Forecasting Innovation from Today’s Nobel-Quality Science

As the Royal Swedish Academy announces this year’s Nobel Prizes, it’s a fitting time to reflect on the relationship between scientific breakthroughs and innovation. While innovation doesn’t always require science — it can stem from ingenuity or clever design — the most transformative advances of the past 300 years have been rooted in new scientific insights. 

Translating a scientific discovery into real-world innovation, however, is rarely straightforward. Einstein’s 1917 paper on stimulated emission laid the foundation for laser technology, but it would still take 43 years until the first functional laser was produced — and even then, applications were unclear. It would take another 20 years for mass applications, like optical data storage, to emerge. 

In this webinar, we’ll explore how groundbreaking science evolves into transformative products and services over three innovation generations. We’ll also examine emerging scientific advances poised to spark entirely new industries.