SILEXGRAPHICSOBJECTIVEMARS 2050!
AS SEEN BYTHE FUTURE
STUDENTS
INTERVIEWSANDREW MCAFEEMARK ESPOSITO
PROSPECTIVESWILL ALGORITHMSDICTATE OUR
LIVES?
S I L E X I D : S T A Y T U N E D & J O I N T H E C L U B
JULY 2016
L 12793 - 9 - F: 2,00 € - RD
2 n e w s p a p e r
Mark Esposito is a professor and expert on the circular economy. He warns us against the excesses of an “economic growth at all costs” and delivers his vision of major economic changes to come.
Silex ID : Many people are counting on the blockchain to disrupt the economy. In what way is this technology linked to the circular economy?
Mark Esposito : The blockchain is a collaborative platform that circumvents the banking system and its characteristic lack of transparency. Which is also what the circular economy aims to accomplish! We need more visibility on the identity of those in charge: will it be supervised directly by the community, or by traditional players in the banking system? That’s precisely the aspect on which the blockchain’s integration within a circular economy system can be disputed. In France, research is mostly conducted by traditional banking institutions. I would really hate to see Visa or MasterCard become the biggest players in blockchain technology. I am positive this technology can uphold its promises and become the first collaborative financial platform, but we must work to make it more accessible to the entire community if we want that to happen.
Will economic and technological disruptions come from developing countries?
M.E : They are capable of adopting disruptive technologies such as the blockchain more rapidly than developed countries because they don’t have to take apart installed complex systems first. If certain emerging countries can demonstrate
I N T E R V I E W S
EnTErIng a nEW Era
the viability of a model based on the use of new technologies, like the absence of a trusted third party in banking transactions, developed countries will have no choice but to follow the change. But such a scenario can only happen if we restore some balance in the access to digital technologies between nations. The world of tomorrow will be split up between the “rich” who are capable of understanding and mastering technology, and the “poor” who don’t have those skills.
New technologies are changing the way we build the world of tomorrow. In order to help us anticipate developments to come, you co-created “DRIVE”, an economic predictions framework. Can you tell us about it?
M.E : “DrIVE” is built upon five axes of development that are characteristic of our societies: Demographics, resource scarcity, Inequality, Volatility and the dynamism of Companies. The idea is to identify various issues related to these axes and take action before it’s too late. We must push forward original initiatives that can put an end to catastrophic scenarios such as the rarefaction of water. In Peru, advertising billboards can transform the humidity in the air into drinkable water! We don’t predict the future to tell people what’s going to happen, we do it to identify how
we can act before that future becomes a reality. Companies have a crucial role to play in searching for innovative solutions to tomorrow’s major challenges. The “frugal economies” from India bring great results with very modest means. Look at the refrigerator made of clay that works without electricity! We must import to developed countries these new ways of creating and reinvent the way we innovate. The ability to achieve a lot with limited resources is what we strive to highlight with “DrIVE”.
USI IS a grEaT oCCaSIon For MEETIng aMazIngLy InSPIrIng SPEakErS. WE InTErVIEWED TWo ThEorETICIanS oF ThE FUTUrE In orDEr To hEar WhaT ThEy
haD To Say aBoUT WhErE oUr WorLD IS hEaDIng: Mark ESPoSITo anD anDrEW MCaFEE.
j u l y 2 0 1 6
o c T o T E c h N o l o gyEach time we have a USI event, we bring together inspired speakers who come to share their vision of the impact of technology on our lives, our companies and our society. This year, thanks to Centrale Supélec and ESSEC, we wanted to include in these discussions the generation that will have to build the world of tomorrow. From homo Sapiens to homo Evolutis, from the origins of information technology to Machine learning, from our dwindling economies to the promises of the blockchain, from the real world to the virtual, USI conferences are their future. It’s high time we asked them what they think about digital technologies and their heritage…
E S S E c b u S I N E S S S c h o o lThe development of ESSEC is guided by the belief that modern leaders must combine transverse skills and be capable of juggling between management, technological and design skills. That’s why we launched our Excellence Centers that work transversally and the ESSEC k-Lab where we offer our students innovative learning experiences thanks to digital technologies and design thinking. The vision of USI goes the same way. and this time complementary outlooks give our students the opportunity to play their part as thought leaders by appropriating the ideas that will make the world of tomorrow.
c E N T R a l E S u p é l E cThe engineering students of the Ecole Centrale Paris (part of the Centrale Supélec group) are aware of the place they must take in our digital economy, in an increasingly connected world. The participation of third year students following our Information Technology option to USI 2016 with octo Technology is very important to our school. The outlook of USI speakers shed precious light on the evolutions of our world, not only technologically but with regards to uses and social issues in our world. We are counting on our students to be digital managers – and responsible “sapiens” – enlightened as they begin their professional careers!
Taking our responsibilities
Everyone in this room is in their twenties. a bunch of young people freshly graduated from business or engineering schools such as ESSEC or Centrale Supélec. Facing us, the seasoned organizers of the prestigious event that is USI – Unexpected Sources of Inspiration, putting us in front of a major challenge: to imagine the world of tomorrow.
The themes talked about during the conferences are fascinating. We understand that the world is changing, that there are many revolutions to come and that they will transform the way we lead our lives. new technologies are progressing with exponential speed and the digital transformation is underway. “Homo informaticus”, “blockchain”, “Maching learning”… and many other expressions still widely unknown to the general public but that will have a significant impact on our world, and which we are going to talk about in this issue of Newspaper. our generation is made of dreamers and accomplishers, ready to perceive the opportunities rising from this new world. We want to work differently, obey differently and manage differently. We want to be happy before we get old, like many others before us.
But the world of tomorrow is also full of challenges. new technologies are automatizing, simplifying, reducing costs and thereby putting thousands of workers out of a job. The digital transformation is fascinating but brings with it a formidable challenge regarding the protection of personal data. The very notions of employment, work, enterprise and the value they bring to society are being scrutinized in a world where start-ups with only a hundred employees can be worth as much as industrial corporations with staffs of thousands.
The world of tomorrow, it turns out, remains to be built, and we must play our part in this endeavor. We know that we know nothing, but we also know we can do anything. Being twenty years old means enjoying the certainty of having your life ahead of you. a life that we can use to help build this modernity brought forth by the digital transformation and to construct a technological world that doesn’t leave out the people who live in it. Being twenty means choosing our future and carrying out our dreams, because no one’s going to do it for us. It means taking our responsibilities.
By Pauline, Inès, Paul, Roxane, Paul, Ludovic, Pierre, Nicolas.
O u r p a r t n e r s
E d i t o
“Companies have a crucial role to play in searching for innovative solutions to tomorrow’s major challenges.”
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3 q u e s t i o n s t o … E m m a n u e l l e D u e z
WoMen’Up, an association that has been promoting diversity in the workplace for five years, The Boston Project, an unorthodox consulting firm and a start-up made of entrepreneurs that place collaborators at the heart of transformation processes… One thing is for certain: serial entrepreneur Emmanuelle Duez has more than one trick up her sleeve. She passionately tells us more about the evolution of education.
What place do you think school will have in our training?
Only 7% of kids under 20 consider school as a place of training. in the future, we will learn mostly from companies, with the obsolescence of skills.
Will school change with new technologies?
Kids have an appetite for learning on computers, and can check the veracity of classes. Michel serres even speaks of “presumption of skills” for teachers. will we see
an overhaul of the school system in the years to come? yes. Are your kids terrorized? no. they have found the solution.
Will our relation to work be affected?
Of course! An OECD study confirms that under 30 year olds will have on average 13 different jobs.
Extract from the USI conference 2016
A researcher at MIT and co-author of the best-selling book The Second Machine Age, Andrew McAfee reflects upon the impact of new technologies and the world’s shift towards a new era where machines will substitute human work.
Silex ID : What drove you to write this book?
Andrew McAfee : My co-author and I had noticed during the past few years an ongoing pessimism regarding new technologies and innovation, when there wasn’t that much going on! and we didn’t agree. We wanted to write a book that would highlight this great era of technological revolutions. We are both optimists about the future, the world and new technologies. our book The Second Machine age is about the very important moment we are experiencing right now, with all the questions that come with it.
The “second machine age” will destroy a lot of jobs. How can we adapt to this sudden change?
A.MA : Technology makes us richer overall and enables us to take better care of our planet. Even economists agree that technological progress brings many advantages with it. of course, there are also a series of challenges that come with this technological revolution. and that’s nothing new: technical progress has always destroyed certain categories of jobs and created new ones. The jobs that disappear first are repetitive and physical, such as assembly-line work, including in developing countries. I believe that this phenomenon will accelerate and affect more qualified jobs, such as doctors: medical diagnoses will be more accurately conducted by machines and technology. Technology will accelerate
the transformation of our jobs and we must start preparing now.
How can we control the effect of these innovations?
A.MA : There is no way of guaranteeing that innovations will have a positive impact on people’s lives. It’s very likely that technology will breed inequality. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything about it, we can manage these negative consequences, which will exist whatever we do. There are examples of countries throughout history that refused to adopt technology: they all proved that was the best way to get poor in a connected and globalized world and to not stay competitive. What about artificial intelligence?
A.MA : It makes no sense whatsoever to be afraid of a malevolent artificial intelligence. It’s as stupid as worrying about overpopulation on Mars. Professionals working on aI all agree on that. But of course, never say never, and technology will always surprise us. There are much more urgent things to do: stop global warming, reduce wealth inequalities, fight cancer… artificial intelligence is the most powerful technology mankind has developed to solve its problems. To worry about it is the worst thing to do, we would be shooting ourselves in the foot.
What is the most revolutionary technology you’ve seen these past few years?
A.MA : The “lottery of birth” determines whether we are born into a poor country or a rich one. and that conditions nearly everything in our existence: the education we will receive, access to medical care, to food… This quality of life is reserved for an elite. Thanks to smartphones, you can now give access to knowledge to practically everyone across the world and contact people who are more than a day’s walk from where we are. That’s never happened before in the history of humanity! no one knows how things are going to evolve, but it’s something truly amazing: connecting humanity, that’s the greatest ongoing revolution!
Read more on silex-id.com
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“To worry about artificial intelligence is the worst thing to do, we would be shooting ourselves in the foot.”
“Connecting humanity, that’s the greatest ongoing revolution!”
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Discover the sharp look of Tonu, cartoonist, on the conferences of the USI.
Let’s imagine one moment that mankind has to leave Earth following a global catastrophe… Exploring new frontiers would become a priority to ensure our survival. What if we discovered new life forms on Mars? And what if the condi-tions of settlement on the red planet weren’t what we thought they were? What if our salvation was to be found in more distant lands?
SURVIVAL OF THE SPECIES
Not sure what destination to pick for your next excursion on Mars? Succumb to the charm of Mount Olympus, the highest mountain in the Solar system. Or perhaps you’d rather discover Valles Marineris, a land of abysses and craters? Too bad, the next Dragon SpaceX is full! Maybe there still is room in a BlaBlaRocket shuttle, you know, the rocket sharing service for space travel. With a bit of luck, you’ll meet your other half up there… Outer space is so beautiful!
SPACE TOURISM
For successful multi-entrepreneur Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX…), space travel has always been a matter of survival for humanity. In 500 million years, our sun will expand and burn the Earth, reducing life to sea bacteria… Musk only had one dream: to set foot on Mars within his lifetime. He even wished to die on the red planet, though he did indicate he didn’t want the cause of his death to be a crash landing. Today in 2050, tourists from Earth can visit the Elon Musk museum on Mars and visit the grave of this dinosaur of tech.
THE ELON MUSK MAUSOLEUM
What’s best? To lose several months sending material with expensive cargo-rockets or source it locally and instantaneously? The start-up Made In Space, launched in 2010 in Silicon Valley, favors the second solution and specializes in 3D printing in zero gravity conditions. Several models have been deve-loped and successfully tested in the interna-tional space station. In 2050, its subsidiary Made in Mars produces manufactured objects, drugs and food components for the entire Martian tourist base. A real industrial success story!
MADE IN MARSIt takes 6 months to reach Mars. We advise you to prepare your leave of absence in advance and mentally prepare for this space adventure. Cans made of “natural polymerization” with sea algae and water and conceived by the famous chef Thierry Marx and the Centre Français d’Innovation Culinaire will let you enjoy your privileged status of intergalactic tourist in style. It’s light, 100% edible, biodegradable in 3 days and adapted to zero gravity conditions: the future of cooking is upon us!
THE SODA CANOF THE FUTURE
LASER PROJECTION
Up to 23% faster that light, photonic propulsion would put Mars only a few days from Earth for an uninhabited ship, one month with someone on board. This technology uses the quantity of movement of photons to propel an object through space. A spaceship could therefore move without any fuel thanks to lasers on orbit that would receive light from the sun and direct it towards the ship. Light still needs to be shed on certain aspects: scientists aren’t sure about how to slow down once the destination has been reached, in order to get on orbit and land safely…
BASE DE LANCEMENT
MARS2050 OBJECTIF
Let’s imagine one moment that mankind has to leave Earth following a global catastrophe… Exploring new frontiers would become a priority to ensure our survival. What if we discovered new life forms on Mars? And what if the condi-tions of settlement on the red planet weren’t what we thought they were? What if our salvation was to be found in more distant lands?
SURVIVAL OF THE SPECIES
Not sure what destination to pick for your next excursion on Mars? Succumb to the charm of Mount Olympus, the highest mountain in the Solar system. Or perhaps you’d rather discover Valles Marineris, a land of abysses and craters? Too bad, the next Dragon SpaceX is full! Maybe there still is room in a BlaBlaRocket shuttle, you know, the rocket sharing service for space travel. With a bit of luck, you’ll meet your other half up there… Outer space is so beautiful!
SPACE TOURISM
For successful multi-entrepreneur Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX…), space travel has always been a matter of survival for humanity. In 500 million years, our sun will expand and burn the Earth, reducing life to sea bacteria… Musk only had one dream: to set foot on Mars within his lifetime. He even wished to die on the red planet, though he did indicate he didn’t want the cause of his death to be a crash landing. Today in 2050, tourists from Earth can visit the Elon Musk museum on Mars and visit the grave of this dinosaur of tech.
THE ELON MUSK MAUSOLEUM
What’s best? To lose several months sending material with expensive cargo-rockets or source it locally and instantaneously? The start-up Made In Space, launched in 2010 in Silicon Valley, favors the second solution and specializes in 3D printing in zero gravity conditions. Several models have been deve-loped and successfully tested in the interna-tional space station. In 2050, its subsidiary Made in Mars produces manufactured objects, drugs and food components for the entire Martian tourist base. A real industrial success story!
MADE IN MARSIt takes 6 months to reach Mars. We advise you to prepare your leave of absence in advance and mentally prepare for this space adventure. Cans made of “natural polymerization” with sea algae and water and conceived by the famous chef Thierry Marx and the Centre Français d’Innovation Culinaire will let you enjoy your privileged status of intergalactic tourist in style. It’s light, 100% edible, biodegradable in 3 days and adapted to zero gravity conditions: the future of cooking is upon us!
THE SODA CANOF THE FUTURE
LASER PROJECTION
Up to 23% faster that light, photonic propulsion would put Mars only a few days from Earth for an uninhabited ship, one month with someone on board. This technology uses the quantity of movement of photons to propel an object through space. A spaceship could therefore move without any fuel thanks to lasers on orbit that would receive light from the sun and direct it towards the ship. Light still needs to be shed on certain aspects: scientists aren’t sure about how to slow down once the destination has been reached, in order to get on orbit and land safely…
BASE DE LANCEMENT
MARS2050 OBJECTIF
Illustration : Camille RocchiTexts : Nicolas Cabanes,
Ludovic Lay & Pierre Gallet
6 n e w s p a p e r j u l y 2 0 1 6
6:34
That’s the time Marta chose to wake me up at this morning. She knows my habits, after all we’ve been living together for 15 years now. She knows everything about me: my schedule, what I like to eat in the morning, how much time I need to take a shower. Sometimes I even forget that behind that familiar voice, there are only lines of code. Ever since we met, I enjoy my morning again: she fixes my breakfast, lets me choose one of two outfits she selected after having checked the weather and my day’s meetings, and even organized the documents I will need during the day. That leaves me more time to spend with my kids.While swallowing my fried eggs, I listen to Marta suggesting to my wife we book seats for the concert of a young classical musician. She thinks we’ll like it. and her selections are rarely wrong. I can’t remember the last show I saw that I didn’t like, just like I can’t remember one that surprised me recently. It makes me wonder if never being wrong might be a flaw. If Marta had existed twenty years ago, I certainly never would have met my wife! our paths crossed when I was leaving a theater play before the end, exasperated by the lousy acting. She’d decided to do the same thing at the same time. Coincidence? at the time, yes. our
p R o j E c T I N g T o 2 0 3 6
WILL DaTa anD aLgorIThMS DICTaTE
oUr LIVES? By Pauline Bouvier & Inès Salhi
schedules weren’t so carefully configured in advance, and we quickly started writing our story together. 7:02
Marta suggests shortening my morning run since planned works are scheduled to start today on the suburban train network, therefore more people will be taking their car to work. as you might have gathered, I jog. I eventually started enjoying it, but it wasn’t natural at first. I forced myself to take up running when my health insurance got too expensive. running earns me “health points” that directly affect my insurance payments. Luckily a law was passed last month to ban the use of hereditary health data in the calculation of insurance rates. as the algorithms grew more and more precise, the system was getting increasingly unfair. The rLE scandal made people realize the importance of the problem. I was reading an article about it yesterday. Banks wanted
to use “remaining Lifetime Expectancy” data to grant loans. It’s a coefficient that evaluates people’s life expectancy based on genetic information combined with data gathered from the connected devices they use. The exploitation of rLE for commercial purposes is now illegal, but it’s use remains widely uncontrolled. This means insurers will go back to CLV, the infamous Customer Life
ThankS To MaChInE LEarnIng anD arTIFICIaL InTELLIgEnCE, UBIqUIToUS DaTa WILL ConSIDEraBLy aFFECT oUr LIVES, TakIng ChargE oF oUr haBITS anD
rEFLExES For US. SoCIaL IMPLICaTIonS WE WILL BE FaCED WITh WILL aLSo ChangE raDICaLLy. WE FoLLoWED onE oF oUr FELLoW STUDEnTS, an EngInEEr In a LargE
FrEnCh CoMPany, For onE Day In 2036.
Value that has been governing marketing strategies for over 20 years now.It’s the mining of that data that guides marketing strategies. That’s why I’m no longer surprised when I receive a new home insurance offer along with simplified administrative procedures for changing my address when I’m only just thinking of moving. I also find it amusing to think that
“I can’t remember a show I saw that surprised me recently. It makes me wonder if never being wrong might be a flaw.”
3 q u e s t i o n s t o … Y u v a l H a r a r i
Yuval Harari, the author of the international bestseller Sapiens: A brief History of Humankind, answers our questions about the exceptional and vulnerable aspects that make us, the Homo Sapiens, who we are.
What do you find most fascinating about Homo Sapiens?
the immense power of our imagination, our capacity to construct entire worlds of fantasy and then act as if they were real. it’s what brings us together, enables us to cooperate and dominate the planet.
What new human species could replace us?
either we will use technology to create an augmented mankind, or we will break the cycle of life’s most fundamental rule and create new species from scratch that would have nothing organic about them, eliminating the very notion of natural selection and replacing it with intelligent conception.
Fighting death so fiercely; isn’t that the most self-destructive thing we can do?
Perhaps, but it’s also a temptation we just can’t resist. Death has always been perceived as a
metaphysical phenomenon. But modern science has redefined it as a technical problem. No need to turn to God to avoid it anymore, a few geeks in a lab can do the trick!
Read more on blog.usievents.com
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7A r t i c l e
it’s my habits that give me away, not some intrusion into the emails exchanged with my realtor (they’ve been encrypted for some time). I’m always impressed by the capacity of numbers to change our behavior. I don’t like to be told what to do, but even I followed the general trend of education through data. Data scientists were already talking about it twenty years ago. I remember a conversation at the beginning of my career with Eric Biernat, who was then director of Big Data analytics at oCTo Technology. he had told me: “algorithms will normalize the behavior of citizens. Everyone will be able to compare their habits to those of others and receive advice for improvements in case they are too different.” That quickly became true for driving. I’m one of the few people who still drive, and I reduced my car insurance by 15% by following my insurer’s advice. My progress diminished my likelihood of having an accident and has a positive impact on the environment. When you think of it, it’s the behavior of the best drivers that educated me. This “good” behavior wasn’t imposed by an institution based on arbitrary criteria, but stemmed from the precise analysis of data. he who elevates himself, elevates the world…
8:59
My workday starts with a meeting with my team. only half of them are physical present, the others are represented by holograms. This technology is still in its infancy, but it still enables us to talk naturally about the deployment strategy for our new product. The conversation quickly becomes about the people who don’t fit our purchasing model. no algorithms can help us figure out if they’re in out target audience or not. Some think we shouldn’t even consider that crowd, since they’re a minority, but I disagree: I think it’s from those we consider “marginal” that new trends will emerge. an algorithm is capable of discovering things by pointing out relevant correlations, but it cannot create. Creativity and inventiveness belong to humans. That’s why we should focus not on predictable behaviors since algorithms are better than us at that, but on new things, on ideas. With the increasing prediction capacity of algorithms, my work has become even more interesting: no more conventional diagrams and mass reasoning, they’ve been replaced by new ideas, paradigm shifts and massive disruptions! The automation of tasks freed me from the rigid framework I was imposed to meet the objectives set by my boss; now I can let
my mind freely wander to better tackle the challenges my company is facing.
11:42
I just received an exceptional offer for a Thai restaurant in the neighborhood where I work. I don’t know what’s happening: I’ve never had asian food before! I must be the object of an a/B test by Marta. Maybe I’ll go for it. Plus today I’m having lunch with my childhood friend I’d like to help. She can’t find a job and feels rejected by society. There are so many people like her! She went to school though and got a good degree, 20 years ago. only she chose a field that got disrupted and can’t seem to find a way to reorient herself towards a sector that’s hiring. 60% of them didn’t exist when she started studying. It makes one wonder if there’s enough work for everyone. I’ve been working for 16 years and have done six different jobs already: I feel like the lifecycle of professions is getting shorter, and that recycling is no longer just an environmental issue! I enjoy the constant evolution of my job, but I’m also aware of the difficulties that implies. We need continuous training, and whoever can’t keep up ends up left on the sidelines.
The development of Big Data and artificial intelligence in our daily lives means we could all one day have our own “samantha”, like in spike jonze’s great movie Her.
“Algorithms will normalize the behavior of citizens. Everyone will be able to compare their habits to those of others and receive advice for improvements in case they are too different.”
13:32
My phone vibrates again: it’s a message from my mother. She says thank you for the present. Thank Marta, really! I had completely forgotten her birthday.That’s my cue to put an end to lunch: I’m expected to give a hand at the association “a place for everyone” where I’m a volunteer. We are looking for economic solutions instead of social ones to these marginalization and job accessibility issues; the task is huge! I think it’s the main issue of our generation. how can we guarantee each and every one a place, their place, in society? Technology has automated so many tasks. The economist Daniel Cohen was already talking about this at USI in 2016: 20th century technologies enabled an evident increase in productivity thanks to the man-machine complementarity. “There still is complementarity today, but mostly there is substitutability.” In most cases, technology has replaced people. So should the value of work be reconsidered? Should we stop endlessly seeking growth? Daniel Cohen questioned our perpetual thirst for wealth: “you are richer and that has no influence whatsoever on your wellbeing. In a century, we will be so rich we will only work two or three hours a day and we’ll focus on what really matters”. We are still quite a way from making that dream reality. But one of the leads worth exploring probably is a universal income for everyone. next month, the French people have to vote on it and decide whether we want to follow the likes of Finland (who implemented it in 2015) and many other European countries. There’s been talk about the subject for some time, but the pace of reform in France hasn’t evolved much. Time is accelerating, not our capacity to make reforms!
15:12
I take a break and check the notifications I left aside. advertisement emails, messages on the various chat groups I belong to and information requests Marta didn’t consider to be urgent. Thanks to the progress of artificial intelligence, every email concerning appointments, meetings or events to attend are filled out automatically according to my schedule, I just need to confirm and send them. all this time I save enables me to finish my workday early. I use this time to do my daily two hours of studying so that I don’t end up left behind in my work. Training, e-learning and the capacity to learn have become essential, much more than the skills people proudly display on their LinkedIn profiles!
17:00
My workday is over. I can dedicate myself to the things I love and take the time to live life to the fullest.
That’s what all these machine learning algorithms have enabled: to focus on what really matters. Living has become an art form again, and if you’ve found your place in society and maintain it through continuing education and rigorous learning, the substitution of technology for human skills is all but beneficial.Gandhi was right when he said “live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever”.
“That’s what all these machine learning algorithms have enabled: to focus on what really matters.”
“An algorithm is capable of discovering things by pointing out relevant correlations, but it cannot create. Creativity and inventiveness belong to humans.”
fOr A SUccESSfUllDIgITAl TrAnSfOrMATIOn
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j u l y 2 0 1 6 A r t i c l e 8n e w s p a p e r
Silex ID Newspaper is published by silex iD – Publishing Director : Matthieu vetter – content Director : Daniel Geiselhart – Head of Silex ID Newspaper : Anaïs Bozino - Design : Yann Taeger – Art Director : Charlotte Cosmao – Head of Silex ID Network : Clémence Fontaine – Community Manager : Jean-Marc Desfougères – Illustrations : Camille Rocchi – Contributors : Roxane Albert, Pauline Bouvier, Nicolas Cabanes, Pierre Gallet, Ludovic Lay, Paul Poupet, Inès Salhi, Paul Talbot – Translation : Patrick Haour Printed by Imprimerie Léonce Deprez, France - MLP Distribution - Texts, illustrations and photos copyright Silex ID, 16, rue Saulnier, 75009 Paris – SAS with capital of €10 157 – Founders : Léonce Deprez et Matthieu Vetter - Contact : 06 81 83 55 07 [email protected] – [email protected] – [email protected] – [email protected] – Legal deposit at parution – Joint Commission : in progress – Subscription : www.store.silex-id.com.
a V a I l a b l E I N o u R N E T W o R k o f pa R T N E R S
Last year, start-ups in the United States raised $72.5 billion according to the estimates of venture capital database CB Insights, and the trend is global. Financing institutions have never been so many: next to the traditional “bank loans” and “love money” (funds loaned or invested by friends and family), new models have emerged. Crowdfunding and participative financing, Business angels – private individuals, generally executives, who not only invest in start-ups but provide professional advice and their address book – “Super Business angels” (successful serial entrepreneurs), Corporate Ventures or Venture Partners (capital risk funds backed by corporations), incubators and accelerators, and of course public funding. This flow of liquidity poses serious questions about the capacity of investors to manage the possibility of a “start-up bubble”. Faced with this risk, how will investors and financing institutions organize themselves? What will be the modes of investment and financing by 2050?
INcREaSEd SpEcIalIzaTIoN
The growing complexity of technologies, the increasing need for funding to establish a company in a competitive and global market won’t leave much room for small, individual investors. Banks don’t seem to be able to adapt to this complex movement, and the high level of speculation and risk are just too scary for institutions that aren’t allowed to make a single mistake. The likely scenario for 2050 would rather be a sharing of investments between private companies and specialized structures such as incubators. “Incubators will become increasingly sophisticated in order to provide the right tool for this or that specific industry”, says Fabrice Cavarretta, author of oui la France est un paradis pour les entrepreneurs (“yes, France is a haven for entrepreneurs”). By 2050, one can hope for an even stronger sophistication, or specialization, of financing structures. Today, most of them are only just starting to specialize in various domains, such as Paris&Co’s Labo de l’édition, but a much bigger effort will be necessary for industries such as BioTech that require funds, scaling effects and industrial needs that cannot be found within current private funding structures. new hybrid forms of financing could emerge: in addition to funding, startups could get access to support and a specialized network in their field of activity.
Who aRE ThE STaRTuppERS?
With the introduction in France of the status of “auto-entrepreneur” in 2008, the typical profile of business creators changed considerably: it’s no longer just eager seekers of opportunities under the age of 25 with a college degree who take the plunge, but more and more often company executives who already have a job! In 2016, nearly have of the French population considers a career as an entrepreneur is the most interesting there is. By 2050, creating a business will have become much more accessible.Executive personnel will change as well: it will be more international, thanks to increased contacts with European and international entrepreneur networks, and socially more diverse, with a wider age range. Founders will have received cross-skills training: the traditional triptych of engineers, sales reps and developers will progressively be replaced by engineering-sales-developer individuals with highly specialized domains of expertise and a better knowledge of the skills of other academic fields. Creating a business in 2050 will be socially acceptable and financially facilitated, thanks to the proliferation and professionalization of support structures and networks. So, who will be the future startuppers who take on these challenges of whole other scale?
gullIVER aNd ThE lIllIpuTIaNS
Multinational corporations will also provide the ultimate guarantees for those who still hesitate: they will be able to enjoy the security net of a large group by creating a business internally within structures such as innovation labs.
Individual entrepreneurs have all the required tools at hand, but a movement is also emerging with large
companies where the inertia of internal structures is areal blocker of innovation. Large corporations can’t help but notice that innovation, that is so critical to them, is slipping away from them. “Big groups have thrown themselves into the fad of open innovation, sensing that they had a hard time following the quick pace of innovations in their sectors, especially those that are born from digital technologies”, says olivier Ezratty author of the guide des start-ups and quelques femmes du numérique.
Companies quickly understood that startups were the key to reinventing their r&D. Big groups have long been interested in the startup scene, but the wave of massive buyouts of startups seems to be slowing down and other models of interactions and developing following the principles of open innovation: hackathons, immersion seminars in startups, opening “labs” or incubators where corporations such as Publicis Conseil, renault, Seb, orange, BnP, SnCF or galeries Lafayette host startups and interact with them.
STaRTup oR R&d 2.0?
Large companies provide a sizeable competitive advantage to startups who are connected with them in terms of funding and strategy. It’s likely the open innovation movement will amplify until the classic model is reached again where every big corporation will have its own r&D lab made up of young entrepreneurs. It’s therefore highly probable that big groups will “digest” this massive influx of ideas and innovation. Increasingly complex structures will be developed to formalize the integration of these former startup companies within the group. and, by 2050, the “startup bubble” everyone is fearing will be regulated by these policies of re-internalizing innovation. Entrepreneurs who don’t care for this type of partnership will have a hard time: they will need to find funding to remain competitive compared to projects backed by corporations. They will likely gather into independent structures that respond to the increasing complexity of business creation and therefore the increasing difficulty of doing it alone. Private incubators, hacker houses and other co-working spaces seem to be credible alternatives for the next 20 years, before other types of structures emerge…
It’s no longer just eager seekers of opportunities under the age of 25 with a college degree who take the plunge, but more and more often company executives who already have a job!
Fonds d’expertise d’entrepreneurs
a d E E p ly c h a N g I N g E c o S y S T E m
2050: ThE DEaTh oF STarT-UPS?WITh 146 UnICornS, STarT-UPS VaLUED oVEr $1 BILLIon, ThE STarT-UP SCEnE haSn’T BEEn ThIS aCTIVE SInCE 2000. granTS, TooLS For hELPIng STarT a BUSInESS, PoLITICaL, LEgaL anD FISCaL DECISIonS…
BECoMIng an EnTrEPrEnEUr haS nEVEr BEEn So aCCESSIBLE.
By Roxane Albert, Nicolas Cabanes & Paul Poupet
