Insights & stories

Imagine a teleconference, with holograms instead of a checkerboard of faces. Or digital communication including smell, hearing and touch, in addition to sight and sound. Pure science fiction? Not really. It is what researchers think possible by 2030, through 6G. Today, we are surrounded by digital technologies that make our lives easier. Tomorrow, the immersive experience of 6G will blur the boundaries between the digital and physical world.

At the Future Forward Talk Joachim De Vos sits down with a key figure from one of our partner companies. He had a conversation with Marleen Porto-Carrero, managing partner of Farys, the Intermunicipal Company of Flanders for water distribution.

Building the home of the future also means looking into the future of the construction industry. Frederik Vaes (UAU Collectiv) and Bart Thijs, two architects behind our new ‘Living Tomorrow’ campus, see several important developments. “The soaring prices of energy and building materials and the importance of sustainability are forcing us to look beyond the latest gadgets and attractive design”, they say.

It is estimated that by 2050 the global population will have risen to 9.7 billion, up from 7.7 billion in 2019. The global economy is expected to more than double over the same period. Urbanization, automation, and the rise of living standards will significantly increase the demand for energy globally. At the same time, we urgently need to reduce our CO₂ emissions to counter climate change.

With the launch of "Why Innovation Fails - 7 keys to success" Living Tomorrow CEO Joachim De Vos is handing a guide to the future for business leaders and policy makers. He provides insights into the technological revoluition and how they can be turned into a concrete approach for successful innovation.

Why do businesses and organisations succeed so rarely in being truly innovative? Why is that a problem? And what solutions are there? Joachim De Vos, CEO of Living Tomorrow and TomorrowLab, explains in his new book ‘Why innovation fails" in great detail where the bottlenecks are and provides the keys to change course.

FARYS|TMVW entered into a cooperation with De Watergroep at the end of March, in the form of a joint subsidiary Waterunie, for a climate-robust water supply.

On 18 February 2022, a young family in Ninove in one go received three new utility meters in their home, all three replacing their existing analogue meters for gas, electricity and ... drinking water. Hence they kicked-off of a pilot project in which three Flemish drinking water companies jointly work together with network company Fluvius to install the new energy and water meters simultaneously for their customers. In this way, any inconvenience for customers is kept to a minimum, while beneficial effects are also achieved in other areas.

Research center imec and KU Leuven have developed a new type of chips for robots that work with artificial intelligence (AI). The chips combine a digital and analog coprocessor: in this way, the calculations that the AI performs can be accelerated, and energy is saved at the same time.

From now on, many of Recticel's insulation products will have PEFC certification. This means that the paper in the multi-layer facer of the insulation panels comes from forests that are managed in a sustainable way. Recticel is therefore the first of all pir/pur manufacturers to be allowed to carry the PEFC quality mark for its insulation solutions.