Pascal Brier - I see three key overarching trends in engineering today. I would call the first one “AI-powered everything.” From devices and robots to simulation, new materials discovery, supply chains..., everything is being impacted by the rapid advances and rollout of AI. A lot will happen in the next two to three years and it’s going to change many aspects of innovation.
The second is the convergence of technologies. The problems we are all trying to fix are now highly complex. A synergy of different technologies is needed to solve them. This requires a wider scope of knowledge, and a transversal approach to research and innovation.
The final theme is sustainability. This is a driver of innovation as it is such a high priority for so many sectors. It also requires comprehensive understanding of many diverse industries and technologies to approach solutions.
Not many companies have Capgemini’s wide scope of knowledge and our understanding of the different technologies that need to come together to address these highly complex challenges.
Keith Williams - First, creating a financially viable business case is key. Unlike digital innovations, which can often be rolled out on a large scale cheaply, engineering innovations can require significant capital expenditure-building new infrastructure and factories to commercialize an innovation. So, it’s not just coming up with a brilliant new technology-it has to make financial sense to bring it to market, which is what we do at Capgemini.
Looking at inflection points, take robotics. It’s been making steady progress since the 1950s. Robotics is complex. It requires innovation across mechanics, electronics, sensors, AI, and batteries. To make progress, all those things need to reach a new level of maturity at the same time, to deliver something that’s groundbreaking. This is why convergence is necessary to create a step change. In robotics, you can see a lot of signals that this is happening.
Sustainability is coming to life in engineering because of the convergence of the environmental imperative plus straight forward economics, for example using less material costs less, plus a host of technological advances in areas such electrification and AI. All these come together to create products which are more sustainable, but equally important they are desirable, frugal, and cost effective.
P.B. - Technological convergence amplifies the impact of individual innovations, creating exponential opportunities. For instance, combining AI, robotics, and IoT has unlocked breakthroughs in autonomous logistics, manufacturing, and even healthcare with surgical robots guided by AI.
Convergence fosters entirely new business models, such as platform ecosystems driven by AI and cloud. Businesses no longer operate in silos but as part of interconnected networks, where value is co-created across multiple players. But there are risks too, associated with high interdependency: organizations must focus on resilience and adaptability to navigate this interconnected future.
K.W. - One example is our partnership with the University of California, Berkeley, on materials innovation. The ability to use high-powered computing plus AI, married with high-speed lasers has dramatically reduced the time it takes to conduct experiments, converting the timeframe for creating a new material from around 10 years to three or four.
Our partnership with Berkeley has focused on building new methodologies and tools to discover material surface properties, with the goal of creating sustainable manufacturing processes and accelerating the time to market of new materials.
