The Innovator's Radar newsletter enables you to stay on top of the latest business innovations. Enjoy this week's issue.
Jennifer L. Schenker
Innovator Founder and Editor-in-Chief |
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PUZZLE X, an annual conference in Barcelona that showcases what’s next in science and technology, this year included everything from fireside chats with Nobel Prize winner Sir Roger Penrose and American geneticist and molecular engineer George Church to a musical performance dubbed The Quantum Symphony Of Biology, created from sounds made by a stem cell and gene expression interpreted by a quantum computer.
Quantum computing, AI, the intersection of the two technologies and DNA data storage were key themes at the conference. (The conference featured what was billed as the capturing of attendees’ memories, which Solimán López, founder of the Harddiskmuseum, then stored on single strand of DNA). The Innovator’s editor-in-chief moderated a panel (pictured here) entitled “Beyond Connectivity” which focused on how, with the introduction of 6G, networks will soon act like a “sixth sense.” Panelists included Chema Alonso, Telefonica’s Chief Digital Officer, Tommy Bjorkberg, Director, CTO Group, ZTE and Alex Carballo, Vodafone’s Public Sector Director.
Read on to get the key takeaways from the conference, which is organized by Zina Cinker, a frontier material expert, strategist, and condensed matter physicist, who currently serves as the Director General of MATTER, an international think tank and association of over 30 country chapters, orchestrating the global use of frontier materials to solve humanity’s most immediate challenges.
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| One of John Chambers' best skills as a leader is that he has been able to call market transitions right. In 2020, he predicted that COVID-19 would have more of an economic impact than expected; in 2021, he stopped investing in China and cautioned others to do the same; and in 2022, he said inflation would displace the pandemic as the biggest issue. Most recently in 2023, he said the Great Resignation would be overcome by the Great Recommit, startup funding would tighten, risk-taking would slow down and agility would be more important than ever before.His 2023 predictions – and the ones before it – ended up remarkably accurate. Now, with 2024 on the horizon, Chambers shares his thoughts for next year in his 31st exclusive column for The Innovator. Paying subscribers can read on to get Chambers' predictions. |
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Who: Benoit Reillier is Managing Director and Co-founder of Launchworks & Co. where he specializes in helping organizations harness the power of ecosystems and innovative platform business models. He has been training, advising and coaching the boards and top management teams of many blue chip companies as well as regulators and governments for more than 20 years and is a guest lecturer on platform strategies at a number of business schools and universities including ESCP Europe, HEC Paris, and Berkeley. Reillier is the co-author of Platform Strategy: How To Unlock The Power of Communities and Networks to Grow Your Business (Routledge 2017) and Mission BlaBlaCar (Eyrolles 2022 for French edition, English edition forthcoming). He was co-chair of the Platform Leaders conference, which took place in London on November 9.
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Topic: How platform networks are evolving
Quote: "When properly harnessed Generative AI improves productivity. It allows businesses to do things faster and more effectively. For platforms, that boost has the potential to be particularly valuable, making it easier to attract people, to connect and match them. With the help of LLMs like ChatGPT, you can potentially get a working prototype in one day. The problem is that everybody can do that now, so you still need to work hard to do something unique that is valuable, rare, and difficult to imitate to get ahead."
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- S T A R T U P O F T H E W E E K - |
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| Reselo, a Swedish startup, uses a biorefinery approach to isolate raw rubber from birch bark, an abundant waste product of the global pulp, paper, and plywood industry. The IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute performed a climate impact assessment of Reselo’s renewable rubber and found that, on average, it cut average emissions in half in a general comparison to the most common rubbers on the market. “You can use it to pretty much replace all standard rubber products,” says Henrik Otendal, CEO and one of the founders of Reselo, a spin-off of KTH Innovation, the innovation arm of Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology, a public research university in Stockholm established in 1827 which conducts research and education in engineering and technology. The first application for Resolo Rubber is sneakers and boots. “We are working with big manufacturers: one has already done a prototype,” says Otendal. Tires are next. Reselo was the winner of a 2023 sustainable tire innovation challenge sponsored by Nokian Tyres, a Finnish producer of tire for cars, trucks, buses, and heavy-duty equipment.Reselo received a monetary prize as well as the opportunity to explore a business or development partnership with Nokian Tyres. |
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| Size of an unusually large Series B funding round announced this week by Aleph Alpha, a German AI startup building large language models that protect data sovereignty. The fundraise was backed by predominantly German firms, with enterprise IT giant SAP, Bosch, Schwarz Group, the owner of Lidl, and consulting firm Christ & Company Consulting investing in the company’s new round. Park Artificial Intelligence and Burda Principal Investments also invested. The announcement comes as Mistral, a French AI company, is in talks to raise €400 million in a deal that could value it at between €1.5 billion and €2 billion, according to The Financial Times. Mistral’s co-founders previously worked on AI at Google Deepmind and Meta. The company made headlines in June when it announced that it had raised $115 million in seed funding. Europe wants to create large language model alternatives to Silicon Valley and Chinese versions. Mistral and Aleph Alpha now appear to be its best bets. Although the U.S.’s OpenAI is a clear leader there is no global winner yet in foundational models.
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DLD, January 11-13, Munich, Germany
World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, January 15-18, Davos, Switzerland.
4YFN, February 26-29, Barcelona, Spain, February |
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