The future of packaging materials

Avery Dennison

Avery Dennisson is market leader in innovative packaging materials. The company sometimes refers to itself as ‘world leader in materials science’. It was great to work with Avery Dennisson again; this time during an international webinar. A team of product developers and innovation specialists came together to ponder the question: “What comes after the sticker?”

The starting point of my inspiration session was of course ‘digital’. In tomorrow’s world, we will see intelligent digital displays all over our smart cities. In self-driving buses, at local outlets, and in buildings, these displays will interact with the world around them.

They will be connected to the cloud and all kinds of smart systems, sources, and technologies – such as content, object and facial recognition, weather information, environmental information and so on. This, in turn, will lead to the emergence of many new digital business models. Of course, we also looked to 2050 and beyond.

During the inspiration session we discussed the organisation of the future as well, in which I spoke about the power of ecosystems and new leadership. The next day I received a nice message from the manager in charge of the webinar: “Great job Richard! You nailed it. We’ll keep in touch.”