The IRI2038 team continues to work on the influence diagrams developed at the ROR Winter Meeting with the objective of having four fully developed future scenarios for consideration at the Diamond Jubilee meeting. Four parallel workshops will be held on Tuesday afternoon, May 21st.  After reviewing a scenario, participants will develop R&D management strategies for each potential future. Results will be used to design an online game about the future of R&D management that will run in the September timeframe. Final scenario results, videos, and game results will be reported at the Future Summit in November.

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The Four Scenarios Under Development:

Africa Leapfrogs Developed Markets - Increasing demand for more customized products drives flexible and localized manufacturing processes. With less of an installed asset base, Africa jumps ahead of the developed world in meeting customer expectations for more personalized products.

The Death of Distance - Technology and connectivity make distance irrelevant at last. MOOC's raise the education level in developing countries and mega-cities faster than any time in history. Access to resources, not level of education, drives stratification of societies.

The Hollywood Model - Research project management as we know it today is over! With the growth of freelance R&D and citizen science, the project managers' role will resemble that of a Hollywood producer today: temporarily assembling the talent and physical assets required on a project-by-project basis.

Everything's in Beta - The manufacturing ecosystem collapses as open hardware platforms and new apps flood global markets with products of questionable quality. Local manufacturing- and city-based markets emerge to reclaim quality, creating new opportunities for new and smaller business entities.

Perfecting Persuasion -The Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab creates insight into how computing products--from websites to mobile phone software--can be designed to change what people believe and what they do.

Islands in a Connected World -"The Internet of Things (IoT) was born between 2008 and 2009" when the number of devices connected to the internet surpassed the number of people connected (The Internet of Things by Dave Evans). With everything from pacemakers to insulin pumps to thermostats now hacked, do we need a second, more secure, internet?

Nurturing the Data Supply Chain -Virginia Rometty, IBM Chairman and CEO, recently spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations 2013 Corporate Council. She argued that data should be treated as the next great natural resource and basis of competition among companies, government agencies, non-profits, etc.