THE SIXTH WAVE OF INNOVATION – FROM 2020 TO 2045
Chapter 2 from our Book "Inventive Energy in the Sixth Wave of Innovation - Revolutions in Things, Computing and Synthetics" By Navneet Bhushan and Amit Kumar Mishra
2.1 Current Creative Destruction (2015-2030)
World is going through a new Creative Destruction since the year 2015. As in previous such periods of creative destruction as discussed in Chapter 1, newer technologies are changing and will continue to change the modes of economic value creation. These will replace, transform, and dismantle the older systems and functioning of the economy and in turn the society at large. The destruction will be considerable and so will the creation. To move on the creative side as quickly as one can, is usually the key objective of all organizations. However, we need to cross the chasm of new destruction.
From the start of the industrial revolution, newer technologies have regularly emerged that revolutionized the form of economic value and means of production of economic value. Each such wave has ranged a few decades. However, the duration of each such wave of innovation is reducing. If the first wave of innovation, lasting about 60 years starting around 1760 was driven by waterpower, textiles, and iron, the second wave of innovation giving way to mechanization, steam-power, and railways lasted 55 years till the year 1900. World has seen two world wars during the 3rd wave of innovation, lasting 50 years which was driven by electricity and steel. The 4th wave of innovation was driven by electronics and aviation, paving the way for the 5th wave of innovation in the year 1990. The fifth wave of innovation was driven by software, digital networks, and mobile computing (years 1990-2020). We are now in the sixth wave of Innovation.
2.2 The Sixth Wave of Innovation – Earlier attempts to calibrate 2005-2020
In the year 2009, Denial Smihula, proposed that the new wave of innovation (the sixth wave) will start around 2015 and will be driven by Bio-Medical Sciences, Nuclear Technologies, Hydrogen Engines, and maybe Robotics. He wrote, “The frequency and radicality of technological innovations are not distributed uniformly in the course of time. Revolutionary innovations in such modern society tend to come in waves rather than continuously. Each of these waves has its innovation phase (inventions occur in a form applicable in practical life and their first real application- which we call a technological revolution) followed by an application phase in which the number of revolutionary innovations falls, and attention focuses on exploiting and extending existing innovations”. James Bradfield Moody and Bianca Nogrady, in their book titled, The Sixth Wave, proposed that the next wave of innovation will be driven by resource efficiency focusing on sustainability and using clean technologies. There have been other attempts to explore and identify those technologies that will be calibrating the next wave of innovation – the sixth wave.
To our knowledge, we have not seen any study or work that used Patent trends to calibrate the sixth wave of innovation. We know that our studies using the concept of inventive energy metric for calibrating the sixth wave of innovation (2020-2045) is a unique study based on deep trends in patent activity. We define below the nine dimensions of what we found when we studied patent trends that we have included in the sixth wave of innovation calibration.
2.3 Emerging - The Sixth Wave of Innovation (2020-2045)
A new economic system is emerging through the application of novel and transformational technologies. Many dimensions of the existing economic system are becoming irrelevant or mutating its key tenets and aspects. We propose in this book that the current creative destruction is driven by what we call the sixth wave of innovation (2020-2045) technologies [1]. These are as follows.
(a) Things becoming Networked, Autonomous, Nano, and Hypersonic,
(b) Algorithmic Intelligence and Quantum Computing, and
(c) Synthetic – Biology, Energy, and Reality.
If algorithms were the building blocks of the fifth wave of innovation, Algorithmic Intelligence (impactful years 2020- 2045) will be the building block of the sixth wave of innovation. Quantum Computing (impactful years 2030 - 2045) will start finding transformation-level applications to evolve the world economy towards a self-organizing, adaptive infrastructure with multi-dimensional inter-human and human-bot hyper-connectedness.
The world economy will evolve towards a self-organizing and adaptive infrastructure with multi-dimensional inter-human and human-bot hyper-connectedness. To operate in and ride the new wave of Innovation - new thinking and calibrated actions at multiple levels and with multiple perspectives are needed. Let us calibrate the sixth wave of innovation.
2.3.1 Reality and Synthetic Reality
Significantly, the last three decades gave us a technological substrate that connects one another instantaneously, at a substantially lower cost. This should be the greatest achievement of human ingenuity and thinking. We named this new artificial substrate of our reality - cyberspace. It exists in some form that is distinct from reality in the physical world. The “reality”, however, defies precise definition, is inherently paradoxical, and is typically driven by dominant social and political beliefs [2]. This substrate also has become a vehicle to “own the reality”, by forces who would like to control us for their specific purposes and “cultism” of all kinds. The “synthetic reality” is real [3].
2.3.2 Biology and Synthetic Biology
There was a crisis in biology after World War II, when physics and to some extent chemistry, were ruling the sciences. Ludwig Von Bertalanffy changed it with his “theoretical biology” that proposed a “system theory of organism”. The system (organism) tends to preserve itself and life builds itself in a “hierarchical mode of the organization”. This expanded to general systems theory. Higher level of organizations is built by lower-level components with new laws relevant to the level being built. These new laws are not deducible from the laws of lower levels. Further, so long as the system (“organic”) has not yet reached the maximum organization possible for it, it tends towards it. We have come a long way in biology, especially with our ability to go deeper into the basic building blocks of life. The genetics revolution has given us new ways to rebuild “living systems”. Non-natural, cell-less synthetic biology is already threatening to transform the way we will live. A small error or deliberate mistake or even a designed synthetic biology attack can not only destroy a nation but can create new pandemics. A lesson from the current Pandemic, even though the evidence of it being a bioweapon is insufficient, is that a controlled version of such potentially synthetic bioweapons can be an interesting option for adversaries [9].
2.3.3 Energy and Synthetic Energy
The Internal Combustion (IC) engine that has given us more than a century of mobility in the form of automobiles is in for replacement. That depends however upon how soon we can synthesize cheaper Electric Vehicles (EVs). The expected EV boom, however, hinges on EV batteries. The lithium-ion battery that powers our mobile phones and electric vehicles is the key. 2019, Nobel Prize for Chemistry was given to the inventors of Lithium-Ion batteries, a clear indicator of how much our new world of anytime connectivity is enabled by these. As the world grapples with creating cheaper and more durable EV Batteries - see for example recent Tesla Patent [5], we are headed for the EVB boom [6]. Our ability to synthesize ways for cheaper, more durable, and green energy will impact all dimensions of human existence.
2.3.4 Things – Networked, Autonomous, Nano, and Hypersonic
If one studies what is called the “inventive energy” [7] of the world, which indicates the current focus of the inventors of the world in specific domains of technology as reflected in the published Patent applications and grant of patents by patent offices, one can see the focus of the world for last decade or so has been to make things – networked as reflected in the Internet of Things (IoT), make things autonomous – for example, many programs and projects across the world to make autonomous cars, make functional things at the nano level which is one-millionth of a millimeter and increase the speed of the objects to hypersonic levels – which is greater than 5 times the speed of sound. We are inventing to expand the boundaries of human existence and human interactivity with the matter at extremes that have been unfathomable just about a couple of decades back. The impact of these efforts and inventions across the human living spectrum – across the known or unknown future operations will be transformative.
2.3.5 The Glue – Algorithmic Intelligence
The key to synthesizing biology, energy, and reality is the ability to embed intelligence, or what should appropriately be called algorithmic intelligence into machines thereby making them more and more autonomous [8]. The ability of these algorithms to quickly filter multi-dimensional data from sensors providing rapid streams of data and creating a quick meaningful, relevant, and decision-enabling picture is well known. What has changed and is changing rapidly is the ability of technical systems to act in real-time autonomously without the need for any human intervention. This has its dangers and also its great benefits – just like any other technology. The future system of systems will be glued together through algorithmic intelligence.
2.3.6 The Emerging Glue – Quantum Computing
Quantum computing and quantum technologies will be the next level of transformational technology of the sixth wave of innovation. “Imagine a 2030 world where nanomaterials are quantum-active with quantum information encoding and manipulating their behavior. The unmanned aircraft, the robots, and the factories may be nanomaterials with the ability to hack the sub-atomic information using quantum technology systems” [9].
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Authors
Amit Kumar Mishra (Amit) is an Electronics & Communication Engineer and a registered patent agent with the Indian patent office. He is involved in IN, US, and EP patent drafting and prosecution support in the domain of electronics, mechanical, telecommunication, and software. His expert areas extend to patent analytics, landscape, Freedom to Operate Search, Validation Analysis, Portfolio Creation, office action response, Patent Licensing Support, and Patent Valuation. Amit has had the opportunity to engage with inventors, law firms & companies willing to tackle some of the most impactful and far-reaching technological evolutions. He can be contacted at amit(dot)mishra(at)crafitti(dot)com
and
Navneet Bhushan (Navneet) worked as a Scientist in DRDO from 1990-2000. He is the founder and director of CRAFITTI CONSULTING (www.crafitti.com) – an Innovation and Intellectual Property Consulting firm focused on co-crafting solutions for global problems. He regularly writes on defence, security technology, and innovation. He is the principal author of Strategic Decision Making- Applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process published by Springer-Verlag, UK, as part of the Decision Engineering Series. Navneet Blogs at http://innovationcrafting.blogspot.com.He can be contacted at navneet(dot)bhushan(at) crafitti(dot)com
References
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[2] Lifton, R.J., Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry, The New Press, USA, 2019.
[3] Bhushan N., Synthetic Reality - The Sixth Wave of Innovation Threat to National Security, Indian Defence Review, 2020, accessed July 2021
[4] Bhushan N., Bio-warfare Attack Scenario on India – What should be our response, Indian Defence Review, 2020, accessed July 2021
[5] Tesla patent could be secret behind million-mile EV battery, WhichEV, accessed July 2021 https://www.whichev.net/2020/06/12/tesla-patent-could-be-secret-behind-million-mile-ev-battery/
[6] Is the World Ready for the EV Battery Boom?, Popular Mechanics, accessed July 2021 https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/hybrid-electric/a33472810/battery-boom-electric-cars/
[7] Inventive Energy using Patent Trends, accessed July 2021
[8] Intelligent Systems, Indian Defence Industries, accessed July 2021
[9] Quantum Computing, Indian Defence Industries, accessed July 2021
[10] The Phygital, Indian Defence Industries, accessed July 2021,
[11] Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge, accessed July 2021 s
[12] Bhushan N., Law of Increasing Intelligence of Technical Systems, accessed July 2021 https://www.aitriz.org/triz-articles/inside-triz/596-law-of-increasing-intelligence-of-technical-systems
[13] Bhushan, N., Inventing Complex Intelligent Strategic Systems, TRIZCON 2020 (online), Altshuller Institute, USA, accessed July 2021,
https://youtu.be/1XMDbkxPNOk Please also see