Driving leadership in sustainability and immersive technologies | Unity for Humanity

[Music] hello everyone and welcome to this very exciting session on driving leadership in sustainability and immersive technologies my name is midis i'm the senior product marketing manager for digital trends and government solutions at unity today we will be discussing how disruptive technologies are pioneering change in sustainable practices and making a positive impact on protecting our planet joining me for our discussion are jasper smith founder and chairman of arxen an innovation technology and adventure company designing capable marine exploration vessels with a focus on safety and preserving our oceans and marco marquezzi chief technology officer at the fabricant a digital fashion house that's reducing the environmental impact of the fashion industry by creating hyper real clothing entirely digitally these two inspiring leaders are reinventing traditional business practices to have a positive impact on the environment glad to have you both here with me today let's get rolling so let's start with this one when we think of sustainability luxury goods are definitely not what first comes to mind there's a perception that luxury brands and the companies within that realm don't necessarily care about social responsibility is that the case let's start with you jasper great question melis um well you know i think in our case we you know we work in the marine industry and the marine industry has a shocking reputation for you know building huge super yachts and that are used by a few people so you know very seldom and so they languish in harbors for you know weeks if not months on end and so yeah you know it's got this this terrible terrible reputation but but if you think of luxury in a slightly different way you know luxury means time and it means caring about things it means you know the idea of things that you treasure and so i think the heart of arson is really about you know the ocean is the world's ultimate luxury it is the thing that gives us the ability to breathe it's the thing that feeds over a billion of us it's the thing that mitigates climate change and so there's probably no more important ecosystem in the world than the ocean and arson really set out to try and change the parameters of the marine industry and how it operates by having a slightly different approach to how vessels are built and used and you know i guess from a from a materials point of view everything that we've done is with a circular economy in mind so our vessels are designed and built using recycled or recyclable materials from from scratch they're designed in a way that they can be used for research and science purposes so the idea behind that is to get utilization of those vessels up from something like 10 to closer to 90 by using the downtime for science programs and projects and then the third component of what we do is really about empowering marine scientists and charities and conservation efforts around the world and so we're partnered through our charity 10 for the ocean with 43 global ocean research charities and we provide um effectively a mechanism that enables some of those things to come together so i in my mind the marine industry has an extraordinary opportunity to offer something you know this precious gift back to the ocean and help humanity understand more about how that ecosystem functions and everything we do at arsenal is really about trying to you know put those those three things that i've mentioned at the core of every decision that we make marco i'd like to hear your thoughts on that yeah i actually i don't have a strong opinion against luxury in general infection at least in my case because it's actually the the problem of fashion is the most in the fast fashion the cheap one the generate more waste so if you consider that let's say well the worldwide fabric waste is around 100 million tons every year at least last year i don't have i don't have the exact data that we can like split between luxury and fast fashion but definitely it's kind of uh renown that is like is there is the cheap one the generate more damage to the environment of course for us the goal is to create a sustainable all digital fashion they replace every fashion it's not like just a luxury or the fast fashion we are basically against every physical facial and this kind of and and i think in that case yes we yeah in terms of let's say ethics and social responsibility there are many luxury brands that actually are responsible they are trying to be at least cargo neutral and try to reduce the impact and also uh it happens as well with the fast fashion but there is definitely where we saw the most more urgency to to kind of change the rules let's say so we talk about the philanthropic angle and an excellent initiative um are there other ways you think your company can impact sustainability any new trends that you're excited about i mean yeah for us this is huge uh nft is for sure and the blockchain side and this one because is uh is a is a it's not just a trend is a revolution because the idea is to uh not just revolutionize how people can experience fashion but it's also about how can people can create fashion how people can can be part of the fashion industry in a different way so our goal is to be more sustainable in the sense that we have of course we reduce the the presence of the professional clothes in the let's say in the real world by using digital items that people can wear for example in augmented reality on virtual reality and let's say the metaversal people love to talk a lot about that but also we we think that this super is going to be super important and present in our lives like how people will generate fashion will create fashion by themselves like and also they will be able to commercialize what they do and uh is going to be a massive shift in the fashion industry because fashion industry is a hyper centralized industry so there are big brands they control the market that there are small brands they have less control but there is a lot of decision making that is taken by a few people a category of privileged people that they control basically the market also in terms of trends and taste and this one is going to change a lot nfts you know that not fungible tokens is the way that on blockchain we are able to track the provenance track scarcity and track content creation in a way that every person is involved we can be kind of part of the this game and and be able to uh to make profit uh be on the market but also and also uh take advantage of the on the digital fashion um industry so yeah it's definitely where we are more exciting a lot and we are definitely for example today we are having a drop with uh with our inft game called star atlas and we are basically selling jackets and uh and other uh clothes and uh it's interesting because it's an entire new world made up of actually our vessels by in the space it's it's quite funny that we are completely we are in the vessel space but we are completely in another in the metaverse and we are physically addressing the the kind of characters there in a way that people can can have fun and enjoy digital fashion in a completely new world we love that one because we strongly believe about digital facial for a reason because we spend a lot of time every day on screens so it's definitely we see the potential the fact that at the end if we spend i don't know people they are spending 10 hours even 12 hours on a screen in front of screen every day and not just some course we're talking about uh any other platform games ar vr there are a lot of different platforms of course all these moments they need new identities so for us fashion is not just that one is also about how no it's not just about racing people about creating uh the new identities in a digital world and this is yeah and this is where we see nfts and blockchain as a strong potential for us to kind of go ahead in the sustainability process because of course it's gonna reduce the impact basically waste in the environment of course a big big topic is uh sustainability and blockchain and a lot of criticism about that and we we are conscious of the fact that blockchain as a technology is not yet the best technology in terms of environmental impact we're actually this is why we are using a sustainable blockchain called flow and we reduce the energy impact and there are a lot of work from other blockchains as well in terms of reducing the impact in the environment this is something that we love to evangelize we love to to be part of that even the criticism we don't want to defend at all costs something where we see there are actually issues that we need to solve all together thank you for that marco that was very insightful how about you jasper what's your take on that i think that was really interesting i mean i haven't yet got to a point where we were doing nft yachts and nft adventures and experiences but i'm sure that will come over over time but i hope it's not in the immediate term for us for us at least so i i think that you know the trends that you're seeing in sort of manufacturing world are towards more sustainable materials and practices and uh you know less wastage so you know ensuring that everything is designed with this circular economy in in mind that i was talking about earlier and we're seeing trends towards things like autonomy uh in in the marine environment very you know following things like uh you know what happened in the auto industry i think probably one of the biggest trends is this move towards experiences rather than ownership and you know i guess people my age and older were all about owning the asset and sort of going off and using it and we're seeing that change fundamentally where you know the younger generation are really just interested in the experience you can have with this extraordinary machine and you can go off to you know antarctica or the arctic or do the northwest passage or something magical like that and really immerse yourself in in you know in complete wilderness and so there's a you know and partly driven by covid and things like that there's a sort of real zeitgeist moment for adventure experiences and you know we all have in our sort of inner human this sort of desire for you know being off grid being in the wilderness feeling the sort of weather and the wind running through our hair you know so it's a big i think there's a big emerging trend there um and actually the marine industries had oddly enough through covert it's had its best ever two years largely because people have been stay at home and they're sort of oh you know what can i do when all this ends and you know having a boat going off and doing stuff has become you know really big a really big driver for people i think um but yeah i i think if you look at the sort of material science side of things what's happening there so if you go back sort of ten years it was actually very hard to find pure recycled materials whether you were designing clothes or whether you were building boats or or you know other big machines that's changed fundamentally now and so you know vessels like the oxen ones are built using primarily recycled aluminium now you know that's you know an extraordinary achievement for the aluminium industry to have got to that point but if you look at the inter interior finishes you look at the way the decks are laid you look at the way they you know the interior electronics are built and the hvac systems and things it's all built with this circular economy and recycling mine using you know materials that probably weren't available five or ten years ago um so yeah i think you know there's there's a lot going on and you know i think as an industry the marine sector will grow from strength to strength buoyed up by the investment that's being made in the auto sector um and as i as i said a moment ago you know i hope we don't get to a completely virtualized sailing experience because the wonder of being on the ocean is the wonder of the ocean and it's it's you know it's very hard to replicate that you know i spent a lot of my early career making games and it's a it's an extraordinary thing to do when you can create a world but the real world is pretty special too thank you jasper for that it's amazing that for both companies sustainability is truly a part of the process from the beginning you have obviously embraced technology wholeheartedly at your company to enhance the experience and maybe even the design jasper can you tell us more about how parks and integrate real-time 3d into the process and how this is advancing your sustainability sure yeah i mean it's interesting you know when we when we um started oxen the idea of using 3d was an anathema to many people in the company you know i mean it was sort of like well that's not how we do stuff and you know we use sort of pens and papers and things like that and it was you know i remember talking to one of the external contractors we used and it it was you know not something they were particularly okay with from a from but it's i think it's it's extraordinary what one can achieve and you know we've we've used it to create effect and you know i'm a as a as a gamer and as an ex-game developer i'm i'm sort of really passionate about bringing a lot of the tools and technologies that we've used in other businesses and other industries into into the marine sector and you know i think it brings to life so many components you know on a product development cycle it's wonderful being able to sort of visualize and texturize and explore a creative vision that somebody's got around a product easily remotely uh and in groups without the huge infrastructure cost that you would normally have of trying to build that product physically and so it's you know i wouldn't say it's cut in half but it's certainly reduced very significantly the um you know the cost of prototyping for a business like us and the second side is it enables you to bring an idea to life very very quickly in a very rich textured way um you know whereas years ago you would be using photoshop and you'd sort of do a sketch of a drawing then try and plug it onto a photo and stuff like that to actually create worlds um and be able to show your products uh through renders in that world um is is is is fantastic and that's enabled a company like oxen um to sell dreams and and you know one of the biggest problems in the marine industry is that the cycle of product development is years um and so for the first four or five years of the business in the marine sector all you're really selling is is a dream that you might one day build this product and to try and find customers to buy dreams when you haven't actually built one's very very difficult and so these 3d tools have really enabled us to communicate our message and our ethos and what we're trying to achieve uh in a you know in a very in a very special way and then the last part that's been great is just customer journey and customer experience so um because the boats we build can be customized quite easily people will ask you know what if we did this or could i change this um so we can obviously provide you know vr and 3d models that enable uh people to see that journal but you know we can also take them through the whole product from you know the propulsion systems and the engine rooms all the way through to you know the galley and you know what it's like to be on deck and things like that so that's given us an entire sort of suite of tools and experiences that we can offer different parts of our organization and it's it's brought us you know it's brought the product to life in a way that's very rich and very dynamic at a point when we're still you know well over a year away from the first vessel actually being um you know in the water well not quite a year away but some time away from the first first vessel being actually in the water um so they i think it's a game changer for us and i i think across all industries all manif manufacturing industries it's a it's a game-changer marco so the fabricant is actually um creating 100 digitally garment um that's that's itself is a sustainable initiative so what else is there that you're using real time 3d prints i actually i love to connect with what the jasper said experience we love to talk more and more about the experience we are not talking actually anymore about product i think the ideals product is kind of die in some way in this new digital world and this one because what we experience we rely on the fact that there are multiple people they i can enjoy experience and multiple people for art means collaboration so the creative process and this is what the fabricator is doing is creating a collaborative experience where multiple people can create together digital garments and this one for us is basically the handgun the end goal for us is reunite the world in a creative way and people people can really enjoy working together and playing together and creating together in this one it's super straightforward to go from that this kind of assumption to real time because real-time rendering real-time technologies in general hardwood is neither as is the technology achievement they allow us to do this because otherwise it will be just gimmicky and uh so this is kind of a privilege and i think we are kind of luck to living in in this moment where actually the technology can allow to do this because people can definitely can finally work together and play together in a way that uh is enjoyable it's not too much i mean i it's a decade that i play games and i pro code games as well and the softwares and of course always being like using your imagination to try to think about how things should be without using real-time technologies but real time of course is not just the graphics aspect but it's also the performance the latency aspect also the fact that the data can be aligned at the same time using the kind of network capabilities so all this aspect they make possible a dream to have people collaborate together we also love to talk about people as a community not anymore as a customers there are no customers they're a community and community means everyone in the community is part of the same goal because and we care about what they want what in the same way that we care internally about what we say i think it's kind of another big shift that we see in this they say metaverse and and blockchain digital war technology and we really love to see also technology kind of uh triggering and empowering people in this way so i'm listening both of you and i realize you're you you're bought in two vastly different sectors however it sounds like your sustainability goals are very similar how are you leading the charge on sustainability within your own sectors it's definitely uh leading the church means for us first of all be responsible with our community it means really give values give a kind of understanding that we care about what people think we care about the future in a kind of global way it means also and for me more personally as a is my role i will say innovation is key innovation it means bringing new technologies by using the right way not just for profit for example i mean of course everyone is doing business uh at the end but we really care about uh people in the sense that uh and sustainability and whole the kind of values that the fabricant has in our core in the in their heart because they really like um and and for us basically leading the change and leading uh all this industry for us rather than be kind of okay just innovative ahead of time this is actually what i always love to do is actually for us it's more important to to be always from next to the people in some way so i it's more important to listen to the people understand what they really want rather they'll try to dictate the technology and i don't know gadgets all these kind of things that people oh wow we want you know we want to follow the formal moments at all costs we don't want that we want we are really care about what people want and what people care about jasper how about the marine industry i think if you look at the opportunity to own something like an arkansan vessel it's really a statement of intent and you know our entire ethos is around trying to democratize ocean science you know to try and enable scientists to get on the water to be able to do really important you know valuable research that that needs to be done and we're trying to do that across our own fleet but we've also got lots of other initiatives that try and expand that fleet so we launched a program um with a few other organizations called yachts for science which which tries to create a global fleet of vessels that um marine researchers and scientists from all over the world can you know it's a bit like tinder for science for marine science if you like so they can match make things like that we started 10 for the ocean you know it's extraordinary to me that only or less than one percent of global philanthropic funding gets allocated to ocean research it's extraordinary i mean how you know how do we get to a point in life where our most vital ecosystem is the most underfunded by some way and you know sdg 14 the least funded of all sdgs so it's extraordinary and you look at this in the context of you know there's a report in the guardian this week that said four out of ten children are scared to have children right when they're up with a when they're older so you know it's extraordinary well six out of ten children are fearful of the future so if you're building a business today you've got to build that business in a way that's cognizant of those fears and those worries and you know i see it holding on myself and i think everybody in arts and sees it it's holding on themselves to build a business that puts the environment first that puts science and knowledge first and puts everything you know that we might associate with the yacht industry or the you know the pleasure the pleasure marine industry almost in a secondary position and reverse you know reverse the parameters and so put you know put the world first and the church bells are ringing on cue as well but uh you know so i think i think as a as a business it's it's really the combination of some of the things i've talked about which is you know marine science fundamental to the survival of humanity over the long term building a business in a sustainable sustainable way that uses materials that don't significantly deplete the resources that we need tomorrow and hopefully don't deplete them at all and third put in place programs that encourage harmony between the scientific community and the and the marine manufacturing industry and if we can achieve those things even on a small scale we will i think have fundamentally changed in industry and if we if we pull that off you know i think we'll be super proud jasper and marco this has been an amazing conversation i'm really inspired by what you're both doing in your sectors you're truly showing that everyone has an opportunity to create change in their own industries and communities i'm excited to see how other business leaders will integrate technology and innovation into their sustainability practices thank you so much for joining me today it's been a pleasure thank you very much

2021-10-30 12:21

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