Joe Manchu and Anthon Botha were born in the same year; they run their own consulting businesses and they share a similar outlook on life. One is an accountant with experience in finance, banking, IT and management consulting; the other a physicist advising clients on the management and commercialisation of knowledge, technology and innovation.
Last month their shared vision to bring an "innovation catalyst" to SA-based companies and organisations came a step closer to being realised when they opened the doors to their new company, InnovationLab, at Gauteng's Innovation Hub.
In simple terms, InnovationLab is a "concept laboratory" that helps clients conceive, develop and demonstrate innovative business solutions for tomorrow.
"All businesses, governments and individuals need to continuously rethink, refresh or reinvent their products or services to survive," says Botha. Usually they will engage in scenario planning, forecasting, road mapping or strategic alignment to do so. But, "do we know enough about future technologies and the impact they will have on the world we will live and transact in, to plan adequately?"
Manchu and Botha think not. "We both have experience in strategic consulting," says Manchu, who is CEO of the new company. "We saw how people got lost just in scenario planning."
Instead the InnovationLab will provide a facility for executives to help them understand emerging technologies and then to see the possibilities that lie beyond conventional thinking. "Future business solutions are based on emerging technologies, technologies that are not yet available off the shelf," he says. "But they have been developed in the laboratories and planning rooms of the world. They exist as prototypes, demonstrators, beta versions and pilot plants.
"What if we could illustrate in a touch-and-feel environment what the world of business, work, life and play will look like tomorrow? What if companies could have early access to these technologies to conceive and demonstrate their products of the future?"
This is what InnovationLab plans to offer. While technology is at the heart of the company, it is not a scientific or engineering lab where new technology is developed, though the company may source technology or contract its development on behalf of its clients. "We will develop solutions, not technologies," says Manchu.
Examples of scenarios that InnovationLab is developing with partners include the future factory, which plans to show nanofabrication in the industries of the future, personal fabricators, superstructures based on atomic manipulation, consumer-based design, and intelligent materials; the future intelligent city which will explore digital hubs, intelligent traffic systems, clean environments, smart navigation, self-healing buildings, and integrated work and living; and future tourism, which explores virtual pre selection of the tourist experience, the travel agent as companion, information clouds, personal translators, and safe passage. Other concepts include the future bank, farm, house, community and transport system.
The focus is not just on business solutions, but also on those social solutions that explore how people will live, play and relax.
Manchu and Botha plan to grow their core team to include specialists like an engineer, a scientist, a lawyer and an economist. Beyond that, students, up to the post-doctoral level, will assist with sourcing and developing the technology demonstrators.
There are not yet that many clients. But InnovationLab is engaged in talks with a number of multinationals and hopes to announce one of them as a client soon. The company has also partnered the Meraka Institute and the department of science & technology to develop a "future knowledge" demonstrator.
They are also talking to government about designing projects that can be used as offset projects for companies that have commitments in this regard. "We have a lot of balls in the air," says Botha, "the trick is to catch some without dropping the others."
The partners are optimistic though. The concept has been well researched and best practices have been drawn from some of the world's great technology labs - MIT Media Lab; Accenture Technology Labs; and IBM Industry Solutions Laboratories. "They all had their own product or agenda to push - we wanted a solution that was not designed along academic, corporate or business consulting lines. Each is restrictive in its way."
Instead, the partners hope, their model will become a world-class node in its own right - with its mix of futures-orientated consulting, technology integration and business demonstration.
