NJTC hosts second Innovation Forecast

The New Jersey Tech Council hosted its second Innovation Forecast on Thursday at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.The event featured speakers from Samsung, Campbell Soup Company, Google and Janssen Healthcare.

Its keynote speaker was Sanjay Macwan, senior vice president and chief technology officer at NBCUniversal. In his address, told from the perspective of a media company, he urged the audience to consider the trends he was presenting across all industries.

“It’s really important to look beyond your boundaries at other industries,” he said.

The trends Macwan identified and discussed were:

1. Content that finds the user
2. Mobile content viewing growth
3. New online networks
4. New forms of storytelling
5. Smart and efficient media technology
6. Next generation video formats
7. The “ultra-connected consumer”
8. Machine learning and artificial intelligence
9. Ubiquitous internet access
10. Connected / autonomous cars

To further illuminate how innovation in one industry could foster growth in another, Macwan demonstrated a small, waterproof adhesive that utilized an internal chip to monitor vitals of health care patients.

It was discovered there was a secondary application: A virtual wallet for amusement parks.

“Now, you’ll go to theme parks and this becomes your ticket and payment mechanism … because, if you’re in a water park, you’re not going to be carrying your wallet or your phone,” he said. “This came from the health care and beauty industry and we incubated this technology further.”