So much so that, in a comparison between twelve countries and regions – Spain, Italy, Portugal, Mexico, Brazil, the Southern Cone, Colombia and Central America, the Philippines, the European Union, the United States and China – our country registers a technological adoption rate of 8 out of 10. The data comes from Innovation Telescope, the first trends report of the new Innovation Observatory created within the framework of the Indra Group's technological plan, with which it seeks to lead European innovation and contribute to technological and disruptive sovereignty.
The technology company is equipping itself with tools like this one, which allow it to gather and analyze current technological trends to identify key R&D areas and anticipate the future of the sector. While the United States and China continue to lead the development of almost all technologies, the other countries and regions analyzed show strong performance depending on the sector and discipline. According to the study, the EU as a whole stands out for its development of sustainable technologies and, as in the case of Spain, for its cybersecurity and AI applications that enhance human skills. Joaquín Ponz, Director of the CTO Area - Portfolio & Innovation Governance at Indra Group, believes that “Innovation Telescope is consolidating itself as a strategic initiative to anticipate technological trends and transform productive sectors in the medium and long term. By combining artificial intelligence and expert analysis, this observatory identifies and analyzes emerging technologies that will shape the future, with special attention to the most disruptive use cases.”
From post-quantum cryptography to AI-powered synthetic humans
Quantum computing is revolutionizing technological advancements worldwide, including in Spain, where companies like Indra Group are working to advance its development and application. This is particularly true for quantum sensor and communications capabilities, anticipating an unprecedented shift in less than five years. Within this context, the Innovation Telescope report confirms progress toward post-quantum cryptography—also known as security algorithms—which will be essential for current encryption models used by banks, governments, and corporate security systems to withstand potential attacks that quantum computing could launch in the near future. Another trend identified by the observatory is the growth of multifunctional robots.
Unlike traditional assembly line robots, these machines can perform complex and diverse tasks because they are programmable and equipped with generative artificial intelligence, giving them the ability to adapt to all kinds of sectors. In this way, they offer possibilities as varied as providing telecare services for the elderly—one of the major impacts anticipated in the medium term—or performing welding on platforms or pipelines in the deep sea. Technological trends are also exploring the relationship between people and machines. A prime example is the creation of synthetic humans to simulate social interactions in certain environments—for example, in the management of critical infrastructure. This represents a new leap forward in artificial intelligence, which, by evolving large-scale linguistic models (LLMs), will allow us to predict human behavior to assess future scenarios and propose possible responses.
Zero trust in the face of threats and secure information
Cybersecurity is constantly evolving to address increasingly sophisticated threats. Emerging trends include the adoption of collaborative architectures, which, along with zero-trust architectures—requiring continuous authentication and verification for every access request—are generating a new technological wave. These solutions are amplifying their functionalities with the global incorporation of artificial intelligence and are present in areas such as threat detection and, increasingly, in supply chain cybersecurity. Another cybersecurity trend is driven by the importance of access to information, decentralizing it while maintaining security standards through blockchain-based technologies and, above all, by digital trust—that is, the ability to protect data, guarantee operational continuity, and ensure the integrity of public and private documentation. Precisely for this reason, and because advances in artificial intelligence are blurring the line between reality and fiction, technological innovation is developing ways to combat the risks of disinformation, which can undermine the credibility of governments and companies or trigger conflicts between countries.
Green Revolution 5.0 and asset repatriation
Innovation Telescope warns that sustainable technologies are undergoing a new revolution marked by the intensive use of artificial intelligence, which will multiply exponentially with the arrival of quantum computing. Another trend highlighted in the report is the construction of green data centers, which will use renewables as their primary energy source and eliminate the need for water cooling. Cases like China stand out, where plans are underway to locate data centers at sea to control their temperature without wasting water resources. Furthermore, regarding another recent revolution—the transformation of organizations by migrating their digital assets to the cloud—the Indra Group report addresses the new shift towards data repatriation, a concept linked to technological sovereignty that is strategic in Spain and Europe. According to their analysis, there is a trend towards the adoption of hybrid computing models: on-premises (using proprietary architectures), edge (processing near the data source), and cloud computing for more complex tasks involving large volumes of information.
