At its 54th General Assembly, Cigref unveiled the 2024 edition of its Strategic Orientation Report, “5 ambitions: what can we do by 2040?”.
“We have taken a radically different approach from previous years: we have set out to describe a digital future we would like to see by 2030-2040, focusing on our capacity for vision and imagination, and we have tried to map out the pathways to get there.” Extract from the editorial by Jean-Claude Laroche, President of Cigref.
With this new edition, Cigref wanted to go one step further in its forward-looking commitment, which began five years ago. As they do every year, they sought to understand and anticipate the course of events in order to provide decision-makers with answers in an increasingly uncertain political, environmental and economic world.
However, this year, in addition to this work of anticipation, Cigref has also sought to outline the “strategic orientations” that the association and its members should take to achieve futures that appear to be the most desirable for European organizations and for society as a whole. Beyond “What can happen?”, this report therefore explores “What are we going to do?”. This question obviously involves determining the objectives to be achieved and identifying the levers of action to be mobilized to achieve them.
The report is thus structured around five strategic questions, representing the five main challenges for Cigref members by 2040:
- Question 1: What can be done to ensure that digital technology makes an effective contribution to the environmental transition?
- Question 2: What can be done to improve security in the digital environment?
- Question 3: What can be done to ensure that digital technologies contribute to social cohesion?
- Question 4: What can be done to develop real European strategic autonomy in the digital domain?
- Question 5: What can be done to ensure that digital technology contributes to improving quality of life at work and quality of employment?
Foreword by Jean-Claude Laroche, President of Cigref
During the presentation of Cigref’s last four Strategic Orientation Reports, and in particular the last one devoted to possible changes over the next one or two decades, I have often heard my interlocutors express their fears in the face of a future which they perceive as worrying, sometimes vertiginous, and in the face of which we seem powerless.
In addition to the uncertainties about the future of our democracies, about peace and geopolitical disorder, about the conditions of life on earth and about the major economic balances, all of which we recall in our background note, the accelerated deployment of digital technologies raises a central question: have we gone from a world where in which man could not produce what he could imagine, to a world in which man can no longer imagine what he is capable of producing? In other words, to use the title of a book by Günther Anders, has the time come for « human obsolescence »? Has the speed of technological development outstripped our ability to adapt, evolve and understand? Are we permanently ‘behind’ the world as it is?
The exercise of foresight therefore exposes us to a risk: that of radical pessimism, followership or immobility. It’s as if, instead of lighting the way, foresight was to shine its spotlight in the eyes of its readers, leaving them dazed, paralysed, in a kind of stupor… and hypnotised by what technology is now capable of producing.
That is why, in this edition of our Foresight Studies, we have taken a radically different approach from previous years: we have set out to describe a digital future we would like to see by 2030-2040, focusing on our capacity for vision and imagination, and we have tried to map out the pathways to get there. We have been resolute in our aim to create a responsible, sustainable and trusted digital future.
We have therefore focused on action, which gives this text a somewhat programmatic character, although it has never been our vocation at Cigref to draw up a political programme. As representatives of major economic players, we simply want to make our contribution to a process of reflection that opens up the future and offers perspectives.
To do this, we have kept our traditional support points: the enlightened debates of our Strategic Orientation Council, the valuable reflections of our Strategic Orientation Council for Young People, the thematic afterworks, the results of our many working groups… and the methodological support of our partner, Futuribles. All these contributions, familiar to our readers, allow us to draw on a wide range of references, documenting and framing our forward-looking work.
We therefore wish all our readers an inspiring read, to use a fashionable term, an inspiring read that will provide them with the tools they need to understand and act in the best possible way in the context of their responsibilities.