FrontierLab developers are given the green light by stakeholder community

Delegates at the Knowledge sharing workshop recently held at The Innovation Hub. Dr Anton Botha, Managing Director Technoscene.

South Africa's first futures laboratory, FrontierLab, was recently given the green light when development partners TechnoScene and Manchu e-Solutions received a mandate from a broad community of stakeholders - multi-nationals, local business, government and tertiary education - to proceed with development.

FrontierLab is being established at The Innovation Hub in the City of Tshwane. The laboratory will research our future worlds of work and living, based on emerging technologies, and will provide related services.

To date, TechnoScene and Manchu e-Solutions have undertaken a feasibility study and facilitated a workshop where the concept was debated. Three international organisations - UK-based Ictinos Innovation headed by Dr Simon Jones, previously CEO of MIT MediaLab Europe, Accenture Technology Labs in Sophia Antipolis, France, and the Telematica Institute in Enchede in the Netherlands - participated in the workshop. Valuable insights and learning about setting up such a laboratory was shared amongst workshop participants.

FrontierLab is being developed in partnership with The Innovation Hub. As an internationally accredited Science Park that facilitates the flow of knowledge between education, research and business, the Hub is the ideal venue for the venture. The facility will consist of a number of future demonstrators, such as home of the future, office of the future, hospital of the future, city of the future, future commodities and mining, the bank of the future and future money, future infrastructure, government of the future, amongst others. One of the most important aspects to support futures research is already under development with Knowledge Focus, in partnership with Convera. The Department of Information Science at University of Pretoria is also involved in the Future Knowledge demonstrator.

The knowledge sharing workshop was preceded by a conference on "Innovating towards Tomorrow's Worlds of Business", which was attended by about 60 delegates with an interest in their own future business environments. The events were sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology, Accenture, Ictinos Innovation, the Telematica Institute, The Innovation Hub and the National Research Foundation.

For more information contact Dr Anthon Botha on 012 807 0869 or visit www.technoscene.co.za.

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