Meet the Future of Manufacturing

 

There is one word that summarizes the future. It doesn’t have to do with innovation, manufacturing, or even politics. Future consumer choices will be shaped by emotions! The future will not be driven by what technology can do, it will be driven by how people will want to live. And it’s changing, profoundly, how we manufacture.

These statements were delivered by Futurist Patrick Dixon during his keynote speech at the analyst event in the exiderdome. He provided the audience with these and many other thoughts about the future of manufacturing but two words struck me. Convergence and Divergence.

Patrick says that we live in a time of convergence. For example, a car manufactured today may contain the same chassis, same body, same color of car #2 but stamped with a different logo and sold at different prices. The future of manufacturing is headed down the road to divergence (10+ years) which is directly related to his statements about emotion. He defines the two as the following:

Convergence – more features, identical products, economy of scale.

Divergence – doing things different to serve consumers better.

You can listen to *most* of Patrick’s talk below. About 10-15 minutes into his talk, the AV guy gave me a feed from his mic and I was able to capture about the last hour of his talk and the Q&A.