Predicting the future: the reason behind this new course with Brightness

 

When Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 15th century, was he aware of the impacts his brilliant invention would have on the transmission of knowledge among people and on the world’s future? Like Thomas Edison in 1879 with the invention of the electric light bulb: was he aware this invention would completely disrupt our ways of living?

What about today? Some specialists are speaking about “several simultaneous Gutenberg”. The world’s transformation gets faster everyday: the world is changing faster than it’s ever been. The evolution of information technologies brought drastic changes in business models, and new technologies such as blockchain or artificial intelligence with machine learning are making the future more and more uncertain. What will happen tomorrow? What will be the next inventions which will transform the world as we know it (like the printing press, the light bulb or the telephone in their times)? How technologies like robotics, biotechnologies or virtual reality will evolve in the coming years? Brightness comes into play to deal with this situation and try to bring answers to those questions.

The story of Brightness starts in 2009 and take its roots in the creation of TEDxParis, the first European TEDx (independent TED events). TEDxParis’ founder, Michel Lévy-Provençal, partners with Nawal Hamitouche to create Brightness. The agency’s goal is to train leaders and their teams to become actors of the world’s transformation thanks to public speaking training, but also to help them understand the stakes of upcoming innovations thanks to workshops and events. In 2013, Brightness created L’Échappée Volée, the first do-tank which puts innovation at the center of society’s common good. A do-tank, from the expression think-tank, combines intellectual work and field experimentations. For its 5th edition in July 2018, L’Échappée Volée gathered 3,000 people and 40 speakers in the Paris area (la Seine Musicale). For its founder, “L’Échappée Volée is developing talents the same way TED is spreading ideas.”

After this trade show where inspiring talks, art performances and innovations were intertwined, Brightness and Coorpacademy are releasing a new course on how to predict the future. Fast-paced transformations and ideas’ evolutions brought organizations to realize that it was riskier to have a wait-and-see approach than to experience new methods and start transformations within themselves. Those same organizations have understood than those transformations won’t happen without giving their managers and their teams training to new stakes and new transformations.

Yes, it is impossible to predict the future… But this course will bring you the keys to anticipate it better. This brand new course – the 4th course co-edited with Brightness – will study upcoming transformations to raise awareness: artificial intelligence, between “weak AI” and “strong AI”, business models’ transformations, mutations of society… This future sounds uncertain and thrilling, and needs to be studied. You can see this course as a continuation of L’Échappée Volée, which “created the framework to discover new ideas and exceptional personalities, and to discover “weak signals” that deserve to be recognized and supported because they contribute to invent a new world” according to Michel Lévy-Provençal, co-founder of Brightness.

This course is soon to be available in English. To discover it in French, it’s here. You’ll find keys to better predict the future.