The Solvay Schools Alumni in Luxembourg is organising its annual Alumni Debate on Thursday 12 October 2017 at 18:30 at Arendt House in Luxembourg-Kirchberg (41A avenue J. F. Kennedy).
This tech-themed debate will address "creative destruction of businesses and productivity"; it gathers a renowned panel of speakers composed of reputed Solvay Alumni, local entrepreneurs, venture capitalisits as well as thought leaders.
Perpetuating Ernest Solvay’s mission to have a decisive and positive impact on how economic and business challenges are addressed, the accent of this year’s gathering is to confer with experts to raise awareness and lead discussion of automation challenges, and its impacts across competence fields and industries, driving the fourth industrial revolution.
The Rise of the Machines aims to draw the attention to the recent and upcoming developments in robotics and artificial intelligence as well as machine learning and computing capacity more generally.
The dawn of a new automation age is not only challaging existing value propositions as labour costs are being slashed for routine work activities - cognitive capabilities are going to transform business processes of magniture likened to the mechanisation of production in 18th century, albeit at a significantly higher pace.
Providing the unique opportunity to interact and exchange experiences, Solvay Alumni organise this exclusive conference to underscore recent success stories with startup pitches and discussion on the core premises to implement and develop future-proof intelligent processes.
- Mathilde Argaud, Largowind CEO & Founder
- Alfonso García Frey, Yotako CEO & Co-Founder
- Grégory Nain, datathings Co-Manager & Co-Founder
- Julien-Alexandre Lamamy, Engineering Manager ispace
- Minerva Elias, Manager Innovative & Alternative Finance at the EIF
- Ann Dooms, Prof. Digital Mathematics at Vrije Universiteit Brussel
- Jérôme Wittamer, VC, Founding Partner Expon Capital & Chairman LPEA
- Laurent Kratz, CEO and founder of NEOFACTO & Scorechain
The debate, an annual celebration by the Solvay Alumni, is gathering both startups and experts in order to channel different views on the revolution’s attendant disruption.
As articulated during this year’s World Economic Forum, the debate’s focal point can be strcutured around a triumvirate of skills, first mover compratative advantages and changed ecosystems challanging current collaboration, regulation and standards.
The experts on the panel will expand on what Klaus Schwab has defined as the qualifiers of the fourth industrial revolution: the velocity of change, its scope and the system impact.
There is no precedent to the speed of change which has been exponential rathar than following a normalized linear path.
Likewise the scope has encompassed a greater multitude of fields of expertise as the rise in processing power and the devline costs of storage have facilitated access to knowledge and the gathering of new insights.
The externality of this change, spanning from computational design to adaptive manufacturing has brought econonic concern in the form of societal questions on the displacement effects due to capital returns. In its most crude form the change in factors of production has led dramaticly changed inequalities between holders of monetary and intellectual capital.
Programme
18:30 Registration
19:00 Opening Speech
19:05 Startup Pitches
19:25 Panel Discussion
20:15 Walking Dinner
