Doors 9 Conference : Hannu Nieminen

Hannu is Head of Insights and Innovation work for Nokia: Telecommunications and sustainability

We are now in a world of conscious consumers that care about the planet.
Bits are moving around, atoms (objects) are moving into bits in a non physical form. telecom is changing the paradigms of communications
600 million phones are being sold every year, people’s perception of the world is changing.

Telecomms are creating self organising networks of people, which are processes that governs themselves

Telecomms are a big enabler to make this one poly-centric planet, from moving atoms to moving bits

Is this big transfer of atoms really necessary? Why are we moving atoms so far away from their source?

The one planet economy will one day look like the internet. We will be able to have personal windmills and be able to sell the excess back to the network, its an internet-like energy architecture. Music delivery allows a direct link between the consumer and the producer of music and micor-networks get organised and bypass structures that exist now.

However nothing can replace face 2 face comms and even if we have the greatest communications, we still travel more and more instead of less. The perception hasnt been changing and we don’t see any good reason why we should not travel. Are the environment challenges enough to change this?

Will surrogate robots be able to replace us and allow our presence to be replicated elsewhere to meetings?

What is the future of physical products? If we want to do things differently we have to start perceiving things differently. If we change our perception of the way we live and consume, we can change our patterns. From the extraction to the use representes 0.7% of total emissions today.

Working on chargers that would support a greener approach. .

There is also a problem of communicating green value. There are too many standards and this becomes confusing for the consumer. What is the ecological footprint of a product? There are now mobile solutions that will allow you to take a pictureof the barcode and get information about how green a product is or how impactful.

Homegrown project at Nokia, they are producing products that adress a cradle to cradle approach and build more sustainable tools.

Companies are a big force in changing the world and so are consumers. Companies listen to consumer change and want to respond to those changes. Human-centered design and openess are 2 key elements of their design practice.