Hendrik knew he wanted to do ‘something with IT and business’ after graduating. And possibly with lots of traveling because he wants to nourish his curiosity for other countries. He found his passion and felt an immediate connection with Umicore, who offered him a job as a world traveling SAP Business Analyst. A match that goes both ways!

A while ago, our Founder & CEO Raf Seymus hopped on a plane to Spain to attend the Singularity University Summit in Madrid, a two-day conference that helps leaders understand how to apply exponential technologies to create positive change and economic growth.

Industry 4.0 is ushering in a new era of exponential change, rapid disruption and regulatory challenges on a scale never seen before. But Raf Seymus, Founder & CEO of Exellys, believes that the future for businesses is extremely bright: “While many jobs will be automated out of existence, many more new jobs will be created,” he predicts.

Acronyms such as IoT, AI, and ML can make it easy to feel overwhelmed by the challenges presented by Industry 4.0 (i4.0). But according to Veerle Lozie, VP of Operations and IT at Melexis, there’s no need to worry. “The opportunities will be huge for everyone”.

For me Industry 4.0 is about hacking. We can alter genes and create super humans, we can produce new molecules in order to make new materials and we can even squeeze time. It’s no longer science-fiction. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is here and, according to Jurgen Ingels, Serial Entrepreneur & Investor, this is how we should tackle it.

The technologies driving Industry 4.0 have already started to change the way we live, work and interact with each other. Robotics, infotech, biotech, and nanotech are fundamentally reshaping the way that we live. According to Philippe De Backer, Minister of Digital Agenda, the fact that Industry 4.0 will be driven by technology means that up to two-thirds of people will have to be retrained and reshaped in the next ten to fifteen years.

From autonomous vehicles to digital assistants and self-healing materials, the lines between the biological, physical and digital spheres are being blurred before our eyes. Change is happening at an exponential speed and the emergence of cyber-physical systems shows us that the Fourth Industrial Revolution is already underway. Yet according to Erwin Verstraelen, Chief Digital & Innovation Officer at the Port of Antwerp, many people are unprepared for the challenges that lie ahead.

Hash Code is a team programming competition organized by Google for students and industry professionals across the globe. Some motivated Exellysts took on the challenge and participated in the qualification round on the 28th of February. Six of our consultants formed two teams and took on a Google engineering problem.