Leveraging collective intelligence and AI to benefit society – MIT Technology Review

A solar-powered autonomous drone scans for forest fires. A surgeon first operates on a digital heart before she picks up a scalpel. A global community bands together to print personal protection equipment to fight a pandemic.

The future is now, says Frdric Vacher, head of innovation at DassaultSystmes. And all of this is possible with cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and a virtual 3D design shop, or as Dassault calls it, the 3DEXPERIENCE innovation lab. This open innovationlaboratoryembraces the concept of the social enterpriseand merges collective intelligence with a cross-collaborativeapproach by buildingwhat Vacher calls communities of peoplepassionate and willing to work together to accomplish a common objective.

This podcast episode was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not produced by MIT Technology Reviews editorial staff.

Its not only software, it's not only cloud, but its also a community of peoples skills and services available for the marketplace,Vachersays.

Now, because technologies are more accessible, newcomers can also disrupt, and this is where we want to focus with the lab.

And for DassaultSystmes, theres unlimited real-world opportunities with the power of collective intelligence, especially when you are bringing togetherindustry experts, health-care professionals, makers, and scientists totackle covid-19. Vacher explains, We created an open community, Open Covid-19, to welcome any volunteer makers, engineers, and designers to help, because we saw at that time that many people were trying to do things but on their own, in their lab, in their country. This wasted time and resources during a global crisis. And, Vacher continues, the urgency of working together to share information became obvious, They were all facing the same issues, and by working together, we thought it could be an interesting way to accelerate, to transfer the know-how,andto avoid any mistakes.

Business Lab is hosted by Laurel Ruma, director of Insights, the custom publishing division of MIT Technology Review. The show is a production of MIT Technology Review, with production help from Collective Next.

This episode of Business Lab is produced in association with DassaultSystmes.

How Effective is a Facemask? Heres a Simulation of Your Unfettered Sneeze, by Josh Mings, SolidSmack, April 2, 2020

Open COVID-19 Community Lets Makers Contribute to Pandemic Relief, by Clare Scott, The SIMULIA Blog, Dassault, July 15, 2020

Dassault 3DEXPERIENCE platform

Collective intelligence and collaboration around 3D printing: rising to the challenge of Covid-19, by Frdric Vacher, STAT, August 10, 2020

LaurelRuma:From MIT Technology Review, Im Laurel Ruma. And this is Business Lab, the show that helps business leaders make sense of new technologies coming out of the lab and into the marketplace.

Our topic today isaccelerating disruptive innovations to benefit society by building and running massive simulations. The world has big problems, and its going to take all of us to help solve them. Two words for you:collective intelligence.

My guest isFrdric Vacher, who is the head of innovation atDassaultSystmes. He is a mechanical engineer who has had a long career at Dassault. First, leading the partnership program, and then launching the 3DEXPERIENCELab. This episode of Business Lab is produced in association with DassaultSystmes. Frdric, welcome to Business Lab.

Frdric Vacher:Good morning,Laurel. Good morning, everyone.

Laurel:Could you start by first telling us a bit about DassaultSystmes? I dont want listeners to be confused with the aviation company, because were talking about a 3D modeling and simulation enterprise that was founded almost 40 years ago and has more than 20,000 employees around the globe.

Frdric:Yeah,that istrue. We are DassaultSystmes, the 3D experience company. Wehave beendigital since day one.Dassault Aviation is one of our clientslike all the aerospace companiesbut our customersare alsocar,shipbuilding, consumer goods, consumer packaged goods companies, and so on. We are a worldwide leaderinproviding digital solutions, from design simulation to productionandwe cover 11 industries. Our purpose is toharmonize product,nature,andlife.

For the past two years,wehavehelpedourclients industry roles to innovate by digitalizing and engineering their products from very complex productstosimplerproducts.Forthe past10 years, we have invested very stronglyintwo directions: the nature of life and from things,to life.

Laurel:That is a complicatedkind of process to sort of imagine. Butwiththe 3DEXPERIENCE Lab, scientists and engineers can go in and build these cloud-based simulations for 3D modeling, digital twins, and product in a waythat isreally collaborative, taking advantage of that human system. Could you talk to us a bit more about whyDassaultfelt it was important to create this 3DEXPERIENCE Lab in a way that was so collaborative?

Frdric:We started the 3DEXPERIENCE Lab initiative five years ago to accelerate newcomers, very small actors, startups, makers, as we believe that innovation is everywhere. For 40 years,weinnovatedwith the aerospace and defense industry.[For example] we established a partnershipwith Boeing onthe 777, for instance, the first airplane that was fully digitized [made into a digital twin].Andnot only the product, but all the processes andthe factories.Now, because technologies are more accessible, newcomers can alsodisrupt,and this is where we want to focuswiththe lab. This lab is targeting open innovation with startup acceleratorsempoweringcommunities online, communities of people,passionate andwilling to work togethertoaccomplish a common objective.

Laurel:And because it is an open lab, anyone can participate. Butyou havecreated a specific program for startups. Could you tell us more about that program?

Frdric:Since the beginning,we havebeen identifyingand sourcing startups that providea strong impactto societyas a disruptive product or projectwanting tomakea real impact.Thisprogram provides those startupsaccessto our softwareand professional solutions that the industryisusing intheirday-to-dayactivities.But also funds to this cloud platform forcommunities to createaccess to mentors.Mentorswill help them acceleratein their development, providing know-howandknowledge.

Laurel:Thatkind of access for startups is rather difficult to get, right? Because this kind of software is professional grade, it is expensive. They may not be able to afford it or understand that they even have access to it. But interestingly, it's not just the software companies and startupsthatwould have access to it's also the people who work at Dassault, correct?

Frdric:Yeah,that iscorrect. Thanksto this3DEXPERIENCE platform in thecloud,as you mentioned,we have 20,000 people worldwide in 140 countries. Those people are knowledgeable astheysupport their business in many industries in terms of technologyandinscience.Andthose people onavolunteeringbasis,could join a lab projectascoach,mentor,orstartup.Thankstothese cloud platforms,theyarenot only discussingandproviding some insight or information orguidance,buttheycanreally co-design with those guys.LikeaGoogle document, many peoplecanwork on the same documentwhilebeing in different locations.This program enables us to perform the same way but on a digital mock-up.

Laurel:People can kind of really visualize what you have in mind. The 3DEXPERIENCE Lab does two things. One, it creates a way for an enterprise to build an entire product as a3D vision,incorporating feedback from the research lab, the factory floor, and the customer.So,all ofthe stakeholders can work in a single environment. Could you give us an example of that and how that works?

Frdric:In a single environment in thecloudthey can startwithusing some apps, maybe fromCATIA or SolidWorks.They can do the engineering part of the job on the same data model theywoulduse toperform their own simulations. Any type of digitalsimulation thatwill help those guys to announce the engineering and the design of their product.Through that,they will optimize the design and then go to the manufacturing aspect,delivering all the processes needed up to programming the machines. Butthat is, I would say, the standard way to operate.

Now for this platform, you have access also to servicesformarketplace.Thisis particularly interesting forearly-stagestartups as they struggle to find the right partnerorthe right supplier to manufacture something. Here, at one click of a button, they can source components from millions of components that are available through qualified suppliers online. Just drag and drop thecomponentinto theproject.

They can access to thousands of factories worldwide, whereby, they will be able to producetheir parts for thosefactories, managing all the business online between the two suppliers. And then, they may alsohaveaccess to engineering services,where ifyou want to do something, but you dont have the skills to do it, then youcontract thejob to a service bureauorqualified partners that could deliver the job. So, itsnot only software, its not only cloud, but it's alsoacommunity of people's skillsand services available forthemarketplace.

Laurel:And it really is a platform,right? To directly offer services and innovation from one company to another, in a way that's very visual and hands-on, so you couldactually almostdemo the product before you buy it because you are in this 3DEXPERIENCE environment. How does that work? Withan example from a company?Am I thinking of that in the correct way?

Frdric:Youre correct. The complete digital project is done on the platform before the real product is produced. You want to develop a new car or a new table or a new chair or new lamp, you design everything in 3D. You simulate to make itrobustand then you do the engineering to make sure that the manufacturing would be fine based on your manufacturing capacities or partners.And,you go one step further on that, then you can really produce the marketing operations, produce the advertising, thehigh qualitypictures you need for your flyers, even the experience from the video torecordthe commercials. So,the digital assets thataredone alreadyat the beginning of the project, to engineer a new product,arenow used not only for production,but also for communication, marketing, training, and so on. That means thatthose people in your marketing department can do the job in paralleland perform all their deliverables, even if the product, the physical product, is not thereyet.

Laurel:How do companies feel about sharing some of this intellectual property ahead of time before the product is even developed? You must have to have very special philosophies and outlooks to want to do this, right?

Frdric:Yeah. The IP is very important for us and obviously for our clients. We deliver to each client a dedicated platform so that they are in a 100% secure network environment. This is true for the big guys like Boeing, Airbus in the aerospace industry or BMW, Tesla in the auto industry.But its also true for smaller startupslikewe are talking about with this innovation lab.

Laurel:Thesystem really does bring togetheranenormousamountof complicated issues, including cybersecurity, as well as processing power, data science, artificial intelligence, but also that human intelligence. How does Dassault define collective intelligence?Whyis that so important as a philosophy?

Frdric:Its key. Behind any project, behind any companies, you have people, right?This is whyon this platform, on the baseline services, you have all those services to enable people to collaborate, not only to manage their project with sequences,with milestones, with task management and so on like any corporation would do, but now in a very agile way for communities. To connect people, to help people, to workbettertogether to match skills and needs. This is a new approach, obviouslythisapproachisnew for professionals, but these services were brought by social networks to thegeneral publicmany yearsago,butwe applied these services to innovative processes onto engineering processes within a company.

Laurel:You mentioned skills,andI thinkaninteresting place to kind of look at it fora bit,is how do people transfer knowledge? And is this environment conducive to training and helping perhaps one group teach the other group how to perform basic tasks or understand a product better? Are you seeing that when companies work with the platform, theyactually bringin everyone,including marketing?So, everyone can have a much better understanding of the entire product?

Frdric:Definitely.First,we share acommonreferential.So, there is no loss in email exchange, in data exchange, and so on. Everyones work aroundadigital twin of the projectis accurateandup-to-date. Second,this platform enablesyouto capitalize knowledgeandknow-how andit isvery important, especially when seniors are retiring,to transferthe knowledgeto new generations.We have seen in the past, especially in the aerospace industry, manyfellows,whohave left theircompany haveto come back to the company because theyareseen ascritical in the process with their knowledge.Such a platform now allows companies to keeptheknowledge inside and to transferthe knowledgefrom one generation to another.

Laurel:So that idea of collective intelligence really does spread throughout an entire enterprise. The lab does take ona number ofthemes, including healthcare. Could you talk about a few of those ideas?

Frdric:Yeah. With the lab, as I said,we have main criteriatoselectaproject:a strong, positive impacttosociety and a disruptive projectthat callsfor collective intelligence. We are very selective as we really want to think big.Wewant to accelerateabout 10 projects a yearonaglobal standpoint. We heavilyuse data intelligence and our toolsto scanand toscrollthroughall news on the web, newVCs, the founding anew startup, [all of this is done]in order to understand the weak signals, the new trends,andbe abletoidentifythosenewer innovators. We use the same platform to orchestrate this ideation process.Havinga smallidea,nurturing and qualifying theidea,up to validating thisideacoming from the startupswiththe communitythe lab community, which is able to challenge the project to give their insights, their suggestions, and then vote.

On everyquarter,anew batch of startups are presenting their projects. They arepitchingusing the platform.Havingas arecord, all of those discussions on the project from several,you knowmentorsexperience givingtheiropinion, the committee'svoting includes our CEO himself, with afewmembers of theboardsvalidating the project based on all these discussions.Soits a very flexible process.A veryrapid process,considering we have a big company.Inless than a few monthswe canorchestrate acompletelynew project.

Its a complete reverse approach than building a PowerPoint document to validate a project. It'savery cool innovationwithinclusivemethodologywhere every volunteer, everyperson,whowants to contributearewelcome to.And obviouslywhen validated,the startups get free access to our software, to those mentorsthat arerecruited.Like, you know, on dating apps, but we are doing matching betweenmentors that haveexpertise and skills withneedsrequested by those startups or on projects.

Laurel:Thats quite a benefit for a startupforpeople be matched with mentors and other innovators in theirparticular field.But to have DassaultsCEO so intimately involved in these processes?That isreally quiteastounding.

Frdric:Its huge.Even if the startup is not selected, we are working on the project, we are challengingthe project with experts. Our CEO himself is challenging the project. It's already important information for those guysand ahuge value.To answeryour question about the themes, we have three main themes that drives our sourcing:life,city infrastructure,andlifestyle well-being. As I said, what we want is to positively impactthe society. We believe that the only progress ishuman. So those themes, as you understood, are driven into a better world.

Laurel:Whats an example of one of these startups that have come to you, what are they working on?

Frdric:We have a huge variety of projects. We have amazing projects that,for instance,thatare performing organ3D printing with patient-specific geometry reconstruction in order to create a virtual twin of a patient. This isin order to haveasimulatorforthesurgeonswho would use it to train before the real surgery in the operating room. It was one of the first startups,BioModex, a French startup. We accelerated at the beginning of the lab. They started at two peopleand arenow at50and they started inParis. Theyhave now also settled inBoston to connect with the life science community. And it ishuge if you look at it, especially for neurosurgery, in some complex case, thesurgeoncan train on your own digital twin before the real surgery. So, itreduces riskwithhigher efficiency.

Another example is about mobilityondrones. We are helping young startupsthat are working ona solarautonomousdrone. You remember,there isastory about solarimpulse with Bertrand Piccard, a pioneer whodid a worldtourwith aplanepowered bythe sun.Thelimit of this project was the pilot,because you cannot staytoolong, not drinking, not eating. I thinka drone disruptscompletelythe concept.This solar autonomous drone is due toperformandoperatemissions, likeforest fire detection.So,ifadronecan stay ontheradar ofany fires early in the process, it would helpcontrollingborders or coasts or pipeline monitoring.Weareworking onit for the pastthree years.Lastsummer, they did their first test flight--12 hourspowered by the sundoing 600 kilometers.So, the first flight was a success and there islotof potentialinthis project.It's calledadrone, but it's more like a plane with two wings.

The third one is a US-based companySparkCharge. They are creating portable, ultra-fast charging units for electrical vehicles. Twoweeks ago, they wereonShark Tank on ABC and they won. They got funded by Mark Cuban.Its a huge success.

Laurel:We should take a minute to define digital twin. A digital twin is a copy of a system that can be manipulated to experiment with different outcomes.Sort of like making a photocopy to preserve the original, but to be able to write on or make changes to the copy.In this case, having a digital twin for a medical procedure helps the surgeon walk through what she is going to do before she does it on a livepatient.

And the second idea of a solar autonomous drone/plane, really, because its not a small drone that we think of, it's a very large one with solar panels on it.Being able to autonomously fly for hours on end to survey forest fires or even oil pipelines, any kind of long flight ability-that really does sound like the future to me. Do you ever just pinch yourself and say, I cant believe these are some of the amazing projects people are coming to us with?

Frdric:Yeah,the future is now. This 3D printed organ is in production andit isalreadybeingused.The solar autonomous dronemade its firstflight,and we expect several flights next year.Thingsare accelerating for the good.

Laurel:And speaking of one of the most important things thatwe aredealing with here in 2020 is thecovid-19pandemic. DassaultSystmeshad a directresponse,as many companies are working very closely with trying to work on solutions to the virus. So,what is theOpenCovid-19project and how's Dassault helping?

Frdric:As I said earlier, the 3DEXPERIENCE Lab has had two kind of projects:a very collectiveandcollaborative project around a startup or a complete community project with special needs. We didthatfor instance, to reconstruct Leonardo da Vincismachinesin 3D.We created an online community,sharedthe collectionall those manuscripts that were the draftings of Leonardo at that timetoengineers.We are using our software, or any3D software, to designandengineer those machines and it workedpretty well. Itstartedeight years ago, andit isstill going. Many machineshavebeen reconstructedand nowthey areforming a playgroundofmany machines. Some of themworked and some of them did not.At that time,heinvented so many things,butobviously not everything wasgoing towork. We did the same for thecovid-19situation.

When the pandemic started,itwas in China, andour colleagueswere reporting the issues to us.Wesaw the pandemic coming intoEurope from Italy first, and then in France. So,we decided to first work with our data intelligence to understandthe needs by developing dashboards to scan what people were saying. And very quickly weidentifiedtwo main needs:ventilatorsandprotection.They were thefocus of things.

Sowe created an open community,OpenCovid-19,to welcome any volunteer makers, engineers anddesigners, to help, because we saw at that timethatmany people were trying to do things, but on their own, in theirlab,in their country. Theywere all facing the same issues, andbyworking together, we thoughtitcouldbe an interesting way to accelerate, to transfer the know-how, to avoid any mistakes done already.

For this community, we acceleratedmore than 150 projectsontheglobal standpoint.With around 25 ventilators in India, a startup calledInalidid a complete engineering simulationandprototyping of a new ventilator in eight days. Onceagain thanks to thecloudand the mentoring.

For collaborative projects with industry, it was the case in Brazil and Mexico.To make these projects you havemakers in the fab lab, trying to do somefrugalinnovation with what they have.Some of those projects havebeencertified,for instance, from whenwe worked with theFabFoundationfrom MITs Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA). They are gathering, with this foundation, all fab labs around the world to connect localproduction.It was mainly the case for protection, for PPE and for faceshields, so that they could 3D print those faceshields.And wewereabletodosome data and GPS localization of those fab labs in hospitals. I thinkurgencydictates to connect them locally so that you can connectto alocal production. A fab lab could develop on designand fabricatePPE forthe healthcare workers close by.

Laurel:And one of those projects that obviously got a lot of interest,is the way that sneeze particles are spread. And withcovid-19, everyone is very interested in understanding how aerosol particles move through the air.

Frdric:Yeah,that istrue. We developed a sneeze simulation model fromthe front of aperson to model virtual particles to see the scientific simulation of the humansneezeto evaluatehowpathogens, suchascovid, wouldspread. And we did this simulation model with MITs CBAwith NeilGershenfeldtofirst announce the design of the PPE, personal protective equipment, the face shielddesign. And to see from two virtualpersonsin front of them,one- or two-metersdistancewhere one is sneezing. What is impact on how those particles would spreadfrom one person to the other,to optimize thedesign?We very quickly understood,for instance, that those face shieldsneeda top coversincethe particles are dropping downandinfecting theotherperson.

Laurel:So how do you see artificial intelligence augmenting human intelligence?

Frdric:AI, for many people, AI is deep learning.It ismachine learning computer vision,or data scienceeverybodyisdoing it. For us,artificial intelligence also leads to generative designs,for instance. The algorithm creates a shape that meets your design intent, your constraints. So,the designer is no longer sketching the shape he wants,he isproviding the constraints. The requirements on the algorithmisproposing a design shape that meets those intents. Itreversescompletely the way the designers performthefunction thanks tothe artificialintelligence.

We spoke abouthuman, augmentedhumanby leveraging the virtual twin. Your virtual me,in a way,of your body,of your organs. We have this collaborative project called Living Heart driven by our American colleagues to revolutionize,thecardiovascularsciencethrough realisticsimulations. This research projectdelivered a heartmodel to explore novel digital therapies. And from this model, we accelerated a new startup, a Belgium company calledFEopsthat now can offer the first and the only patient specific simulation model for structuralheartintervention with AI, which will predict the bestTAVI[those valve implants]that the surgeon would needformatching correctlyhispatientsanatomy.

Laurel:So,the simulation really does come out of the cloud, and out of the computer to real life.And, ina rapid way that helps people on a day-to-day basis, which isreally fantastic. It's not something that just lingers around for approval. You can make changes, see the effect, and then move on to see what else you can do to improve situations.

The face shield project is also one of those thatisso critical.Bringing in the makers, as you said, somany folks wanted to get involved,and still are from around the world,andhelping outin their own way. So,this idea of bringing in amateur makers, as well as startups, as well as these professionals, as well as enterprises, all working together to really combat a global pandemic is reallyquitesomething else. This shows me thatDassault really does have an innovator's mindset when it comes to science, when it comes to helping humanity.Howelse are you seeing the successes of the 3DEXPERIENCE Labsort of ripple throughout the Dassault?

Frdric:At DassaultSystmesyes, we are all innovators in a way.Thats why,when I established this3Dlab initiative five years ago,I decidednotto create a new organization with the boss that would perform innovation. I was willing to have an inclusive management system.Wedecided toallowany of our 20,000 employees to take up to 10% of their time to volunteer on innovation acceleratedby the lab. And bring their hard skillsandtheir know-howknowledge.

And again, this is possible thanks to this platform.Sowe invented, in a way,a new management organization with communities, completelyacrosssilos,acrossdivisions, so that anyone could join a project forfewhours,a few daysora few weeks in order to work on it.Itwas really a new governancefor open innovation, withnew management methodologies that impacted not only the person,orthe employees, but also our own platform on solutions. We work closely with ourR&D to enhanceafew or to develop new applications, to sustain new methodologies on process.

Laurel:And do other companies come to Dassault to ask,how did you do this?Youre a large corporation, with global offices, and youve been around for a long time. You probably have very specific ways of thinking. How did you manage in five years to become this innovative company, they must want to learn from you?

Frdric:Thats true. I don't know if they want to learn from us, butatleast get inspiration from us. What we do is wearealwaystrainingaheadof our time. Thinking ofnew ways of working at the lab. We experimentedwithnew usage,thanks to thecloud. Wesucceededbecause now it really works with 20,000 people in operation with deliverablesandKPIs.Ourpoint is really to inspire themandto show them what is possibleandwhat we can do to transformourselves. It's also digital transformation forDassaultSystmeswiththese employeesin order forthem to think how it could also impact them, how they can also transform their management systemandtheir companies.

Laurel:Thats excellent. What a perfect way to end todays interview. Thank you so much for joining us.

Frdric:Thank you,Laurel.

Laurel:Thatwas Frdric Vacher, the Head of Innovation at DassaultSystmes, who I spoke with from Cambridge, Massachusetts, the home of MIT and MIT Technology Review overlooking the Charles River.

Thats it for this episode of Business Lab. Im your host, Laurel Ruma. Im the director of Insights, the custom publishing division of MIT Technology Review. We were founded in 1899 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And you can find us in print, on the web, and at dozens of events each year around the world and online.

For more information about us and the show, please check out our website at technologyreview.com. This show is available wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, we hope youll take a moment to rate and review us. Business Lab is a production of MIT Technology Review. This episode was produced by Collective Next. Thanks for listening.

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Leveraging collective intelligence and AI to benefit society - MIT Technology Review