longer holds true. The periods of stability between punctuations have become dramatically shorter as technology develops, and we’re experiencing a permanent flux of change that calls for adaptability, flexibility, swift and agile responses.

Major geopolitical shifts opening up new markets and breaking North America’s hegemony in many industries, the rise of globalization enabling competition from pretty much anywhere, anytime, the freedom and flexibility of digitization: these are all factors behind the end of sustainable competitive advantage. Meaning it’s not enough anymore to be the best in your field and hold onto your market share. In the ICT sector, in particular, digitization and globalization mean not having to own your capex-heavy assets as a prerequisite to entering the market. Programmers can be based anywhere in the world, web capacity can be bought made-to-measure, servers leased as necessary.

Competition is opened up, no longer delineated by a single industry, but encompassing entire arenas of activity, breaking down traditional boundaries between sectors and blowing up silo walls.

Robert Goizueta of Coca Cola famously exemplified arena thinking with his aim for his particular brand of soft drink to increase its percentage of the average daily human intake of 64 fluid ounces. He was openly pitting his company’s soda against not just other soft drinks, but tea, coffee, juice, even water – the whole beverage arena, much more than one industry.

This blurring of boundaries has always been apparent in the ICT sector – its very name combines both information and communication technologies – but is increasing on a massive scale as technology advances and long-standing business models are threatened. Witness the rise of OTTs as ferocious competitors from the internet world; the convergence of broadcasting and broadband; how cars are becoming mere nodes on an information system; or how big data analytics are growing so effective that human insurance underwriters may soon be out of work in many instances.

And the advent of the Internet of Things is speeding up the process still further. Are washing machines technically-enhanced machines to wash clothes or complex computers with a clothes-washing function? Are smart grids the domain of ICTs, energy companies, consultants or systems integrators? Add in robotics and the merging of the digital and physical worlds, and we are truly in a new competitive era dominated by uncertainty.

Preparing for this uncertain future means moving away from older models, creating resilience to change and openness to new information. Mixing up the structure of a business may mean adopting a portfolio approach based on differing degrees of uncertainty in markets and technologies. Lower risk core business should be supplemented with fairly sure candidates for next generation core products and services. Investing wisely in higher-risk innovation for longer-term growth means getting smart at managing options, being willing to fail where necessary and kill a project, taking it as an experiment from which to learn, not an admission of defeat. Getting in early may mean investing in several competing new technologies before a clear winner is declared, automatically condemning several other options in order to reap the sizeable benefits of not waiting for the proven – therefore expensive – success of one.

This kind of agility and ability to reconfigure quickly is at the heart of the virtualization of network components and software defined networks that are beginning to radically alter the shape of the ICT industry. It calls for maximum flexibility and responsiveness across the whole system, at the expense of optimization of one task or element within that system.

It’s also a business mindset that government and industry leaders alike need to take on board to face the new fluid realities of change as the new norm – and it’s the basis of the new playbook for strategy I’ll be proposing at the Leadership Summit on The Future at ITU Telecom World 2014 in Doha this December.

Technology has an enormous role to play in solving the grand challenges of today, from geopolitical tensions and religious fanaticism to poverty, climate change and the endangerment of privacy and security.

Many threads of radical new technological developments and scientific disciplines are converging, or running in parallel, with an utterly unprecedented potential impact, including biotechnology, nanotechnology, neurotechnology, artificial intelligence, drones, sensors, 3D printing, and advanced solar energy. Over the next five to ten years, these and other technologies will become increasingly mainstream as they ramp up capability, cost, scale and competitive reach.

In healthcare, for example, bio tech sensors working with portable nano chips and cloud networks will allow the diagnosis of widespread diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis or malaria within the hour, more efficiently, easily and accurately. Advances in bio technology mean the cost of DNA sequencing has dropped at an astonishing rate from around a billion US dollars 13 years ago to less than 1 000 dollars today, when your personal profile can be produced within 90 minutes. Affordability and accessibility at this level will drive a range of services based on DNA profiling, from restaurant menus tailored to your individual tolerance of carbohydrates to personalized viral loads of medicines or individual cancer treatments increasing effectiveness and reducing side effects.

In artificial intelligence, developments in machine learning and deep learning are producing extremely powerful super computers able to recognize patterns and use algorithms to solve complex issues and problems without any human intervention. Within the next five years, robots will be equipped with perfect computer vision, object recognition, speech and language capabilities enabling them to utterly transform a multitude of vertical markets as costs are driven down, services and advertising highly personalized, security and disaster management improved.

The developments with the biggest immediate impact include sensors creating the Internet of Things, big data and deep learning algorithms, bitcoin currencies, drones and robotics, including robo-cars. Longer term, the commoditization of graphene will radically impact sectors from auto construction to consumer electronics, transportation and household appliances. A super material 200 times stronger and six times lighter than steel, graphene is highly conductive, energy efficient, sustainable, malleable and flexible – with the power to transform our physical reality to a large degree.

These are just a handful of examples of the tsunami of change coming our way. At the heart of all of this technology, as regulator, supporter, investor, user and beneficiary, sits government. Government, like finance, retail, media, energy or IT, is an information-enabled business, directly influenced by developments in artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning apps in particular. It is the reach of government into every area of our lives and societies that makes this so significant. Applications in tax collection, detection of fraud, policing, and predicting crime; avoiding or better preparing for calamities, pandemics, energy shortages or natural disasters; connecting different modalities and systems from education to health, security and transport – in all of these areas, algorithms allow governments to be more responsive, flexible and preventative.

All this technology can, of course, be used for good or for ill, to tackle our global grand challenges or to drive terrorism, criminality, hacking and disruption of cities or whole nations. Governments and businesses need to be aware of the dangers of using technology for surveillance – and of the backlash from citizens and consumers empowered to use drones, sensors and cameras to open up corporate and government powers to a more equal degree of scrutiny.

The enormous market for personalized products and services based on DNA profiling must be regulated responsibly to avoid discrimination or abuse by employers, governments or health insurance companies. And we need to talk in detail at international level, and very soon, to establish consensus on corporate governance and cross-government issues of cyber security and bio technology, just we did with the Montreal protocols on ozone levels thirty years ago.

We need to be prepared for a revolution at the level of government, business and society, altering established social and economic structures beyond recognition. That’s why I am taking part in the Leadership Summit on The Future at ITU Telecom World 2014. Because we need to be aware of the extent of these exponential changes in order to prepare for our future.

The challenges of embracing the digital era are bringing us into a perfect storm of change. Old systems designed for a pre-Internet world are reaching their limit, overwhelmed by massive economic, financial and political uncertainty, increasing complexity, major environmental pressures, and dramatic, disruptive developments across multiple fields of science and technology. As a result, business cycles are accelerating and shortening, governments are under growing pressure to respond and adapt, and individuals are facing disruption in every aspect of their lives, from job security and financial uncertainty to the reshaping of education and healthcare.

As an example of this drama at a personal level, we are already experiencing massive advances in human brain and body capabilities through implants, drugs and genetic enhancements that will extend life expectancy and create a different race of people, effectively half-computer, half-human. Within our own lifetimes, average life spans could well stretch to 100 or 120 years and life quality may be improved by a range of genetic treatments including, for example, eliminating rage or obesity. At the same time, life and employment prospects could be increased by chemicals that enhance our concentration and implants that expand our memory and cognitive capabilities.

Against this backdrop of radical change, literally every industry is being transformed by new technologies and business models. Embedded sensors are enveloping us and will form part of every conceivable object – generating an avalanche of data and creating the Internet of all Things. Manufacturing and commerce will be reshaped by robotics, synthetic biology 3D and 4D printing, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, and entirely new payment and charging systems.

Take synthetic biology, producing new materials, compounds, and potentially even new life forms through the creation and manipulation of matter at the level of genes and their constituent proteins. Bio-engineering could create new biological entities that could consume waste, turning it into useful new by-products; or absorb our currently dangerous atmospheric emissions in a form of environmental clean-up; or create new energy sources, replacement body parts or new plants and foods. Everything and anything may be possible. The opportunities opened up by synthetic biology, and indeed all new technologies, are breathtaking – as indeed are the potential risks and downsides for different sections of society.

Simply put, we don’t know what the mid- to long-term consequences of many of these new developments might be. Some suggest we are entering a period of abundance that could solve all our challenges through the exponential development rates and convergence of activity in the fields of nanotechnology, biology, information technology and the cognitive science. Others argue that we are creating unprecedented sources of existential risk. The social and ethical implications are immense and require enormous commitment and consideration from the scientific community, based around the principle that just because we can do something in science doesn’t mean we should. For governments, businesses and individuals, the challenge is to prepare ourselves for a society, and a world of work, that is going to be radically different from anything we have previously seen.

It’s evident, for example, that we probably can’t rely on big business for employment in the way we used to. Technology has already eliminated huge swathes of manufacturing and service jobs, and is now beginning to use robotics and advanced software to replace humans even in professional areas such as legal services, accounting and journalism. Current qualifications and job skills will be increasingly inadequate or irrelevant, and with the active workforce potentially including people of up to 100 years of age, we need to start preparing now for a radically different near-future.

We might not know today what jobs will be done or skills needed in 10-50 years from now, but we – governments, business and society – can start equipping ourselves with the basics. Learning how to learn, problem-solving, accelerated learning, pattern recognition, understanding complexity, design learning and scenario thinking are the types of underlying skills that will enable us to keep adding relevant skills, acquiring new knowledge, and preparing for a new era of multiple jobs and careers within an extended working life.

Encouraging entrepreneurship and providing training in setting up and running businesses will be vital to tomorrow’s economy. A vibrant small to medium enterprise (SME) sector will drive innovation, create jobs and keep society moving through the buying and selling of goods and services. It is a big challenge for governments to ensure greater numbers and more diverse groups of people are comfortable taking the risk of starting their own business, and creating new products, services and employment. This calls for investment in training at every level of entrepreneurship and for effective support mechanisms in areas such as marketing, human resources and financial skills. This also calls for ongoing long-term thinking on adult education focused on encouraging and facilitating genuinely life-long learning. Governments must act in a spirit of enlightened self-interest by investing now in education solutions for the future workplace – or face the potentially disastrous social, economic and personal consequences of long-term, large-scale unemployment.

This will form the core of my message to governments, regulators and industry leaders at ITU Telecom World 2014’s Leadership Summit on the Future – prepare for our future by investing in education now.

24 innovative minds are headed to Linz, Austria for the Future Innovators Summit, a project of Ars Electronica, ITU Telecom World, and Hakuhodo held between 4-8 September. This group represents a multidisciplinary melting pot of creative engineers, social entrepreneurs and social activists, scientists, artists, designers and tech innovators, including six former winners of the Young Innovators Competition. They will be working towards solving problems facing the world today, submitted on-site by the audience and selected by serendipity, and will be asked to find solutions in the form of concepts and maybe even new partnerships in a collaborative co-creation process.

In 2013, in the Lab at ITU Telecom World 2013 in Bangkok, a bag of stones was lifted high in the air. Its fall to the ground was controlled by Gravity Light. This system uses gravity, friction and a gear system to generate enough electricity to provide up to 30 minutes of light at a time, anywhere in the world. Though it started as an art installation, Gravity Light quickly became a product that has the potential to change lives for those who live without regular power supplies. This kind of thinking was the foundation of the relationship between Ars Electronica and ITU Telecom World, that art and design can inform technology and social change in powerful ways.

From this relationship came the Future Innovators Summit. There’s no way, of course, of knowing exactly what this unique and exciting mix of young people will bring about, but there is tremendous potential for dialogue, exchange of ideas, communal inspiration and co-creation across generations, nationalities and professional disciplines. They will work together in a collaborative process, alongside professional facilitators, future researchers and an impressive group of mentors, who will ensure just the right environment for ideas to take shape. All with the aim of turning technology to positive social ends.

Through a mixture of video documentation, real-time feedback from future researchers in each session, interactive displays, observations and social media monitoring, the participants and the audience onsite in Linz and online around the globe will form a broader collaborative community. All this aggregated data will be available as a live feed of interactive videos at https://www.aec.at/bienenstock/#/ for anyone interested in following the thought processes, evolution of ideas and engagement of contributors. We want to make the co-creation process real, witness change in the making, and involve as wide an audience as possible.

Using these different resources, we will be running an experiment in following, tracking and analysing the creative ideation processes involved in the meeting of minds from across different professional fields, different corners of the globe and different generations. We’re looking to map this thinking process, define the key takeaways of how offline co-creation works, and apply this knowledge to our online co-creation Challenges in the Young Innovators Competition. We will of course also present the concrete outcomes of the Future Innovators Summit, in the form of six creative solutions to six global challenges, in The Lab on the showfloor InnovationSpace at ITU Telecom World 2014 this December. This is where we hope to showcase some of the best young innovative talent being put to the best possible ends in the creation of social start-ups – so that we can see many more successful ideas such as Gravity Light changing lives at the most fundamental level.

Each group will be working independently and has its own additional hashtag:

For Group A, https://www.aec.at/c/future-innovators-group-a/ follow on #FISGA

For Group B, https://www.aec.at/c/future-innovators-group-b/ follow on #FISGB

For Group C, https://www.aec.at/c/future-innovators-group-c/ follow on #FISGC

For Group D, https://www.aec.at/c/future-innovators-group-d/ follow on #FISGD

For Group E, https://www.aec.at/c/future-innovators-group-e/ follow on #FISGE

For Group F, https://www.aec.at/c/future-innovators-group-f/ follow on #FISGF

You can follow all of the action at the summit through #FISummit on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr

And look for more information at: https://www.aec.at/c/en/future-innovators-summit/