Search For The ‘Next Big Idea' Needs To Continue In The New Normal

A formal group or panel needs to be tasked with specifically looking for creative ideas that might lead to a competitive advantage, projects where some preliminary experimental work has already been completed, and projects for which resources are required from both within and outside

- Rajesh Nair

We normally look at the future as a logical extension of the past. Our surmises and conjectures are often based on incremental changes in technology. Then came the pandemic! With the tectonic impact of exponential and combinatorial events, the future could be a lot different from what we see from the drawing board today. The core of most of these changes can be looked at from the prism of Moore’s Law – a concept from the 70s which simply suggested that the processing speed of a computer chip that we can buy for $1000 roughly doubles every 18 to 24 months. And this is not just engineering technology, but even biological sciences see these effects – the dramatic cost decline in human genome sequencing from the whopping US $10 Million in 2008 to around US $800 today. It also explains the need for organisations to constantly look inward and see potential disruptions much ahead of the curve down the road.