Children are the future, and they are the inspiration for the technological innovation that will come — and Dave Wright (pictured), chief innovation officer of ServiceNow Inc., is using the inspiration that children’s questions and ideas spark to dream about the future of technology when it comes to the way we work, the concept of ownership, and self-driving cars.

“I’ve got a 12-year-old and seven-year-old,” Wright said. “And the 12-year-old was saying, ‘Well, we don’t buy music.’ … And then my youngest daughter said, ‘Why would you want to own a song forever?’ And I was like, ‘This is interesting.’ ”

Wright spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Rebecca Knight (@knightrm), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at theServiceNow Knowledge event in Las Vegas. They discussed the future of technology and how post-Millennials are already rethinking what that future could look like. (* Disclosure below.)

The future of tech revisioned through post-Millennials

The above conversation with Wright’s daughters about music was just one example of how the future generation is already rethinking the concept of ownership. This, in turn, leads to complex questions and how it will effect industries. Another example is that his children often ask questions about the way people work and why people with a variety of skills only work for one company.

“We’ve got a lot of people in work who’ve got all these different skills, but we force them to do one job,” Wright said. “So have we seen the first generation arrive now where they expect everything to be task based? And then it gives you control over your own career?”

But really listening to the questions of children also helps Wright think through innovations in technology and ways people will interact with systems in the future. For example, the concept of owning a car for everyone may fade simply because not everyone needs to own a car — especially with the idea of self-driving cars hovering on the horizon.

“I definitely think driving your own car will become the exception,” Wright said.

Even retail will be effected by the way post-Millennials think about purchasing items online. “So something like a shop that just sells sneakers: I can see someone could easily offer a range and say, ‘Well look, here’s what we sell. When you order something, we’ll automatically ship you one size up, one size down, or two variations of color, and it will be a free system return the ones you don’t want,'” Wright described. “I think the whole experience of ordering one thing and hoping it works out — I think that will go away.”

Artificial intelligence may be a way to help predict future outcomes and build better systems, such as a ServiceNow customer Wright knows that has managed to create a customer service system that predicts the problems of callers and can direct those calls to agents with specified knowledge for problems.

“I think people can’t even imagine what they can do,” Wright stated. “It’s when people start to look at things in completely different ways; it’s when people start to say, ‘Well, if we apply machine learning to a user interface, for example, could we come up with a better user interface?’ Because now, if we understand how people interact with the system, could we actually build a better system?”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the ServiceNow Knowledge 2018 event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for ServiceNow Knowledge 2018. Neither ServiceNow Inc., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE