The Innovator's Radar newsletter enables you to stay on top of the latest business innovations. Enjoy this week's edition.
Jennifer L. Schenker
Innovator Founder and Editor-in-Chief |
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| The planet just marked a new milestone: Every single month from June 2023 to May 2024 was the world’s hottest such month on record, according to new data from Copernicus, the European Union’s climate monitoring service. Copernicus released its data on June 5, the same day as United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres made an impassioned speech in New York that urged world leaders to swiftly take control of the spiraling climate crisis or face dangerous tipping points. “We are playing Russian roulette with our planet,” he said.. “We need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell.”
The next day, the World Economic Forum provided some potential escape routes. Among the 2024 cohort of Technology Pioneers announced June 6 are 14 companies working on both established and emerging green technologies in areas such as carbon-negative and circular materials, carbon capture, regenerative agriculture, alternative proteins, nuclear fusion as well as carbon-negative and circular materials.
“The 2024 Technology Pioneers are revolutionizing industries on a global scale,” Verena Kuhn, Head of Innovator Communities, World Economic Forum, said in a statement. “These innovators are leveraging the most advanced technologies to drive the radical changes needed to confront the world’s most urgent challenges.”
Take the case of Captura which maintains that the ocean is the answer to reducing carbon emissions. Its Direct Ocean Capture system runs with just two ingredients: seawater and renewable electricity. The California-based company uses its proprietary membrane and electrodialysis technology to extract CO2 directly from seawater to be permanently stored or reused ( see the photo.) Once the carbon is removed, the ocean naturally draws down CO2 from the atmosphere to rebalance. Developing carbon management technologies, as well as fusion, energy storage, peer-to-peer energy generation, green hydrogen and electric car charging at scale will require huge amounts of capital as well as new types of collaborations and actions by governments, financial institutions, and large corporates in traditional businesses.
Read on to learn more about this story and other important technology news impacting business. |
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Two starry-eyed 20-year-olds from small towns in India told a local newspaper that they witnessed first-hand some of the problems the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals are trying to solve: a rapidly growing population, not enough output from the available arable land, significant water stress conditions, and global warming. As engineering students, they saw an opportunity to tackle some of these problems using technology.
The two started by building AI models that could process terabytes of satellite imagery and extract actionable insights and patterns from that data to help tackle problems in agriculture, predict yields and track the spread of certain crop pests and diseases, detect illegal mining, predict and monitor natural disasters and forest fires among other pressing problems.
But there was a problem: The satellite imagery of the earth that was freely available for analysis at that time in most cases was out-of-date and was not rich enough or detailed enough for many of the potential use cases. So, five years ago the two formed a company called Pixxel which launched a constellation of nanosatellites to provide global, real-time satellite imagery that addresses the needs of key industries such as agriculture, energy, forestry, and environmental monitoring.
On June 6 Pixxel was named a 2024 Tech Pioneer by The World Economic Forum; one of nine space companies in this year's cohort of 100. The space pioneers, which include space data companies, satellite makers and in-space manufacturers, reflect the promise of this burgeoning sector.
Pixxel, for example, illustrates how space technology can help tackle some of earth’s toughest challenges and how new players, including private sector companies and countries who were not present when the space race began in the 1960s, are now taking part in the space economy.
Space is set to play a pivotal role in addressing inequality by improving access to education and economic activity, through bridging digital divides, widening access to education and healthcare, and enabling precise monitoring of agriculture, natural resources and environmental changes, according to an April Forum report.
No country and no company want to be left behind because the space industry is also a booming business that is expected to grow to $1.8 trillion by 2035, up from $630 billion in 2023, according to the report.
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Who: Anne-Delphine Beaulieu is Chief Digital Officer and Chief Sustainability Officer at LISI Group, a 247-year-old French company in the aerospace, automotive and medical sectors that employs 10,000 people and had a 2023 turnover of €1.6 billion euros. It operates 42 factories in 13 countries. She is a member of the executive committee. Beaulieu is responsible for ESG topics, the company’s carbon trajectory, digital transformation of the company and development of artificial intelligence across the group. She previously held the position of CFO within the Aerospace Division.
Topic: LISI Group's digital transformation
Quote: "Convincing the general management to participate in proof of concept trials is the most difficult. Factories are always facing challenges, have limited resources and dedicate their time cautiously to new things. So, it takes time. But, once the test is in place, most of the times, the appetite grows rapidly and adoption too. Opening the gate is hard, but when you succeed, then they provide you with full support and want, as much as you, to make it a success."
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| Automated Industries' GenAI co-pilot transforms factory knowledge into micro-learning modules, delivering a personalized, intelligent feed to workers on the factory floor.
“Right now, 70% of EU manufacturers fear their investments are at risk because of the skills gap,” says Dr. Elisa Roth, the CEO of the Germany-based startup. In the U.S., $2.5 trillion could negatively impacted by the lack of talented people in manufacturing by 2028 according to Deloitte, she notes. "Training is more relevant than ever, but the problem is all the options are not fast enough to keep up with sustainable and digital transformations. We use GenAI to help manufacturers solve the skills gap at scale with action-oriented learning in the flow of work.”
By using Augmented Industries co-pilot customers decrease their factory training costs by up to 84%; increase factory learning effectiveness by up to 26% and drive the implementation of continuous improvement, according to a study conducted by the company. |
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| The first tweet in history to be written and published uniquely through thought was sent last Friday using a non-invasive brain-computer interface developed by French company Inclusive Brains. The tweet was sent to France's President Emmanuel Macron using mental and physiological commands in front of a live audience at the U.N.'s "AI for Good" Summit in Geneva. It took a couple of minutes to mentally compose and send the tweet, which read “Hello U.N.! World premiere made in France Fierté Française! cc Emmanuel Macron,” and included emojis and a photo. Macron responded with “Bravo,” congratulating the company for what he said was a world first and for developing tech that will increase inclusion by helping people who can no longer use their hands or speak to communicate.
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