A Digital Twin for your next Tea Ceremony? The Future of (Business) Events, Anno 2021/2022.

Since February 2021, together with Filiberto Amati, founder of Amati and Associates, Warsaw, and Polish licensed representative of BOMA, US, we engaged in a research program focusing on the future of the future of events. In this article, a synthesis of what done so far is presented, and an anticipation of what is next is provided.

At the end of Summer 2021, we started to engage with 30+ thought leaders, senior industry leaders, AI foresight consultants, Design Thinkers, and emerging talents in the event industry.The program started in February with an interview with industry leader Rinco van Rijn, Global Leader of Events and Sponsorships at Signify, formerly known as Philips Lighting, with whom we spoke also of education in the sector, and did continue with industry senior Simon Poulter, Global Manager Corporate Communications at Vodafone. formerly with Lucent Technologies, Nokia, and Philips, who shared views on corporate communications, media relations, the event sector, the relationships with journalism, the destiny of world class, High Tech fairs, and his passionate background for music. High Tech and digital futures remained central in our research interests, with the generous contributions by Claudia Lieshout, Principal Design Research at Philips, and Petra Beekmans-Van Zijl, Global Head of Communications at Nexperia Semiconductors, who -in the hottest Summer ever for silicon chips, due to their endemic shortage- enlightened us with visions and views on digital roadmaps, brand management, and the role of tomorrow’s innovations in the context of business events.

Parallel to senior industry leaders, thought leading Dr. Robert Govers, Chairman, International Place Branding Association, and Samir Bantal, Director at AMO, the world class research studio by Rem Kohlhaas at the Office for Metropolitan Architcture, Rotterdam, elaborated insightfully on cities, design, place-making, place branding, museums, and other mission more world class design leaders. A pivotal moment in our dialog with thought leaders was the interview with Joanne Schroeder, President of the UN World Leisure Organization, US, and Chair of the Graduate Programs at Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo, B.C., Canada, who uniquely expanded the reflection on cities, communities, and the necessity to pursue innovative (leisure) policies towards true inclusion and social innovation.

At the crossroads of industry seniority and thought leadership, Filiberto and I had the privilege to speak with Rieko Shofu, CEO, Pokka, Singapore, and CEO, Sapporo Group Foods Ltd, Tokyo, and the founder of SensingAsia, Tokyo, the intelligence firm for enterprises that have the ambition to enter the Asian continent with the best forward looking perspective — please click here to enjoy the YouTube recording of the interview. Rieko is an alumnus of both Wharton Business School, Philadelphia, U.S. and of THNK, the School for Creative Leadership in Amsterdam, where I have contributed during my Ph.D trajectory as Research Fellow, and I have had the pleasure to share the stage with her at the ESOMAR 2009 Fragrances conference in Cannes, where we submitted our award winning paper, and events on luxury and premium in Moscow, Beijing, and more.

Remotely, in the comfort of our homes, in Singapore, Warsaw, and Eindhoven, The Netherlands, Rieko shared with Filiberto and me her views and vision on the future, with unique insights as to be expected. Some selected insights include:

1. in the food and beverage / spirits industries, the challenge will be to go beyond product delivery (to be automated with drones and robots), into the recreation of a whole brand experience, digitally and through micro-engagement events;
2. a remarkable example of micro-engagement event was delivered by Singapore Airlines that enabled First Class passengers to enjoy fine dining at home, with the same inflight experiential value of luxury by means of highly customised delivery;
3. over the next half decade, the digitalising of events will possibly translate into a restructuring of said industry into a data-driven reality, divided into a limited number of world class data management platforms, run by the Microsofts or Googles of the future, and a countless number of vertical “phy-gital”” event curators, designers, and organisers, redefining the actual economic and organisational structures within the entire sector;
4. the digitalisation of events into “phy-gital”, data-driven platforms / verticals will have reflections on how talent is managed and formed, with the rapidly increasing need to establish empathic leadership in corporate or large enterprises in order to nurture content, and with marketing, psychology and digital design as the new leading domains deemed to form tomorrow’s talents at academic level;
5. the power of events will remain in their cultural roots, where a spiritual experience like the Japanese Tea Ceremony, that Rieko considers her lifetime achievement as she masters every aspect of it in her traditional Tea House in her Kyoto family residence; the challenge will be to generate digital and “phy-gital” experiences enabled by Digital Twins or immersive technologies, where cultural roots are fully embodied.

It was excellent to be on video with Rieko, who is firmly positioned as a thought leader on issues of gender and inclusion, and a delightful host herself, as I can recall our latest meeting in Tokyo, namely an informal Xmas lunch in 2018. As Xmas is different in Japan, we met and shared a very relaxed Asian meal with green tea at an elegant location in Omotesando, the fashion district of the Japanese capital. Arigatogozaimasu, Rieko-san! And thanks to all the above senior industry leaders and thought leaders who accepted my invitation to join Filiberto and me in the first half of 2021, in order to set a solid yet visionary foundation to our research ambitions to scope, envision, and sketch the future of events, from here to the end of the decade, with particular focus on the shorter and mid term (2023–2025).

What is yet to come next in 2021/2022: A.I., Design Thinking, and emerging talents from the event industries

In September 2021, Filberto Amati and I will complete our first phase of visioning with the unique possibility to involve and engage with design guru and industry visionary, Bruce Mau. In the 1990s, Bruce art directed Rem Kohlaas’ legendary book “S, M, L, XL” and magazines like Flash Art International, establishing himself as a front-running leader in the “desktop revolution” in graphic design. Since the early 2000s, Bruce has shifted to design as a tool to aim at achieving “Massive Change”, towards a new notion of “design for life” that encompasses empathy and care for the context, holistically, as key within the creative process. Fresh from the recent publication with Phaidon of a new milestone in his thought leading reflexive practice, Bruce will join Filiberto and me in a final interview of our first series. This will mark the end of our first foresight research phase, that was focused on professional personalities and thought leaders.

Artificial Intelligence-led Foresight

Then, the next phase of validation and optimisation of findings will come. This will be structured in three different moments of dialog and interaction. Firstly, a moment of consolidation of our early findings in the form of semantic analysis and online extraction of directions and new meaning was performed with Mike Jackson, Founder and CEO, and will be presented by Dennis Draeger, both of Shaping Tomorrow, where we will benefit from the state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence of Athena, the foresight robot, in order to generate their specific insights. Dennis will present the outcome of our collaborative efforts, with an introduction by Filiberto and I where we will clarify our viewpoint on A.I. and Design Futures, based on our co-authored paper printed in a special issue of World Futures Review, SAGE, edited by foresight “godfather”, James Dator.

Lastly, Filiberto and I will return to immerse ourselves in structured dialogs with two specific categories of talented professionals and exceptional individuals, with whom we will a) validate our early hypothesis; b) stretch our insights from physical return to digital trajectories of post pandemic events; c) sketch new views and visions of possible, probable, and preferable futures of events in general, and business events in particular. As a result, we will accumulate, present and analyze by coding a critical mass of qualitative research data, leading to a constructivist, co-created vision of the future of the field under study.

Design Thinkers: speculation, conception, curation

We chose to engage with Design Thinkers because of their proven capability to envision the future by speculation, conceptual imagination, and daring drive to challenge the status quo. We selected our partners in crime among senior to next generation talents within creative industry networks, from enterprises like IKEA, Sweden, or Sonos, U.S.A., to Design Futures and foresight “boutiques” like TrendONE, Hamburg, to Breque, Amsterdam. The principle we adopted is to select and speak with current or former experts in curation and conception within Design Research, Speculative Design, Organisational Design, and other creative industry disciplines and directions.

Emerging Talents: tomorrow’s event industry leaders

We chose to engage with Emerging Talents in the field of study because of their proven ability to perform, progress, and prepare the future of their sector, as proven during their coherent and consistent professional track record from higher education in event tracks with consequential diploma at BA or MA or equivalent levels, to promising and sometimes bright advancement in their growth within jobs pertaining to event design, management or curation, and business events in particular. We selected the next generation of seniors in event sectors and idustries , from enterprises like a leading bank, Germany, or start ups / scale ups from Amsterdam, to social innovation young leaders from South Africa or Sint Maarten. The principle we adopted is to select and speak with the next generation of event-related professions, with a bright track of 2 to 12 years in their professional growth path, from project leadership to management positions within diverse organizations or on consulting basis, including creative direction and trend setting towards sustainability and inclusion in hospitality and leisure.

Filiberto and I enjoyed more than 20 dialogs, that provides scientific validity to the coded outcome according to Grounded Theory, facilitated through a structure yet open and dynamic framework, where Design Thinkers and Emerging Talents critically reviewed our early findings and assumptions with their insights and ideas, as derived from such a diverse parterre of professionals with a vision. As based on earlier professional practice at Philips Design, a matrix tool was sketched to be piloted, tested, and consolidated in these two cycles of dialogs. Preliminary insights in the future of (business) events will be documented in Medium articles and presented in conferences, seminars, and lectures in the course of 2021/2022, in order to finalize our research according to constructivist, co-creative, and participatory principles. At the end of our analytical efforts, a validated tool will therefore tentatively be available to practitioners and designers, shifting the focus of our applied research from reflexivity to generative creativity. In parallel to our convinced grounding in terms of applicability, Filiberto and I will as well not let go of our research efforts, as in 2022 we will follow up with editing our research methodology and findings into a peer reviewed paper, for submission and publication to a scientific journal to be defined. This duality represents the parallel ambition of our bottom up research initiatives, between the everyday reality of practices within industries “in the world” and the rigorous intellectual and methodological obligations of academic research, that might sometimes sound like an “ivory tower” to the layman but is necessary to contribute to any field with the necessary solidity and robustness for future validity and applicability.

In conclusion, while the 2021/2022 “research season” will soon open with Bruce Mau as welcome keynote interviewee, Filiberto Amati and I would like to acknowledge and thank in one synthetic overview all the professional friends and generous leaders who enabled our work about the future of (business) events. To all the above and the 20+ talented contributors who will be revealed in the course of Fall 2021, who agreed to join us in our effort, Filiberto and I express and reiterate our gratitude. We are looking forward to engaging further in our dialogs, in 2021/2022.

Originally published at https://www.marcobevolo.com on April 16, 2021.