#NextBigThing
The Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, automated driving, robotics, and virtual reality — the fourth industrial revolution has transformed society across several levels. How will things proceed? What innovations await us? We speak to experts from different fields about the future — and they give us a glimpse into what they believe is the “next big thing.”
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What will come next?
The road from the steam engine to artificial intelligence has been long and shaped by pioneering inventions developed by visionary minds. But it’s not over yet. We asked thought leaders about which developments with revolutionary potential they believe await us, and which technologies will come to enrich, shape, and define the society of the future — from the mobility of tomorrow, to neurosciences and new business models, right through to the high data volumes that will become available.
Sami Haddadin, Director of the Munich School of Robotics and Machine Intelligence
One of the most fundamental challenges we have is energy supply. There I see hydrogen as a big solution and a future technology.
Sarik Weber, Digital Advisor, Ottobock
Mobility will play a vital role, both in factories but also for humans. Ottobock will play an important role in enhancing human mobility. In future, humans will move in different ways enhanced by devices.
Christian Bauer, Head of Business Development, Volocopter
There is more and more data generated worldwide. How can we transform this data into services and how can we transform the services into a customer experience? Going from A to B intermodal or paying on demand — both is not happening today. So, the big question will be: How will we connect our hubs with other hubs or people and their destination?
Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President Cloud + AI at Microsoft
The #nextbigthing is edge-based AI, which transforms the physical world. Technologies, such as augmented reality, will change how humans interact with each other as well as with their physical environment.
Andrew Ng, expert in AI and CEO of Landing AI
My personal #NextBigThing is to develop principles, algorithms, ideas, and tools for machine learning operations (MLOps) with a data-centric view that enable teams to develop, deploy, and maintain artificial intelligence ten times faster and more cost-effectively than possible today. I believe this will be key to the deployment of AI in industry and other sectors.
Tim Berners-Lee, CTO and Professor, CSAIL/MIT
Unwanted control and manipulation of our data — that is the downside of the internet in present days. So, the #NextBigThing from my point of view is “Solid”, our platform, which flips the whole privacy questions upside down and so the right way up. As a consequence, you own all your data and you control all your data to be empowered to do your next big things.
Alexander Otto, Chief Executive Officer of ECE
The #nextbigthing for us as a company is to look for digital solutions in other areas. We’re really interested in the hotel business, which is also being revolutionized through digitalization at the moment. There are a lot of innovative concepts coming up.
Alejandro Agag, Chairman, Formula E Holdings
The #NextBigThing is gonna be a combination of technologies. The real power is in combining — mixing different technologies to obtain completely new and different products. The combination of e-mobility with connected and driverless vehicles — this will be a revolution.
Jean-Marie Sol, Group Agronomy Director, Bonduelle
The #NextBigThing is the understanding of the interaction between microbes, the plant and the soil in the fight against plant diseases. Digitalization is going to stimulate innovations in terms of biocontrol and biostimulance and IoT will be able to analyze soil quality and accompanying flora and plant diseases very quickly. The data will be available at short notice and appropriate measures can be taken — a key element to agricultural transformation.
Dr. Sebastian Thrun, Robotics expert and CEO at Kitty Hawk
The #nextbigthing is artificial intelligence taking over repetitive work. It will take jobs that we don’t like, so we are able to focus on more creative work. AI will also help humans to become experts in certain job fields much more quickly by coaching them, and it will make experts such as medical doctors more efficient.
Dr. Shohini Ghose, professor of quantum physics and computer science
For me, the final frontier is actually inside us — it’s the human brain. I think better understanding the human brain is the real road to understanding artificial intelligence, how quantum will work, and a lot of other technologies.
Jörg Dederichs, Member of the Board of Management, 3M
Technologies like digital printing, rapid prototyping, will disrupt what we do today — so we need to anticipate where the markets are going and come up with entirely new business models. The Business model thinking is our #NextBigThing.
Dr. Roland Busch, Chief Technology Officer at Siemens
The #NextBigThing is increased communication between machines. There are more technological devices on earth than human beings. When the majority of them becomes smart and starts sharing information this will bring the internet of things to a new level. Among other things this will change our manufacturing processes and improve manufacturing on demand.
Catharina van Delden, Founder and CEO of innosabi GmbH
In our fast-paced digital world, I think we have to realize the importance of mental health. Every employee, every person has to focus on emotional and mental stability in order to be able to thrive in a digital world.
Aries Liu, General Manager, DiDi Mobility Innovation Center
AI will be the next big thing for smart transportation architecture. AI will play an important role in transportation platforms, but also contribute to autonomous driving and also enable the whole transportation infrastructure to run more safely and convenient.
Katja Nettesheim, Founder and CEO, _MEDIATE GmbH
The #NextBigThing is neuroscience, because Digital Transformation needs culture change. And culture change means behavioral change and we all know how difficult behavior changes are. Neuroscience made such great advances in the last decade that we should use these findings in order to affect better cultural change — and thus the Digital Transformation.
Franz Josef Radermacher, Head of the Research Institute for Applied Knowledge Processing
For me, this is Desertec. We have to mobilize the potential of those huge deserts that lie in the sun belt and ground does cost essentially nothing. We have to produce solar energy where there is a lot of sun. With large solar power plants in the Sahara, we could, for instance, supply energy to North Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Russia.
Chris Adams, organizer of the ClimateAction.tech community
The #nextbigthing is a more pedestrian friendly city environment. The idea that we are moving towards surroundings that are designed for people and are not so dependent on cars is really exciting.
Claudia Nemat, Member of Deutsche Telekom’s Board of Management
We will increasingly live and work technological in ecosystems. By this I mean that everything is connected — people with people and machines, and machines with each other. Ecosystems are digitized, work with open standards, and turn competitors into partners through coopetition. This makes it possible to respond individually to the diversity of people’s needs.
Stefan Dohler, CEO of EWE AG
The northern German hydrogen project, which goes under the name “Clean Hydrogen Coastline,” has just reached the second stage of a nationwide selection process and is thus one step closer to joining other proposed European projects in receiving funding. This highlights the importance of the northern German coastal region as a hub for a future national and European hydrogen economy.
