April 12, 2018. Shanghai – With rapid economic growth and improving living standard, customers today demand not just products but personalised and rewarding experiences. Mr. Sylvain Laurent, Executive Vice President of Dassault Systèmes' Global Direct Business Transformation Sales Force and Global Field Operations Asia/Oceania, today shared his thoughts on why experience and creativity matter in the business world and how Dassault, as an industry pioneer, provides businesses with virtual universes to imagine sustainable innovation and craft delightful customer experiences.

According to Mr. Laurent, following the Industry 4.0 revolution and digitalisation, we are entering a new world made up of Makers and Innovators. This transformation will be a driving force for innovation, increasing the need for traditional manufacturers to adapt to the future workforce, while also introducing new players into the digital world. This will include smart cities increasingly interested in identifying new ways to connect and manage residents' lives.

He noted that, historically, human society has gone through phases of agricultural, industrial and service economies, moving on to a new era of the experience economy. Mr. Laurent believes the most significant change lies in people's needs, which have gone beyond products and services to experiences. This requires businesses to focus more on the context and impact of products, he said, which urged them to find an efficient way to anticipate and compare the possible experiences that could be delivered to customers, in order to make better decisions.

To meet the great demand, Dassault has launched its 3DEXPERIENCE Platform. With information collected worldwide, it helps users to visually connect people, data, ideas, and all the dots to see the full business picture, and thus, to foresee the possible impact of each solution. Provided with the example of the cutting-edge Virtual Singapore Initiative, the audience was amazed to find how city planning can achieve higher efficiency in the virtual world, free from all the limitations of space and resources in real-world simulations.

The revolution of the industry is posing tougher than ever challenges to global manufacturers. And Dassault's innovation is typical of the game-changing attempts to confront the challenges in today's “Industry Renaissance". At the end of his speech, Mr. Laurent expressed confidence in human beings' capacity for innovation, and encouraged the audience to give more thought to innovation in different fields and to reimagine the future.