Anushka Sharma (Naaut): Blockchain for space supply chain
At the fourth Internet of Agreements conference on Space Anushka Sharma of Naaut talked about the various pieces of work that underlie her latest project.
Transcript:
Hi, good afternoon! How is everyone doing? I’ve always wanted this point in a conference, when I can say I’m the last person on stage that’s stopping you from having lunch. I’ve always wanted to use that line, and I’ve been able to deploy it today.
My name is Anushka Sharma, I’m the Founder of Naaut. I do innovation, strategy in my present life, with my future project that I’m building, which is Naaut, and it’s all about innovation and frontier technology for a multiplanetary future. Now, often as the case can be, I feel like I’m amongst friends so we can probably be a bit more relaxed about what our future goals and aspirations are, particularly in the space sector, but often when I tell people, they often laugh in my face. And that’s okay, because we’re talking about this conversation in a very safe space, and everybody that is looking to do something in the space sector is genuinely building something that we’re building on decades’ worth of work, and technology, as it’s accelerating the process right now, is bringing us a very interesting point in our human history. Technology is changing the game.
One of the things I also do is help corporates and startups and scale-ups understand what the capability of innovation in technology is and how to turn that into an advantage for your organisation, and help them to write and build a strategy. It’s really interesting, because that’s often the fuzzy grey space that many people find too uncomfortable to sit in. My background is I’ve worked in politics, for 14 years I’ve worked on political campaigns, I left that to work on the Olympics, I have a computing background, and somehow, three and a half years ago I got invited by NASA to tend the launch of a satellite at Vandenberg Air Force Base. That’s when I’ve realised that you didn’t have to necessarily have a technical background or be a rocket scientist to access the space sector, very much as I’ve found in the work that I’ve done in the tech ecosystem.
So, very much bringing this conversation back to Earth and keeping it focused on Earth, I wanted to talk about how blockchain can really help with future supply chain for space. One of my clients last year that we did some research for is a fast-moving consumer goods brand, they’re a global name, and they were looking at how their product, which is the food product that provides early life nutrition for infants, can look to deploy innovation across their global supply chain. When you have 60 global supply chain directors that come to the UK, they’re here for an innovation day, I had to design for them a process where they could really look to understand what they should be potentially building and mapping in their short, mid, and long-term goals.
One of the things we looked at was artificial intelligence, the other thing that we looked at was sustainability, we also looked at bringing in interesting startups and scale-ups who are working agritech. There’s a great company in the UK called Wefarm that’s working to enable African farmers, through really basic SMS technology, to understand how they can actually nourish and nurture the ground with what they have to really get the best yields. If for example you are creating a dairy product and you’re looking to reproduce it, package it, dry it, get it onto the shelf, ship it, there’s a huge supply chain that goes into that process, you want to ensure that if you are providing nutrition that it is the best source. In the world that we’re living in right now, consumers and sustainability and social awareness and impact and ethics all come into that process, so we really can enable blockchain to help with the transparency of such supply chain goals of any global brand, but also help them to understand where these exciting startups and scale-ups sit, to help them empower themselves, and maybe work together in the future. Because that’s where innovation comes from, collaboration and really breaking down the doors of where you wouldn’t necessarily have the opportunity to work together.
One of the other companies that we got them talking to is a company called OLIO, a UK-based company, really interesting. What they do is they have a platform that connects people in a local neighbourhood to share surplus stocks. You had a party, you have excess wine, why would you want to give it away? But you can, you can sell it to neighbours in your community and help redistribute that with a very low carbon imprint. Now, what was really interesting about this product is obviously they provide nutrition for infants. They didn’t realise that some of their products were being shared on this platform, because we’re going through changes in society where not everybody is able to access products, maybe price. But also, when you have wastage in the community, and we’re looking about generally being more aware of our environment, we want to make sure that we’re sharing and looking after members of our community.
So it was really interesting for me sitting in on that conversation, where there was a real uncomfortable moment where the startups totally rightly are saying, “We’ve got this really interesting platform and we’re sharing our product, and you’ve got a big corporate that’s looking at this grey, fuzzy area and wondering how that impacts them on legislation, on their product, on how they can ensure that if there’s an issue with the product, how would they then track back to ensure that the batch that they might need to look into could be trackable,” and that’s where blockchain really supplies a real-world incentive. And if we look at what corporates are doing, as they’re scaling blockchain technology and adopting it, we really will start to see really great protocols and standards, much like in the 90s with the Internet and TCP/IP, which really help public and private sharing of data across networks. I really can see that as the future for how we share information, and really ensure that it’s trackable, obviously in the way that blockchain can do that in a transparent way, and ensure that we can move forward and scale what the potential of the space sector can be across different sectors.
I think one of the really exciting space companies to look at today is Open Cosmos, who basically are a one-stop shop for CubeSats, they’ve done really well with some raising of some funds very recently. They are your one-stop shop, and they are the person that you can go to, and they can design and build and deploy and launch your CubeSat. When you look at the work that some of these really innovative startups in the space ecosystem are doing today, the potential of how that scales and sets the tone for bigger players like Airbus and ESO and NASA and the UK Space Agency as we move forward with our goals, we really will be able to have really unique viewpoints, and it’s just really important that we can all sit together around the table, to ensure that everybody has a voice to have this discussion. So Katherine, I really echo your comments about collaboration, I think that was a wonderful thing to really echo.
There’s one quote that I just want to finish off with, and it kind of sums up what I’ve said, it’s from Wired magazine. It says, “Today, it is circa 1993 for blockchain technologies. Even though most people barely know what the blockchain is, a decade or so from now it will be like the Internet: We’ll wonder how society ever functioned without it. The InterNaaut — the InterNaaut… pun intended? [laughter] — the Internet transformed how we share information and connect; the blockchain will transform how we exchange value and whom we trust.” I think trust and the trust economy is a big core of what we now need to build, and I really want to ensure that everyone you sit next to, everyone you meet today is a player in the space ecosystem now, in the midterm and tomorrow. Who you meet today might be doing a really interesting work in the legal sector, but all of these worlds are colliding, and my very rogue-like background has enabled me to have the courage to stand in front of you today and talk to you about what I am building with Naaut for my future stuff.
And I’ve just wrapped up COGEX. I don’t know if anyone was there at COGEX — Vinay did speak, great. COGEX is the biggest festival for all things artificial intelligence, blockchain and emerging technology. We’re in the process of putting all of the talks up on stage, we had some eminent speakers from all around the world, I encourage you to check out the content, it’s out there and it’s there for everyone. What I loved about that is that it was a very… I get really passionate about diversity in tech, but it was a very diverse representation of people from all across the tech ecosystem, as much as that was reflected in our audience. Sometimes when I go to events in the tech sector and space sector, it’s very undiverse. But I’m looking at the audience today, and I’m really pleased to see the representation of diversity that we need to champion in the space sector and every sector, to encourage all of our voices to flourish and come together, and give access to space for everyone. Because ultimately, we are all representing humanity and we all need to make sure that that is carried forward in our future space race.
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