i3 - January/February 2016 - 39

At CES 2016, more than 115 automotive tech companies and nine automakers are
launching products in 200,000 nsf of exhibit space. See auto tech trends from
parking assistance, collision avoidance and emergency braking to the latest in
driverless, electric and energy-efficient vehicles.

Sheryl Connelly, Global
Consumer Trends and
Futuring Manager, Ford
Motor Co., Dearborn, MI

Aric Dromi, Futurologist,
Volvo Cars, Gothenburg,
Sweden

Dromi: I agree with Sheryl. It's almost impossible
to predict the future. My main role is to help my
company navigate whatever comes down the road.
It's basically to tell them stories about potential
futures that could happen, and then work with my
team and try to conceptualize futures that should
happen. We have a concept treatment for 2070 but
that's where we stopped.
We are looking to five different groups: demographic; geopolitical movements; new technologies; people; and social interaction. We try
to identity the reciprocal relationships between
these groups to understand how they are marching
forward together. The main reason for my existence
is to challenge the notion of what exists is what is
right and shouldn't be changed, to push the envelope of thoughts that exists in our industry since
the dawn of time. I don't really care about how the
car looks and feels today, but instead what is the
place of mobility in the changing society?
Mankowsky: Future studies are creating new
thoughts about the future. My role is like a catalyst.
The timeframe is very simple: Every industry has
its heartbeat, its rhythm. The heartbeat in the auto
industry is six or seven years. My perspective is two
generations-14 years ahead. It's not about predicting, because predicting is difficult on the individual
level. You can't say I'll win the lottery. But you can
develop a sense of time and this makes a difference
to trend research.

As a global company, do you focus on
only one market-your home market, for
instance?

Alexander Mankowsky,
Futurist (Future Studies
and Ideation), Daimler
AG, TK, Germany

C TA . t e c h / i 3

Connelly: I have global responsibility, so the
trends team that was created by Ford Motor Co. in
early 2000 was done with a very specific agenda.
We believe that there are people all over the
company-irrespective of their title, their function
or the geography-who have given meaningful
thought in contemplation about what the future
holds.
The company decided it was very important to
centralize that work geographically. Because our
worry was that Ford North America might have
one set of trends, Ford of Europe might have a

different outlook and Ford Asia Pacific could have
a completely different outlook. Not only could they
be inconsistent, the greater danger was that they
could become incompatible.
At the very top level my goal was to create a collection of global trends that would be universally
relevant around the world by all functions. The
next step was to recognize that the implications
can vary by region. I also never lose sight of the fact
that I am an American and I'm a mid-westerner
and those things will cloud my point of view. We
make sure that we keep a rigorous and robust
process, where we bring in other people that will
challenge my point of view, so that our ideas are
well vetted.
Dromi: Part of my job is to tell stories about
futures that could happen, and in that perspective we definitely try to understand global trends.
Urban lifestyle doesn't just exist in Europe. Every
city around the world is facing the same problems.
We try to create what we call the mobility hierarchy of needs [like Maslow's hierarchy of needs].
Emotion is one of the things that haven't evolved
with human beings. Love today is love 5,000 years
ago. Hate today is hate 5,000 years ago. What are
the basic animal instincts of needs that create the
commonality on a global scale? But then comes
the time that we need to conceptualize. We need to
show [our constituents] a future that should happen, and that we never do on a global scale. That
we do on a very narrow local scale. So 50 percent
of the time when we are looking at global scale we
are very much storytellers, but when we are looking
at local scale we are story makers and we hope that
the story will be catchy and will fly and will go viral
fast enough.
Mankowsky: We have our design studios and
research studios all over the world: in California,
Beijing, Italy and Germany. We see in the global
markets similarities-we have a global way of life
today. On the other hand as Mercedes-Benz, we
have to bring something European. Nobody would
wait for an Indian car from Mercedes-Benz. We
have to design European style, European luxury,
European invention, German technology. We can't
create extremely local cars.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs http://CTA.tech/i3

i3 - January/February 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of i3 - January/February 2016