From Our CEO, Yan Simard: On the Future of Work

We believe that technology, if used right, can not only allow front line workers to stay relevant, but will make them more critical than ever before.

Experienced tech entrepreneurs are used to thinking about their products as solutions to a market pain. It is, after all, an effective way to build a product that people care about.

Product interest is typically measured by people’s willingness to pay for that product, which in turn attracts investment dollars. As the CEO of Kognitiv Spark, it’s my job to think, or rather obsess, about our product/market fit. However, as a father of 4, my real driver is something else entirely.

My real driver is to give my kids a chance to live in an exciting world full of opportunities, where anyone who’s willing to work hard has a chance to thrive. I can speak for our entire team at Kognitiv Spark when I say that this vision for the future of work is what drives us daily.

We all hear about how fast workforces are shifting. Automation, AI, digital transformation, disintermediation, cyber threats, protectionism, and globalization are tectonic plates in motion – which will undoubtedly trigger socio-economic earthquakes in our near future. The world is home to more than 3 billion workers. Most of them are directly impacted by the work trends at play. Many will lose their current way of making a living, some will re-tool, and unfortunately, some won’t be able to.

I find it difficult to call technological advances “progress” if they threaten the livelihood of so many people. But here’s the thing: it’s up to us, the tech entrepreneurs, to make technology work for people.

This is our purpose, and this is what I love most about the work we do. We want to empower workers to achieve more. We especially want to empower the world’s 2 billion front-line workers, who are expected to be heavily impacted by automation and AI.

We believe that technology if used right, can not only allow front-line workers to stay relevant but will make them more critical than ever before. Research has proven time and time again that empowered workers are more engaged, have faster problem resolution, and experience fewer incidents. They can help organizations build stronger teams and more productive workforces.

The right technology can bestow workers with a literal superpower: the ability to visualize complex information and process enormous amounts of data in real-time.

We believe that this perfect mix of human empowerment and leading-edge technology is at the intersection of Mixed Reality, AI, IoT and situational awareness. We like to refer to it as “contextualized work insight”. We believe it can change the way humans work.

Our first product, RemoteSpark, is a Mixed Reality communication platform for front-line workers. It’s been enjoying solid success because it helps workers solve complex field problems with greater speed, accuracy, and safety instead of relying on experts to travel on-site – causing added expense, idle time, and equipment downtime.

Augmented and mixed reality worker support tools like RemoteSpark are barely scratching the surface of what front-line workers want and need. However, it’s the first stepping stone we need to fuel the digital empowerment of field workers.

Our dream is to go deeper, wider, and for so many more people and organizations. Our drive is to make all front-line workers feel good about themselves and their ability to perform at their full potential. After all, truly successful technology is one that’s in the hands of the workers, not the other way around.