The Evolving Hardware Space

Who and what can we expect in the 2017 tech-hardware charge?

2016 has been quite a year. Impossible to predict, turbulent, at times tragic, but we’re not here to talk politics, we want to look ahead to the potential 2017 brings for hardware innovation and industrial design across the global startup community.

William Gibson famously said that “The future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed”

He was right — much of it is resident here at the CRL. Here’s what the immediate future looks like to us, based on the innovations that we are incubating:

There is no doubt that many hardware startups will be integrating the latest in software technologies. From machine vision to artificial intelligence to the latest virtual reality environments, we see many of our resident startups requiring world-class software development skills in addition to hardware and manufacturing skills. We’ve seen huge consumer interest in Augmented Reality, with software successes such as Pokémon Go, but we are seeing the development of even more magical augmented gaming experiences with sophisticated fusions of physical as well as virtual game components. We’re also seeing the application of such technologies move beyond the exploratory world of gaming to more every day applications such as hospitality.

With the continued success of Rasberry Pi, Tech Will Save Us and many more, we know that ‘edutech’ is a hot market. But most of what we have seen already is purchased by parents seeking an apparently healthier digital diet for their children than smart phones and tablets. With the launch of BBC Microbit for schools, and based on what we are seeing in-house, schools are now picking up on this trend and properly working out how to embrace fast moving technology in their perhaps slower moving teaching curriculum. Perhaps most importantly we’re seeing the most advanced products aim beyond the IT and Design and Technology curriculum to science and music and other traditionally non tech-led subjects. A much more mainstream vision.

Thinking about the continued influence of designers in founding teams, we see the trend for simplicity growing. It’s not just that designers know the value of minimalism, or that crowdfunding platforms need a simple story to engage prospective consumers, it’s that one way to accelerate startups is to launch with a truly minimal feature set. Time and again we see teams realise that they can launch with less and than what they first thought was their minimum product. Simple will continue.

More speculative, but no less important is the search for circular economy business models. If there is one thing that product developers feel guilty about, it is the landfill that they generate.

With this in mind an increasing number of product developers and startups, are concerned about not just getting their product onto the market, but give consideration to the business’s role in the product’s complete lifetime, how long it lasts and where will it end up at the end of it’s “first life”.

We’re starting to see larger corporations understanding the value of material efficiencies and offering products through services — but few startups have managed this yet, beginning to embrace opportunities, particularly focusing on so called “waste” material streams. As consumers (as well as regulations) become ever more concerned about the discarding of products, or even the sourcing of the materials within the products, we’re going to see more startups recognising this opportunity.

But all in all, given the relatively unstable political landscape, 2017 might be a year for enhancing and honing existing products, rather than gambling on daring new devices. What the past few years of wearables and smart devices have shown, is that it’s actually very hard to create a new device. Product categories exist that consumers already hold great attachment too, the question is how new technology can perhaps be integrated in a more enhancing and lasting form.

That said, we could be proved entirely wrong when the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) kicks off again in Las Vegas in just a few weeks’ time.

As ever, we shall continue to watch with interest as the hardware space continues to evolve.