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Get inspired. Check out more about the future for the health sciences industry at www.inspirethefuture.com/health-sciences.Miranda
Aunt Natalie is set to depart on a new mission for the Cosmopolitan Retrofuturistic Innovators’ Secret Investigative Sisterhood (CRISIS).
The episode concludes with SAP executives discussing the value and importance of analyzing and using patient data, as well as innovations around personalization and privacy concerns.
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Get inspired. Check out more about the future for the health sciences industry at www.inspirethefuture.com/health-sciences.Aunt Natalie implores Miranda to give back to the world by volunteering for a research study on ice cream headaches and the adolescent brain. Once at the hospital for an fMRI, Miranda is overwhelmed with the intake form, noting that she can download her video game scores from wherever she can get a signal, but her complete medical history has to be provided manually.
Aunt Natalie recounts an incident with a Tajik chemist who operated a lab from a yurt in central Asia to create a “smart pill”. Her story distracts her niece right up until the doctor tells her that she must choose between garlic- or fish-flavored ice cream for the research study.
The episode concludes with SAP executives discussing the value and importance of analyzing and using patient data, as well as innovations around personalization and privacy concerns.
Produced by SAP.
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Get inspired. Check out more about the future for the telecommunications industry at www.inspirethefuture.com/telecommunications.When her neighbor winds up in the hospital, Miranda agrees to take care of her Great Dane, only to lose the dog the moment she opens the door to feed him. Not only is she panicking about the dog, she’s worried what her elderly neighbor will think.
It doesn’t exactly help when her beloved, and kooky, aunt relates a dire tale of dognapping. In another valiant attempt to distract her niece from a meltdown, Aunt Natalie recalls how the dognaper was thwarted by technology in the form of a speaker, attached to a dog’s vest, that had been programmed to interpret various sounds the dog makes: two quick barks, a growl, a howl. Each sound would trigger the speaker to play a pre-programmed message so that anyone in within hearing distance, could provide needed assistance.
To Miranda’s relief, the Great Dane hadn’t been stolen. He’d simply missed his owner and was desperate to find her.
The episode concludes with SAP executives discussing how the telecommunications industry is evolving to support not only humans’ ubiquitous interactions with things like 5G, IoT, AI, and ML, but also real ways for service dogs to interact with technology.
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Get inspired. Check out more about the future for the telecommunications industry at www.inspirethefuture.com/telecommunications.Miranda decides to play a small prank on Aunt Natalie, and fortunately her aunt has a great sense of humor about it. However, Aunt Natalie takes the opportunity to advise her young niece about the distinction between constructive and destructive behavior by relating a story about an innocent prank phone call that went terribly wrong.
It seems that the mayor of Grappen, Netherlands received a call from someone claiming to be the esteemed microbiologist, Dr. Johannes De Nep. He informed the mayor that their entire water system was infected with a dangerous chemical called “dihydrogen monoxide,” a colorless - odorless chemical that’s associated with many known toxic substances, including fertilizers, pesticides, and industrial solvents. It’s highly regulated internationally and continues to be a cause of many environmental disasters. It’s been used in the production of pharmaceuticals, plastics, and adhesives, and has extensive military applications. It’s also popular among substance abusers. Altogether, it contributes to millions of dollars in property damage and thousands of deaths each year.
The town acted quickly but shutting down the water supply kicked off a chain reaction with dire consequences. And the prankster got fourteen years in jail and had to pay for the entire cleanup.
The episode concludes with SAP executives discussing how the ability to deliver compelling services and unique customer experiences while protecting privacy and ensuring security is key for the telecommunications industry.
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Get inspired. Check out more about the future for the higher education industry at www.inspirethefuture.com/higher-education-research.Aunt Natalie prepares Miranda for a crisis by conducting a midnight fire drill.
Despite the fact that it’s the middle of the night and Miranda is exhausted, Aunt Natalie is excited about the Internet of Things and smart watches. She begins planning the creation of a random crisis-generator app that could be installed on her niece’s phone. This way, Aunt Natalie could control it at any time from anywhere, thus ensuring that she can help keep Miranda safe and prepared.
Not surprisingly, Miranda is so not a fan of this idea. “Seriously? You know me, right? We have met. Do you honestly think I need an app on my phone that will randomly start a crisis?” In an effort to calm her down, Aunt Natalie tries to teach her about the challenges of disaster preparedness by regaling her with a story of how a group of legendary South African jazz musicians used their improvisational skills to help the different departments of a university collaborate more effectively to manage crises.
The episode concludes with SAP executives discussing how institutions of higher education cannot rely on the last disaster when preparing for the next one, as the next crisis is likely to be something unforeseen.
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Get inspired. Check out more about the future for the higher education industry at www.inspirethefuture.com/higher-education-research.Miranda is struggling with the library’s old technology and accidently destroys a reel for the microfilm reader.
Amidst the chaos of the librarian trying to fix the broken machine and other students freaking out about their classes not going well, Miranda foresees a bleak future as the entire world learns that she’s completely obliterated a part of history.
Aunt Natalie tries to distract her by relating an account of her time at Poland’s “Flying University” when future Nobel laureate Marie Curie was her lab partner. Initially Miranda thinks it was a school for flight attendants but is intrigued to learn that it was actually a clandestine, underground “school” that operated in Warsaw for students who were denied an education for various reasons.
The episode concludes with SAP executives discussing the future for institutions of higher education as they increasingly evolve to become customer centric.
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Get inspired. Check out more about the future for the public sector at www.inspirethefuture.com/public-sector-government.As we open this episode, Miranda and her Aunt Natalie have just completed a 15-kilometer hike. “Uphill. Both ways!” wails a dehydrated Miranda.
Aunt Natalie gives her a dollar for a bottle of water but it’s old and worn so the vending machine refuses to accept it. On the brink of a heat-induced meltdown, she refuses to use the water fountain out of a fear of contaminants. “Raccoons drink from water fountains. They use their creepy little hands to push the button. They have rabies! If I drink from that fountain, my brain will swell until my head explodes!”
Her aunt tries to distract her from enumerating all the ways her head could explode with another fantastic tale of the Cosmopolitan Retrofuturistic Innovator’s Secret Investigative Sisterhood. This one is about the time they helped the island nation called Morologia automate the delivery of government services.
The episode concludes with SAP executives discussing the very real possibilities of an intelligent automated constituent-centric public sector.
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Get inspired. Check out more about the future for the public sector at www.inspirethefuture.com/public-sector-government.In this episode, we find 12yo Miranda overwhelmed by an upcoming dance competition. Aunt Natalie attempts to distract her with a memory of the Cosmopolitan Retrofuturistic Innovator’s Secret Investigative Sisterhood.
It turns out that long ago and far away, an evil man once infected an entire (tiny) town with choreomania, or “the dancing plague.” No one in government could get any work done because they all were dancing like mad and couldn’t stop. It was a public health problem that became an economic problem, and ultimately a public policy problem.
Fortunately, the sisterhood stepped in to help the citizenry get back to business just as Aunt Natalie stepped into a spare pair of tap shoes to help her niece master the Double Maxi Ford Toe with a Pullback.
The episode concludes with SAP executives discussing how by becoming the public-sector equivalent of a private-sector intelligent enterprise, governments and agencies can transform their approach to constituent service and be more effective in fulfilling their mission.
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Get inspired. Check out more about the future for the oil and gas industry at www.inspirethefuture.com/oil-gas.The episode opens with young Miranda in a state of panic brought on by the discovery that her private journal has gone missing. Aunt Natale finds it ironic that her niece can’t remember where she put a journal of thoughts she’s written down so that she won’t forget them. Not surprisingly, this does little to alleviate Miranda’s crises.
Her aunt assures her that the Cosmopolitan Retrofuturistic Innovator’s Secret Investigative Sisterhood literally wrote the book on the “disappearing object phenomenon” when they’d been called in to help find a crude oil tanker called the “Voyager” that had vanished without a trace in the Bermuda Triangle.
The sisterhood discovered there are basically 5 possible explanations when things go missing. By staying calm and working through their options, they’re able to resolve Miranda’s crisis.
The episode concludes with SAP executives discussing the challenge faced by large enterprises like those in the oil and gas industry when managing thousands of assets, and how intelligent enterprises maximize asset performance with real-time insights, predictions, and simulations.
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Get inspired. Check out more about the future for the oil and gas industry at www.inspirethefuture.com/oil-gas.In this episode, young Miranda informs her Aunt Natalie that she’s trying to make bombs, but she’s stressed because it’s not going very well. To Aunt Natale’s relief, they’re bath bombs made with essential oils. This triggers one of Aunt Natale’s outrageous memories, in which she worked with a German physicist named London in the United States. The team was trying to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen in an attempt to build a water engine as part of Winston Churchill’s Special Operations Executive.
Although the Cosmopolitan Retrofuturistic Innovator’s Secret Investigative Sisterhood’s efforts to build a working water engine are ongoing (CRISIS never gives up), their efforts highlight how alternative energy sources are nothing new.
Miranda expresses concern that oil and gas are destroying the planet. Fortunately, her aunt takes the time to explain that oil and gas themselves are a natural part of the planet and they’re inanimate, so they’re not inherently evil. But she also points out that the entire world needs to be cautious about how we obtain our resources and how we use them.
The episode concludes with SAP executives discussing the need for innovation and efficiency for oil and gas procurement since alternative energy sources can only be part of the solution, and fossil fuels are a finite commodity.
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Get inspired. Check out more about the future for the consumer products industry at www.inspirethefuture.com/consumer-products.In this episode, young Miranda finds herself upset due to a group robotics project that seems to be in jeopardy due to lack of follow-through on the part of her teammates, only to learn that they had not let her down after all. This is doubly important to Miranda as the “project” concerns someone dear to her.
In an odd twist (pun intended) in our tale, Miranda’s struggles with this robotics project triggers Aunt Natalie’s memories of a battle for pretzel supremacy, where (let’s be honest), the real winners were the pretzel-munching public. Keep in mind that Aunt Natalie’s story took place in a golden age, well before the Atkins diet and its global war on carbohydrates.
In addition to the project not being in jeopardy, Aunt Natalie takes the opportunity to teach her niece an important life lesson: Sometimes group projects are a pain, but when you have the right people all working toward the same goal, the results can be amazing.
The episode concludes with SAP executives discussing how innovation often requires more than the implementation of new technology and software; it requires an enterprise dedication to doing things differently.
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Get inspired. Check out more about the future for the consumer products industry at www.inspirethefuture.com/consumer-products.Twelve-year-old Miranda looks to the future with trepidation. On the verge of maturity, she enjoys the new-found freedom of being able to make some of her own choices. However, making even small decisions at that age can be intimidating and facing an undetermined future can be overwhelming.
Recently, Miranda has been staying with her beloved Aunt Natalie, who always has a great story to tell and a taste for adventure. Aunt Natalie claims to belong to a secret sisterhood of retrofuturist innovators called CRISIS. As you will learn, retrofuturism examines how the past imagined the future, and how the future can be informed by the past.
In this episode, Miranda decides to become a social media influencer. This prompts Aunt Natalie to tell how the secret sisterhood to which she belongs once spearheaded a rescue mission to Antarctica to find a group of researchers who got lost looking for the lost city of the Elder Things. The rescuers included a waddle of 300 penguins.
The episode concludes with SAP executives discussing how online shopping and social media have impacted the consumer products industry. And how all of these things ultimately are about two subcategories: your being the protagonist of your own innovation story, which is your purpose, and how consumer products companies build lasting relationships in the market.
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Get inspired. Check out more about the future at www.InspireTheFuture.com.What is retrofuturism? The future as seen from the past? The past as seen from the future? Or perhaps just nostalgia for a time when innovation was looked on with romance and optimism. In nearly every aspect, the world today is a better than at any other time in human history. And our future? Our future is in the hands of today’s youth …
The Retrofuturist Chronicles center on a 12-year-old girl named Miranda who is affable and bright but disempowered because of her age. Each episode begins with Miranda expressing concerns about something in her life.
In turn, those concerns always remind Miranda’s kind-of-crazy retrofuturist spinster Aunt Natalie of some extraordinary absurdist exploit that she’s had. Aunt Natalie’s tall tales are never constrained by time, place, logic, or even laws of physics. She often invokes historic people and incidents and makes outrageous claims. But she inspires Miranda with fantastic tales of past innovations that have just enough truth in them to be intriguing and uplifting.
Our host, SAP’s Global Vice President of Marketing for the Intelligent Enterprise and Industries, Helen Dwight, provides commentary at the conclusion of each story, separating the patently nonsensical from the nearly unbelievable reality.
Finally, we’re joined by SAP’s Futurist Martin Wezowski and VP of Industries Pradeep Amladi who, together, explore the future of innovation, industry by industry.
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