KEY TERMS AND DEVELOPMENTS
GLOBOTICS
“Things have changed so much that not even the future is what it used to be,” says Richard Baldwin, professor of international economics at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. Baldwin is also one of the world’s leading experts on the changing world of work, and in his new book, The Globotics Upheaval: Globalization, Robotics, and the Future of Work, he argues that the dramatic pace of technological change threatens to overwhelm our ability to adapt.
To make his point, Baldwin quotes social-media marketer Graeme Wood: “Change has never happened this fast before, and it will never be this slow again.” There is still time to prepare for what’s coming, he says, but we need to realize that the future will be very different, as it is changing in ways very few of us expect.
GERMANY: INFARM
The German urban farming start-up Infarm has secured $100 million in funding from Atomico, Balderton Capital, Astanor Ventures, Cherry Ventures and Triplepoint Capital. Infarm, which has developed a modular urban farming system, currently operates in Germany, Switzerland and France, where it has partnered with food retailers such as Edeka, Metro, Migros, Intermarché, Auchan, Selgros and Amazon Fresh. It claims to have set up 200 in-store farms and another 150 farms in distribution centres, harvesting more than 150,000 plants monthly.
The ambitious Infarm vision is to feed the cities of tomorrow by bringing farms nearer to the consumer. https://infarm.com
THE NETHERLANDS: WOOV
As the summer music festival season comes to an end, Amsterdam-based tech start-up Woov announced that it has signed up one million users to its platform. Woov aims to bring event organizers, artists and festival visitors together on a digital platform so that everyone can spend less time on their phones and more time enjoying the party.
The free app was developed by founders Sebastien Westerduin and Irfan van Ewijk and it features interactive maps to help festival goers immediately see where their friends are hanging out and what is going on in real time during an event. Woov says it has already connected more than 800 festivals in over 41 countries. https://woov.com