Innovation
December 02, 2025
Enabling technologies for multiple futures
Each innovation can be the beginning of several trajectories, in which new scenarios can be imagined and built
We live surrounded by technologies, but we rarely perceive them as great innovations technological — even if at the time of their popularization they were, as happened with television or smartphones. Today they blend into everyday life so naturally that they are no longer seen as innovation by new generations. Only when something truly new emerges and reorganizes the way we see the world do we regain that sense of novelty.
Alan Kay, one of the fathers of personal computing, used to say that “technology is only technology for those who were born before it was invented.” For those who come later, it has simply always been there, as part of the scenery. It is the memory of before and after — of what existed and what came to exist — that allows us to recognize something as technological innovation.
Adopting or creating technologies within companies opens new perspectives. They are not just tools, but means to enable potential futures — elements that expand the scope of what is imaginable and executable in our strategies. More than trying to predict the exact outcome of events, what really matters is to provoke questions about what can happen when new technologies emerge or become widely popularized.
For decades, industries operated in practically the same way, until concepts such as cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), autonomous robots, and augmented reality began to be incorporated into production processes. This movement propelled the term “Industry 4.0”, first presented at the Hannover Fair in 2011, marking a new era in which technological integration redefines production, logistics, and value generation models.
Currently, the literature on the subject is extensive, and each author highlights different technologies that enable this new phase of the industry. Enrique Rodal Montero, for example, also includes 3D printing and artificial intelligence itself among the structuring elements of this technological ecosystem.
The European Commission for Foresight also presents a set of technologies considered enabling technologies, highlighting six: micro and nanoelectronics, nanotechnology, industrial biotechnology, advanced materials, photonics, and advanced manufacturing technologies. According to the Commission, these technologies enhance the capacity for industrial innovation, enabling the tackling of complex social challenges and the building of more advanced and sustainable economies. It was from this set that the acronym Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) emerged.
These examples focus on the industrial context, but it is possible to imagine how other sectors are also impacted by these — and by so many other — technologies, opening space for new possibilities and future scenarios. Generative AI itself is a clear example of a transformation that crosses sectors and produces profound changes in the individual and collective behavior of society.
Mike Bechtel, a futurist at Deloitte, proposes an interesting lens for understanding the maturation of technologies, dividing this process into three phases: Tech, Toy, and Tool. The Tech phase marks the initial stage, full of experimentation and uncertainty, when we are still testing reliability, safety, and applicability. In the Toy phase, enchantment emerges – the period when technology entertains us, sparks curiosity, and seems closer to entertainment than practical use. Finally, the Tool phase arrives, when technology reaches maturity, becomes an essential tool, solves real problems, and significantly improves people’s lives.
This cycle can be observed in several recent innovations. ChatGPT, currently the most popular AI tool in Brazil, has gone through the cycle in an evident way. In the beginning, when few understood its potential, it remained restricted to the experimental phase. Then came the moment of enchantment, when it became a viral “toy” due to its ability to creatively generate texts and images. Over time, it began to occupy a new place: that of a work tool, decision support, and aid for complex processes. It was in this stage of understanding and diffusion — when it ceased to be a novelty and fully entered the collective repertoire — that we began to imagine futures in which its presence is practically inevitable.
Getting to know and interacting with new technologies, first and foremost, expands our imagination capacity. Today, it is unthinkable to outline organizational strategies without considering the impact of generative artificial intelligences. In this sense, technologies — current or emerging — can be treated as objects of study for the construction of scenarios and foresight strategies. Projecting futures in which these technologies exist, operate, and are even widely adopted helps to create anticipations and hypotheses for action. Each scenario can be narrated as if we were already living in it, reconstructing the path that led us to that point. And, when a future is imagined, it can no longer be simply disregarded.
Cone of futures
In previous texts, I presented the concept of plural futures, inspired by Joseph Voros’s Cone of Futures (2003), a visual tool that expands our perception of time and breaks with the idea of a single, linear future. The cone highlights that there is a range of possible futures — probable, preferable, improbable, and even undesirable. This approach invites us to abandon deterministic views and recognize that the future is constructed, always the result of actions and decisions made in the present.
Talking about futures, therefore, is never trivial, because just by imagining them we begin to transform them. More than abstract projections, scenarios function as imaginative laboratories, spaces in which we test consequences, choices, and values. Authors like Wendy Schultz and Stuart Candy argue that future narratives not only describe possibilities but also make them experienceable, creating collective sense and expanding our capacity to act in the present.
These discussions lead to another fundamental aspect: the transversal potential of technologies. Not every innovation fulfills only the role for which it was created; many cross borders and end up impacting unexpected sectors. This is what happened with the webcam, which emerged in the 1990s from a simple need: researchers at the University of Cambridge wanted to know if there was still coffee in the lab’s coffee maker. By connecting a camera to the internal network, they created a domestic and unpretentious solution. Later, when the camera was connected to the internet, it became the first webcam broadcast live to the world — an experiment that inaugurated the era of digital transmissions and profoundly transformed the way we communicate, consume, and relate to each other. It is a simple, yet powerful, example of how a technology can generate impacts beyond its initial purpose.
Ethics
This transversal potential can also open ethical and moral dilemmas. The printing of lab-grown meat, for example, emerges as a sustainable alternative capable of reducing environmental impacts. However, this same technology also enables the production of meats considered exotic, as demonstrated by companies like the Australian Vow, which develops products from small cell samples of kangaroo, zebra, and even crocodile, using complex preparation and laboratory cultivation processes. This emerging market has attracted other companies, such as Redefine Meat and Meatable, further expanding the scope of what becomes possible within the food industry.
Faced with these possibilities, inevitable questions arise. What would prevent someone from trying to produce human meat? What if a celebrity decided to license their “own meat” for consumption? The idea seems absurd — and precisely for this reason, thinking about futures is so essential. Imagining what still sounds unthinkable is a way of anticipating risks, responsibilities, and implications that rarely appear in initial debates about innovation. Every technology carries within it the power to enable different futures, including those that extrapolate what we consider ethical or acceptable. And, now that this imagined future has been shared, it can hardly be entirely disregarded.
Those who create technology need to understand the responsibility they carry. Each innovation can be the beginning of multiple trajectories — some that bring us closer to a more just and sustainable future, others that deepen inequalities or weaken human values.
While technologies improve in execution, it is up to us to imagine what we will do with this capacity. Talking about technologies as enablers of futures is recognizing that they do not determine the direction — they only expand the possibilities, creating a new foundation from which new scenarios can be imagined and built. The future will continue to be a territory of human choices. Far beyond looking at specific industries or technologies in isolation, it is fundamental to understand that they interact with the environment, influence entire systems, and continuously shape the futures we can — or cannot — build.
Throughout history, we have countless examples of technologies that have opened up space for new scenarios. Each invention or discovery creates a new “floor” — a level from which other futures can be imagined and built. Just as they enable possibilities, they can also impose restrictions or shifts in certain markets. All of this requires careful attention, a willingness to experiment, and an openness to explore the potential of technologies, whether consolidated or still emerging.
What technologies are enabling the futures that can transform your market? Among those already popularized and those that are still emerging, which combinations of the new and the existing carry the greatest potential for enablement? And, above all, how aware are you of this?
| To access the references of this text click here. |
Who wrote this column
Lucas Tangi
