There are future situations that will require our anticipated action/reflexion today. Anticipation has always been important in all strategy setting, but it has become especially essential in our current fast changing world, until being absolutely vital for the forthcoming times of every business.
A great illustration of the absolute necessity of anticipation is the aviation industry, where a new time of pioneers has started.
A bit more than a century ago, the first aviation pioneers like the Wright brothers who invented the first airplane, or Louis Blériot who was the first man to cross the British Channel with a flying machine, together with a bunch of audacious engineers and daring adventurers have opened a new era, a new space to explore, with infinite possibilites.
I am always amazed, each time I sit down in a plane, about the amount of risk that had been necessary to make us able to fly from one side of earth to the other in total safety. We have come a long way and are now enjoying flying, travelling and discovering the world thanks to the sacrifice of a few, and the talent of a lot of these pioneers who participated in the development of aviation.
The new Pioneers
But times are changing and to keep mankind's flying dream alive, it is obvious that a completely new approach is needed, of course due to the massive amount of fossil fuel required to support this industry and its thousands of airplanes.
The current period has therefore become an era for aviation pioneers of a new kind, trying to develop machines entirely moved by renewable energy. Most people already saw or heard about "Solar Impulse", this fantastic project that aims at showing how far we can go with such type of airplane, and which already completed a loop around the planet.
But Solar Impulse is not the only project of solar airplanes to be on track. Other passionate people are designing these new types of machines, testing and trying, again and again, to develop safe and clean solutions that could be easily accessible, and making them the new standard. This is the case of Electra One Solar, developped in Germany by a small airplane manufacturer, or e-Genius, also developped in Germany, by the Stuttgart University. Useless to mention that the aerospace giants are actively thinking about the future in their R&D Centers and Corporate Labs, like Airbus with their E-Fan prorotype.
Every actor in the aviation industry knows that the future will be totally different as what it is today for the obvious reasons I mentioned, giving them the time to adapt to the new context they see coming. But the reasons of change are not always that obvious and again, in a fast changing world, it has become more and more crucial to anticipate, to innovate and more than ever to dream about what will be a bright future, like these new aviation Pioneers do!