Welcome to our May editorial!
In this month’s editorial, Justin Anderson, the Digital Twin Hub’s new Director, discusses his vision and priorities for the Hub in the coming months.
Can you tell us about your journey to the DT Hub?
Since the age of seven, when I first learned to code using punch cards, I’ve always been intrigued about how machines can help us to do things better, faster and more efficiently.
It’s led to four decades working in the digital and technology world.
I started in California working with Silicon Valley startups and have myself run a technology company for two decades. I then moved to KPMG International where I was Global Head of the Technology Centre of Excellence and responsible for looking at the impact of emerging technologies and digital technologies on clients’ business models and operating models. This was an exciting place to be and provided me with a good understanding of what’s coming towards us and the impact of those technologies. I also set up the all-party parliamentary group on artificial intelligence, which has been about debating the economic, environmental and social impacts of AI since 2016.
In some ways, coming into this building feels like coming home as I had an office here eight years ago and have worked across various Catapults, most recently as interim Regional Director for the Digital Catapult.
I am hoping I can use these experiences in a way that can really help impact some of the thorny social and environmental challenges that we face.
What is your priority coming into this role?
My priority is to listen to the voice of the customer, the customer being the digital twin ecosystem, and understand where it currently is – its priorities and experiences. It’s important to me to spend as much time as possible engaging in different discussions across that ecosystem, as well as through the DT Hub Strategic Board, Advisory Board, Community Council, Catapult Councils, Secretariat and Connected Places Catapult itself.
We are also looking to bring people in to help grow this ecosystem across all sorts of different boundaries, whether that’s across sectors or disciplines – clearly interdisciplinary expertise is at the heart of it all.
My aim is that the community feels comfortable with me in my stewardship of the DT Hub, representing them and delivering for them.
Why are you passionate about digital twins?
My passion is more about the fact that we’ve got some serious societal level challenges that need to be solved and digital twins represent a bundle of different technologies that all come together that can help us solve problems.
The technology is there, but it’s how you actually align an ecosystem around a common purpose, built on common principles, with common protocols in order that collectively you amplify the efforts of all the parties and accelerate things. And what I hope to do is to look at all these different paths and find a way of making sure they all line up, head in the same direction and talk to each other. We have to set ourselves around a consensus view of what good looks like going forward.
Are there any events for the diary you want to highlight?
We have the Connected Digital Twin Summit coming up in June, which is the major summit of the year for anybody interested in digital twins. We’ll have around 300 people in person and more than 350 joining online. It’s backed by central government, local regional government, as well as some major industry players and academia. It should be a really exciting event and a great opportunity for the community to meet in person. We hope to see you there!
Justin Anderson, Director, Digital Twin Hub
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