Dassault Systèmes provides business and people with 3DEXPERIENCE universes to imagine sustainable innovations capable of harmonizing product, nature and life.
In the last two centuries, the world has been built like a house of cards on a finite measure of knowledge and raw materials, with an economy split into silos. This has driven huge progress in healthcare, education and living standards — but to the detriment of the environment, our local contribution and a certain way of life. This isn’t sustainable.
Instead, we should think about progress in terms of balance and impact. As we create value, what are we taking from our planet? Harmonizing product, nature and life lies at the heart of the industry of the 21st century — the primary driver of innovation in all sectors of the economy and progress in all domains of society.
When we formulated our company purpose in 2012 and defined ourselves as the 3DEXPERIENCE Company, we anticipated that the world would shift from a product economy to an experience economy, that values the usage over the product.
The experience economy is not just about “user experience”. It is about the overall balance and impact of any service we provide to society. This means seeing industry as a value creation process for people, rather than the "means of production". The industry of the 21st century is a network of creation, production and exchange of experiences.
In 2012 we also dared to imagine that the 3DEXPERIENCE platform would become the most powerful vehicle for sustainable innovation.
The platform phenomenon redefines the industry: it's no longer the producer that underpins the industrial value chain but each and every one of us as a worker, a consumer and a citizen — you and I. Far more than simply a powerhouse of technology, virtual platforms provide a holistic approach to innovation and an inspiration for new offerings. A new world where we're all both frugal consumers, people who want quality of life and people who want to contribute.
The 3DEXPERIENCE platform clearly met the challenge. We demonstrated that it takes a special kind of compass to understand the past and navigate the future.
As it is adopted by new categories of innovators, the 3DEXPERIENCE platform has become the catalyst and enabler of the Industry Renaissance, today's global transformation that brings new ways of inventing, learning, producing and trading. Again, it's not so much the technology that matters. The value of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform lies in its ability to empower the workforce of the future with knowledge and know-how. Indeed, experience is the ultimate of knowledge.
The new book is the experience! Virtual worlds revolutionize our relationship with knowledge, just like the printing press did in fifteenth-century Europe: virtual worlds are our library and our workshop. Tomorrow’s game-changers will not be those with the most automated production systems, but those with the best-developed legacy of knowledge and know-how, whose business environments involve suppliers as full-fledged partners in value creation.
Welcome to the century of imagination
We stand at the threshold of a new world, where industry will need to create new landscapes in terms of what we offer, decide between use case scenarios and transform the art of how we produce. We’ll only be able to tackle these challenges by balancing all the dimensions of what it means to be human: at once an industrial being, a social being and a living being. The ability to imagine, the passion to learn, the willingness to dare, and the art of how we make it happen will be crucial. In this brave new paradigm, virtual will be the vital link between the imagination, the useful and the sustainable.
It goes without saying this isn't conveyed through exponential computing capability. Having access to data about the past doesn't mean we're able to envisage the future. Big data isn't worth a thing unless we have a virtual model that gives it meaning: the project experience goes far beyond mere usefulness to embrace quality and art. Modeling and simulation are other words for imagination –a collective undertaking that is converged around representations of the world and a shared project. This is what we call the IFWE spirit. Virtual worlds extend and improve the real world because they are spaces where we can represent and experiment with our imagination.
Why “virtual” rather than digital? Well, precisely because the value of what we do lies in the potential it offers for imagining the future. “Virtual” is about what’s possible – the potentiality. In that sense, the virtual is the very essence of human nature: we are virtual beings. We are beings of possibility.
Dassault Systèmes’ ultimate purpose and primary resource are one and the same – the human being.
Experience is human.
“Experience is Human”: this big idea leads us to extend our focus from things to life.
There was a before and an after 1989, the year we created the first virtual twin of the Boeing 777. There was a before and an after February 9, 2012, when we shifted the center of gravity of the industry from product to experience. There will be a before and an after the virtual twin experience of the human body.
Since 1981, we have been instrumental in sustainable innovation for products. In parallel, our ambition to harmonize product, nature and life has led us to develop a new understanding of life and nature.
Today, we're capable of applying the knowledge and know-how we acquired in the non-organic world to the organic – living – world. From things to life.
Imagine being able to understand, model, search, test, and treat a human body as precisely, safely and effectively as we already can today for a plane, a car or a building. We can transform how people are cured and help them live a better life.
The virtual twin experience, a new way of representing of the world.
What is the difference between things and life? Life is not made of parts: the human body is one piece and hyper connected. Life doesn’t do standardization: it’s personalized design, production and usage. And life isn’t “used” but lived. Life is an experience.
So to improve life, we have to invent new ways of representing reality. We have to invent the virtual twin experience of life.
A virtual twin experience of the human body with the 3DEXPERIENCE platform integrates modeling, simulation, information intelligence and collaboration. It brings together biosciences, material sciences and information sciences to project the data from an object into a complete living virtual model that can be fully configured and simulated. By combining art, science and technology, it makes it possible to understand the invisible to represent the visible. Industry, researchers, physicians and even patients can visualize, test, understand and predict what cannot be seen – from the way drugs affect a disease to surgical outcomes – before a patient is treated.
“Experience is human” is at the core of who we are, what we do, and with whom we do it.
This big idea shapes our strategy, evolving from Social Industry Experiences to Human Industry Experiences.
“Human” means that our ultimate ambition and primary resource are one and the same – the human being. We build on imagination, knowledge and know-how to make a lasting contribution for the benefit of all. “Industry” means that we want to offer customers what they value the most - a sustainable outcome. “Experiences” mean that we aim to help businesses and people build and live in today’s new “New World”.
To achieve this strategy, Dassault Systèmes will focus on developing its leadership in Life Sciences & Healthcare alongside two other strategic sectors of the economy: Manufacturing Industries and Infrastructure & Cities.
These sectors share similar development processes and sustainability needs in their efforts to improve quality of life, whether through more affordable and precise therapies, optimized infrastructures, or better use of the environment.
Because experience is human, experience is about enjoying art, science and technology to imagine and create a better world for all.
And this world must be sustainable.
