**4. Into the future**

The commonly held advice about making predictions of the future is to avoid having to do it if at all possible. No-one can predict the future beyond the next 400 days [22]. In the turbulent times triggered by the fall of the pandemic domino, this number is becoming lower, and with every additional falling societal domino, is tending to become lower still.

#### *Systematic e-Service Innovation DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.96463*

What the TRIZ and Systematic Innovation research has shown, however, is that just because we cannot predict everything about the future does not mean we are not able to predict anything. If nothing else, the Trends of Evolution described in the previous section are a good way of informing innovators that, while it might be difficult/impossible to know *when* discontinuous jumps will happen, *what* those jumps will be is much more predictable. A 'product'-based business will, sooner or later, shift to become a 'service'-based business. Similarly – and crucially for those already working in the service industries – sooner or later any service business will evolve into an 'Experience'-based business. The implications of that most likely ought to form the basis of an e-Experience successor to this book.

First Principles knowledge, meanwhile, is remarkably stable [23]. The laws of physics are essentially just that: laws. As mankind's understanding of these laws evolves, the 'first principles' will evolve too, but their half-life generally speaking is measurable in decades or centuries. More subtle, but the TRIZ-originated innovation-DNA research has also revealed the relative stability of knowledge pertaining to the emergence and resolution of contradictions. Innovation – the successful transition from one S-curve to another – is in effect driven by this contradiction story. Innovation, to all intents and purposes, is contradiction solving. Knowledge pertaining to how contradictions are solved will thus inevitably become one of the critical factors in the e-Service innovation story. If organisations are not managing the contradictions in their e-Service business, they are placing their future on a path with a 98% likelihood of failure.
