104 Pages of Ideas to Future-Proof Yourself & Your Business

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034 SCIENCE WW2015 NEW QUESTIONS

50.Once you’ve done this,step back and determine three or four questions that are the most “catalytic” – the startling ones that force you to change your BUSINESS perspective. Seek solutions to these questions until you uncover extraor- dinary insights and answers. One way catalytic questioning can help a company transform its business BRAINS GET with big data is by asking: “What story is the data telling us?” Consider SAP. SAP data scientists worked with a major transportation company that THINKING HE GREATER THE DATA WE HAVE, was struggling tounderstand what was With detailed metrics pouring in from every the harder it is going to be to discover impacting its financial performance, direction, businesses have never had so itsimplications.In2015,anewapproach and to predict where the market was much insight. 2015 will be the year they learn toanalysis –catalytic questioning –will heading. Using catalytic questioning, to ask their data the right questions give business leaders fresh insightsthat SAP brainstormed with executives. will transform markets. From those questions the data scien- By Hal Gregersen Catalyticquestioningisanalternative tists developed forecasting models to to brainstorming whereby your team analyse more than 48,000 combina- can do question-centric work. Pick a tions of “products shipped x location problem that your team cares deeply x customer” that were validated aboutandasknothingbutquestions(no against thousands of macro-economic answersallowed)untilyoureachatleast factors,competitive dataand customer

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ILLUSTRATION: SAM FALCONER

LEVITA TING TRAINS - A Cambridge team will commercialise a cheap, efficient high-temperature DIPLOMACY semiconductor for maglev trains. The material can trap a record- breaking electric field of 17.6 Tesla. IN SPACE sentiment. Fuelled by uncommon Off-planet relations become the new final frontier as the US, Russia, questions and big data, this company China and Europe work to find ways of co-existing in orbit is now predicting future outcomes and competing more successfully. By AN Hash In the not-too-distant future, wemayseeartificialintelligenceactively engaged in catalytic questioning. By Whether the mission succeeds, or tracking subtle human cues (heart rate, even runs its full term, depends less on etc) it may provide instant feedback for thescienceofhealthrisks,however,and a group to generate new questions. But more on the political situation down machines will not be able to truly read on Earth. The key question in 2015 will emotion, at least in the next decade or be how viable a multinational space two,so they can’t completely duplicate station led by the US really is? catalytic questioning. This process is The US is lead nation: it pays the inherently a creative one that’s meant most annually to keep the station to convert raw numbers into ripe running. But the ISS is a joint venture. understanding and solutions. Beyond Russia, Canada, Japan and the providing a unique perspective on European Space Agency contribute how to achieve a goal, this process NANO substantially to its running costs. As can also uncover whether the original partners in space, they also depend goal is even worth pursuing. PROPELLER on each other more than many of their Ifworldleaderslearntoasknovelnew politicians on Earth would like. questions, big data can enable them to Nano materials At the most fundamental level, solve some of the planet’s most vexing will be able to ISS crew members depend on the challenges. Researchers, for example, travel through station’s Environmental Control and have often depended on physical obser- fluids thanks Life Support System (ECLSS). This vation to understand Earth’s biodi- to a propeller- provides critical life support: the air, versity and the interrelationship of like structure water and food needed to keep the species. However, by using data from developed by humans on board alive. Both US and DNA testing, combined with environ- researchers Russians systems are used and, in mental findings, researchers with the in Israel and many cases, this means that redun- Barcode of Life project can now ask Germany. The dancy is built in: one side’s sub-system questionssuchas,“Whatspeciesofplant team has built a Y MARCH 2015, US ASTRONAUT can cover for the other’s in the event of did a specific caterpillar feed on, and tiny corkscrew, Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut any major system failure. The Russian what parasites fed on the caterpillar?” 70 nm-wide and Mikhail Kornienko will have begun a segment depends on electricity Understandingthevariousfoodwebs 400 nm-long, US-Russian one-year mission aboard generated by US solar arrays; it stays willbecriticaltoprotectingbiodiversity and made of the International Space Station (ISS). orientated using data drawn from and our future food supply. silica and nickel, Instead of the standard six months, US satellites and gyroscopes. 2015 will be the year when big which is powered the two men plan to spend an entire Since axing its ageing Space questions will force big leaders to by an external year circling Earth. By monitoring Shuttle fleet in 2011, the US depends challenge big assumptions that magnetic field. the two men over a longer period of on Russian help to reach the station.

JONES perpetuate big, enduring problems. If This will allow time than usual, medical researchers For Roscosmos, the cash-strapped leaders fail to ask new, uncomfortable, it to propel its hope to get a better understanding of Russian Federal Space Agency, an JAMIE emotionally charged questions, we payload through the physiological damage suered by astronaut on one of its Soyuz space-

TION: will live out the same old answers – no bodily fluids humans in space. The aim is to devise craft taking the six-hour trip to the

USTRA matter how big the data sets become. such as blood ways of protecting humans living in ISS brings in over $70 million (£41m).

ILL HalGregersenisexecutivedirectorofthe and deliver it to a space for long periods,with an obvious In 2015 this balance of dependency

SPOT MIT Sloan Leadership Centre precise location glance to future missions to Mars. will end. The renewed rattling of sabres in the body. In vivo tests will begin in 2015.

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