25 March 2022
Incubating New Technologies
Incubating New Technologies

Tom Wells, Chief Disruption Officer at Synthesis, a Capital Appreciation company, unpacks just what that looks like

 

Tom Wells leads a team called Synthesis Labs. It is here where a group of bright, young minds look at how to reinvent and reimagine ‘business as usual’ and to prototype and  incubate disruptive technologies. They do this with one goal – to build, test and launch exceptional ideas.

 

Focusing on tomorrow, today

With the constant pace of change today, it is hard to comprehend that while we’re just getting to grips with today’s tech, there is a team of people already focused on the tech that will shape our tomorrow.

 

Wells explains that Synthesis Labs is a small and targeted area of the business, that actively lives in the future - occasionally bringing back some of the best ideas and applying them to the challenges of today.

 

“It’s hard to define the very thing that Synthesis Labs focuses on; but what it is, is an investment into future disruptive ideas. An ideas lab – if you will. We ask ourselves hard and sometimes seemingly crazy questions like “I wonder what an architecture would look like if we made all request/response interactions between services illegal”. Research into topics such as this have sparked off numerous initiatives where we are designing first hand and building architectures which most software companies might call science-fiction – but could potentially have major impact as we start to hit the limits of traditional systems design.

 

“Another interesting question could be “what does a fully personalised user experience feel like? For example, a mobile application whose user interface is entirely driven through artificial intelligence based on what we know about and the context of the user using it”. We have seen small glimmers of this sort of thinking in existing apps – but none that have  gone “all-in” on this idea yet. There is so much to learn, what are we waiting for?

 

Hungry, humble, and smart

“The focus is on the capability of our team, and importantly – our ability to adapt to change. Some of the more obvious tech that we work on includes cloud and distributed architectures, digital user experience (UX), machine learning (ML) and web3, but that’s just scratching the surface. Our team is tasked with digging deeper and identifying ‘next generation differentiators.’ The important thing to remember, is that these are still ideas, and it will take time to know if they will work, be adopted, and become mainstream in the future.

 

“The insatiable hunger of our team has led us to explore and discover new opportunities. These are then built into innovative platforms today, and some that will shape the unknown “disruptive” domain of tomorrow. Our success has traded on hiring and training the right people – we value EQ, creativity, and the entrepreneurial spirit – and we look for talent across a range of disciplines (not just engineering). We also foster individual’s ability to tell stories, creating empathy and living through the experiences of our users, and of course we work hard on developing our individuals technical skills.

 

“All of our projects have an element of R&D built into them, and we have a dedicated focus on emerging technologies and experimentation. This includes a lab that provides the space for deep research, while carefully balancing against real-world application. This is an ongoing process where we can incubate breakthrough innovations.    

 

Putting the customer in the middle of your world

Tom concludes that the Synthesis Lab is working to increase the speed of digital transformation in businesses by inspiring young professionals to lead the digital revolution. “What that translates into, is that we put our customers in the middle of our world. We’re developing and honing a certain intuition so that we can do business at the speed of light, allowing us to simulate every scenario. This helps us make the right strategic investment decision, every time.”

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