Interview: Dassault Systèmes' Gian Paolo Bassi on the fifth industrial revolution

Industrial revolutions are like buses these days. You wait for decades for the next one to come along, and then they arrive at ever-decreasing intervals. And just when you’re getting used to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the fifth materialises. 

Industry 5.0 (or even 5IR) started in around 2020, but its ‘present and ongoing status’ only really took hold when industry commentators started to analyse the post-Covid fallout. This was when the 4IR obsession with the ‘datafication of everything’ matured into applying this resource to meaningful human contexts. The game-changer was artificial intelligence.

Speaking at this year’s edition of the Dassault Systèmes conference 3DExperience World, EVP of 3DExperience Works Gian Paolo Bassi described the transition to IR5 as a post-Covid realisation that industry needs to put the ‘human experience front and centre’ in the industrial process. It’s a coalition of ideas, he says, ‘a cultural change’ focused on interconnecting AI, automation and digital threads. The emphasis is not just about providing better productivity for engineers, but on reshaping industrial sustainability for the future.