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What is retrofuturism? The future as seen from the past? The past as seen from the future? Or perhaps just nostalgia for a time when innovation was looked on with romance and optimism. In nearly every aspect, the world today is a better than at any other time in human history. And our future? Our future is in the hands of today’s youth …

The Retrofuturist Chronicles center on a 12-year-old girl named Miranda who is affable and bright but disempowered because of her age. Each episode begins with Miranda expressing concerns about something in her life. 

In turn, those concerns always remind Miranda’s kind-of-crazy retrofuturist spinster Aunt Natalie of some extraordinary absurdist exploit that she’s had. Aunt Natalie’s tall tales are never constrained by time, place, logic, or even laws of physics. She often invokes historic people and incidents and makes outrageous claims. But she inspires Miranda with fantastic tales of past innovations that have just enough truth in them to be intriguing and uplifting.

Our host, SAP’s Global Vice President of Marketing for the Intelligent Enterprise and Industries, Helen Dwight, provides commentary at the conclusion of each story, separating the patently nonsensical from the nearly unbelievable reality.

Finally, we’re joined by SAP’s Futurist Martin Wezowski and VP of Industries Pradeep Amladi who, together, explore the future of innovation, industry by industry.

Produced by SAP. 

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Key Links

• Get inspired. Check out more about the future for the consumer products industry at www.inspirethefuture.com/consumer-products.

Twelve-year-old Miranda looks to the future with trepidation. On the verge of maturity, she enjoys the new-found freedom of being able to make some of her own choices. However, making even small decisions at that age can be intimidating and facing an undetermined future can be overwhelming. 

Recently, Miranda has been staying with her beloved Aunt Natalie, who always has a great story to tell and a taste for adventure. Aunt Natalie claims to belong to a secret sisterhood of retrofuturist innovators called CRISIS. As you will learn, retrofuturism examines how the past imagined the future, and how the future can be informed by the past.

In this episode, Miranda decides to become a social media influencer. This prompts Aunt Natalie to tell how the secret sisterhood to which she belongs once spearheaded a rescue mission to Antarctica to find a group of researchers who got lost looking for the lost city of the Elder Things. The rescuers included a waddle of 300 penguins.

The episode concludes with SAP executives discussing how online shopping and social media have impacted the consumer products industry. And how all of these things ultimately are about two subcategories: your being the protagonist of your own innovation story, which is your purpose, and how consumer products companies build lasting relationships in the market.

Produced by SAP.

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Key Links

• Get inspired. Check out more about the future for the consumer products industry at www.inspirethefuture.com/consumer-products.

In this episode, young Miranda finds herself upset due to a group robotics project that seems to be in jeopardy due to lack of follow-through on the part of her teammates, only to learn that they had not let her down after all. This is doubly important to Miranda as the “project” concerns someone dear to her. 

In an odd twist (pun intended) in our tale, Miranda’s struggles with this robotics project triggers Aunt Natalie’s memories of a battle for pretzel supremacy, where (let’s be honest), the real winners were the pretzel-munching public. Keep in mind that Aunt Natalie’s story took place in a golden age, well before the Atkins diet and its global war on carbohydrates.

In addition to the project not being in jeopardy, Aunt Natalie takes the opportunity to teach her niece an important life lesson: Sometimes group projects are a pain, but when you have the right people all working toward the same goal, the results can be amazing.

The episode concludes with SAP executives discussing how innovation often requires more than the implementation of new technology and software; it requires an enterprise dedication to doing things differently.

Produced by SAP. 

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Key Links

• Get inspired. Check out more about the future for the oil and gas industry at www.inspirethefuture.com/oil-gas.

In this episode, young Miranda informs her Aunt Natalie that she’s trying to make bombs, but she’s stressed because it’s not going very well. To Aunt Natale’s relief, they’re bath bombs made with essential oils. This triggers one of Aunt Natale’s outrageous memories, in which she worked with a German physicist named London in the United States. The team was trying to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen in an attempt to build a water engine as part of Winston Churchill’s Special Operations Executive. 

Although the Cosmopolitan Retrofuturistic Innovator’s Secret Investigative Sisterhood’s efforts to build a working water engine are ongoing (CRISIS never gives up), their efforts highlight how alternative energy sources are nothing new.

Miranda expresses concern that oil and gas are destroying the planet. Fortunately, her aunt takes the time to explain that oil and gas themselves are a natural part of the planet and they’re inanimate, so they’re not inherently evil. But she also points out that the entire world needs to be cautious about how we obtain our resources and how we use them.

The episode concludes with SAP executives discussing the need for innovation and efficiency for oil and gas procurement since alternative energy sources can only be part of the solution, and fossil fuels are a finite commodity.

Produced by SAP. 

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Key Links

• Get inspired. Check out more about the future for the oil and gas industry at www.inspirethefuture.com/oil-gas.

The episode opens with young Miranda in a state of panic brought on by the discovery that her private journal has gone missing. Aunt Natale finds it ironic that her niece can’t remember where she put a journal of thoughts she’s written down so that she won’t forget them. Not surprisingly, this does little to alleviate Miranda’s crises. 

Her aunt assures her that the Cosmopolitan Retrofuturistic Innovator’s Secret Investigative Sisterhood literally wrote the book on the “disappearing object phenomenon” when they’d been called in to help find a crude oil tanker called the “Voyager” that had vanished without a trace in the Bermuda Triangle.

The sisterhood discovered there are basically 5 possible explanations when things go missing. By staying calm and working through their options, they’re able to resolve Miranda’s crisis.

The episode concludes with SAP executives discussing the challenge faced by large enterprises like those in the oil and gas industry when managing thousands of assets, and how intelligent enterprises maximize asset performance with real-time insights, predictions, and simulations.

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Key Links

• Get inspired. Check out more about the future for the public sector at www.inspirethefuture.com/public-sector-government.

In this episode, we find 12yo Miranda overwhelmed by an upcoming dance competition. Aunt Natalie attempts to distract her with a memory of the Cosmopolitan Retrofuturistic Innovator’s Secret Investigative Sisterhood.

It turns out that long ago and far away, an evil man once infected an entire (tiny) town with choreomania, or “the dancing plague.” No one in government could get any work done because they all were dancing like mad and couldn’t stop. It was a public health problem that became an economic problem, and ultimately a public policy problem.

Fortunately, the sisterhood stepped in to help the citizenry get back to business just as Aunt Natalie stepped into a spare pair of tap shoes to help her niece master the Double Maxi Ford Toe with a Pullback.

The episode concludes with SAP executives discussing how by becoming the public-sector equivalent of a private-sector intelligent enterprise, governments and agencies can transform their approach to constituent service and be more effective in fulfilling their mission.

Produced by SAP. 

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Key Links

• Get inspired. Check out more about the future for the public sector at www.inspirethefuture.com/public-sector-government.

As we open this episode, Miranda and her Aunt Natalie have just completed a 15-kilometer hike. “Uphill. Both ways!” wails a dehydrated Miranda.

Aunt Natalie gives her a dollar for a bottle of water but it’s old and worn so the vending machine refuses to accept it. On the brink of a heat-induced meltdown, she refuses to use the water fountain out of a fear of contaminants. “Raccoons drink from water fountains. They use their creepy little hands to push the button. They have rabies! If I drink from that fountain, my brain will swell until my head explodes!”

Her aunt tries to distract her from enumerating all the ways her head could explode with another fantastic tale of the Cosmopolitan Retrofuturistic Innovator’s Secret Investigative Sisterhood. This one is about the time they helped the island nation called Morologia automate the delivery of government services.

The episode concludes with SAP executives discussing the very real possibilities of an intelligent automated constituent-centric public sector.

Produced by SAP. 

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New season coming early 2021! 

Key Links

• Get inspired. Check out more about the future for the higher education industry at www.inspirethefuture.com/higher-education-research.
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Miranda is struggling with the library’s old technology and accidently destroys a reel for the microfilm reader. 

Amidst the chaos of the librarian trying to fix the broken machine and other students freaking out about their classes not going well, Miranda foresees a bleak future as the entire world learns that she’s completely obliterated a part of history.

Aunt Natalie tries to distract her by relating an account of her time at Poland’s “Flying University” when future Nobel laureate Marie Curie was her lab partner. Initially Miranda thinks it was a school for flight attendants but is intrigued to learn that it was actually a clandestine, underground “school” that operated in Warsaw for students who were denied an education for various reasons.

The episode concludes with SAP executives discussing the future for institutions of higher education as they increasingly evolve to become customer centric.

Produced by SAP. 

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New season coming early 2021!