I share a passion with entrepreneurs around the world, to improve the world around me. This passion inspired the desire to design an organization that manifests itself in the ability to cultivate an ambition to innovate. Every founder has a unique perspective on the organization they are working on and in this piece, I want to elaborate on my own. This view is summarized in two phrases that are core to Nuwa. The first is that we share the ambition to innovate and the second is that we view the world as our canvas. I believe these phrases are essential in nurturing a culture that cherishes creativity, innovation, and curiosity.
Moving back in time, we created our first technology as tools starting 4 million years ago to make spears or cook food. We created our first drawings 70,000 years ago. 10,000 years ago we started cultivating our first crops. The world’s first glasses were made in Italy 1,000 years ago. And in just the last 50 years we went to the moon (1969), designed our first microprocessors (1970s), and launched the modern smartphone (2007). The time between leaps in innovation is gradually decreasing. Where the previous global revolution had been personal computing, I believe the next will be spatial computing followed closely by a revolution in biotechnology and material sciences. But what will define our lifetime will be the impact seen and felt, as a result of the acceleration of convergent technologies. This movement implies that varying fields of high technology will converge. Nuwa will be designed to leverage this direction with the purpose of acting as a propulsion mechanism that pushes the technological proficiency of our species forward.
Artificial intelligence is integral to any process moving forward. Where it is possible to alleviate people from robotic tasks, it should be imperative to do so in order to unleash their creative potential. Spatial computing – the overarching term for virtual reality, augmented reality, and extended reality – is in its birth stage. The ability to interact with a world as an extension of our own, by bringing our experience from a 2D interface to a natural interface will launch a revolution in the way we experience entertainment, collaboration, and art creation. The ever-rising capabilities of sensors, network speeds, and trust-centered technologies such as blockchain will close gaps in information enabling more efficient communication. Progress in materials science and biotechnology will result in breakthroughs for the ingredients we use to make anything from shampoo bottles and underwear to chips. Advances in sub-technologies such as nanotechnology and genomics will broaden our concept of materials and health. We will experience efficiency gains in energy storage and production, processing complex troves of data with quantum computing, and personalized manufacturing with 3D printing.
These are the technologies that are converging at an accelerating pace and each is influencing the evolution of the other. From an ecological perspective, those affected most are undoubtedly the people. We design these tools to amplify our capabilities, unintentionally disrupting the ecosystem we rely on. Our minds make us feel responsible for the effects we have on nature and social dynamics. We strive to fix what we have broken, but even those pushes for good unintentionally have negative effects on the ecosystem on which the broken was designed upon. So we should not seek to fix, but rather to evolve. As an example, let us consider the concept of ocean cleanup. While the primary focus is to extract plastic out of the ocean, technologies similar to dams are being installed to restrict large plastics to enter the ocean; with the consequence of disrupting the surrounding ecosystem. This necessary solution will not solve the challenge. The challenge is to evolve from plastic production by investing in material sciences to mass manufacture cheaper, sustainable alternatives catered towards the 750 billion dollar industry.
To bring this back to Nuwa, the first pillar signifying its existence is innovation leveraging convergent technology. The second introduces a principle harmonizing evolution and ecology in order to sustainably develop products for the people of tomorrow: do not take more than you give back. The third pillar is craftsmanship, our way of indicating the importance of mastering technologies and methods to make beautiful products. This final pillar is emotionally the closest to the people using and creating our products. From an organizational perspective, innovation not only takes place in our output but also in the workplace itself. For the greater part of the world in the last 200 years, through economic growth and increased global wealth, the diminishing necessity of work-to-survive motivated people to seek purpose in their work. So almost naturally, we desire our workplaces to resemble a playground in which curiosity, innovation, and creativity are rewarded; and where people can be people. This experience will be essential to the organization and will emanate through the lives of those contributing to Nuwa’s purpose as much as resonate with the customers enjoying our products.
In 2020, Nuwa set out to expand the digital canvas to one that isn’t limited by the confinements of the screen, our vision of the true meaning behind spatial computing. The first step in this mission is to develop the pen of the future. This will be followed by the glasses of the future by which time Nuwa will have made its mark in 2030 a global company that designs and produces high technology in Europe. The strategy mentioned hereafter will be foundational to Nuwa’s way forward as it integrates and appropriates knowledge to realize the vision for the future: while the spatial computing venture of the organization matures sufficiently to exploit itself, we explore new territory. This new territory would involve materials sciences, among other applications, to develop the fabric of the future fitted for the 1 trillion dollar textile industry. Advances in this field would promote the mass production of sustainable materials that can be used in toys, clothing, and other products found in people’s homes. As the wingspan of the organization increases, we target the 3.5 trillion dollar airline industry by developing the future of air transportation. While the rapid innovation in materials sciences matures, we explore sustainable food production catered to the 5 trillion dollar industry through 3-D printing, robotics, and biotechnology and we follow by exploring the personalization of healthcare through genomics and nanotechnology designed for the 8.5 trillion dollars pharmaceutical industry. In the meantime, the appropriation of knowledge in networks, blockchain, and artificial intelligence will impact art, education, and the efficiency of democracy all while enabling Nuwa’s capabilities to forge the future of agriculture and industry.
This ambition is extensive and necessitates a global perspective. Developments in communication and collaboration have furthered education and technological prowess to every part of the planet. Although Nuwa will be headquartered in The Netherlands, the presence will be expanded through satellite research and development centers spread internationally to harness the talent concentration in cities such as London, San Francisco, Sydney, Paris, Tokyo, and Shanghai. While this existence facilitates increased knowledge transfer, Nuwa’s challenge will lie in the organization’s absorptive capacity. This term, derived from innovation literature, indicates a firm’s ability to recognize new information, assimilate it and apply it to commercial ends. Nuwa’s cultural mechanisms will incentivize and reward behavior that increases its absorptive capacity. In the long run, this culture will enhance Nuwa’s sustainable competitive advantage. Interactions aside, the pursuit of Nuwa’s vision will be a global undertaking spanning the largest industries in the world in order to innovate for humanity.
Technological progress has been hampered by the struggle between ecology, profit, and human experience. So, we position ourselves as understanding the impacts of evolution. We foster a deep love for technology in our souls which enables us to design beautiful products for the people of tomorrow. Meet Nuwa.
