Beyond If Beyond If

Innovation

At Jacobs, we empower and equip people to approach challenges differently.

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In 2019, Jacobs initiated an enterprise-wide program to promote a culture of innovation and inclusion on a global scale. To encapsulate our innovation culture, we launched Beyond If℠. 

Beyond If is our program for instilling and sustaining our innovation culture. We seek to inspire innovative ideas, practice the discipline of innovation and promote innovation outcomes. We don’t just ask ‘What If?’ or ‘How Might We?’, we act to turn ideas into reality and drive value through innovation.

Beyond If showcases the best of who we are as innovators, creators and problem solvers. We lead with innovation and follow with technology when appropriate.

While we invest in the assessment and development of new technologies, both internally and through our partner ecosystem, we recognize that some of the most impactful and enduring innovation requires no new technology. Instead, value can be found in new ways of working, process changes, new methodologies/approaches to solving problems, or a repurposing of products and services.

 

By leveraging our deep domain expertise and adopting design thinking, lean start-up and agile approaches to innovation, we seek to develop innovative solutions that result in enduring outcomes for our clients.

When we implement new technology, it’s our innovation culture that enables us to identify and use emerging technology more quickly and more effectively. As part of the Beyond If effort, we honed our innovation focus on a variety of client challenges and are actively exploring five technology areas: applied geospatial science, cybersecurity, automated design, Internet of Things and predictive data analytics.

These technology areas are at the center of our Beyond If program to fuel more complete, higher-value solutions for the benefit of our clients and society at large. At Jacobs, we are truly challenging today and reinventing tomorrow as we take on the world’s toughest challenges. Innovation is not just what we do, it's who we are.

What if...

... we showed you how we’re solving the world’s greatest challenges by transforming intangible ideas into intelligent solutions for a more connected, sustainable world?

The world needs innovators and problem solvers who turn challenges into greater opportunities. We have an insatiable curiosity about transformative trends challenging the status quo: Urbanization. Water scarcity. Climate change. Digital proliferation. Security.

These issues inspire us to dig deeper and apply big data analytics to fully understand the interplay of multifaceted variables shaping the future, ensuring that we conceive and deliver solutions that connect people and places with the means to work smarter and live better, and make an enduring, positive difference in the world.
 

Click the links below to read project stories from our innovation journey.

  • How Imagining Life on Mars is Made Possible Through 3D Printing
    Beyond If
    How Imagining Life on Mars is Made Possible Through 3D Printing

    A third of urban dwellers – some 1.6 billion people – could struggle to secure decent housing by 2025. Smart options for affordable, livable structures, both on land and in space, are critical for society and for future exploration. What if we showed you, how with 3D printing, Jacobs and NASA can fabricate habitable outposts, in the most remote places and possibly even those closer to home?

  • How Smart City Tech Delivers Safer, More Livable Places
    Beyond If
    How Smart City Tech Delivers Safer, More Livable Places

    A blank slate introduces a host of challenges and opportunities for newly-incorporated cities to manage built assets, enhance planning and improve public safety. What if we showed you how Peachtree Corners, one of Georgia’s newest cities, went digital with operations partner Jacobs, to improve the quality of data used to support operations and citizen services and deliver better life for future generations? 

  • How This Flexible Solution Could Change Road Travel as We Know It
    Beyond If
    How This Flexible Solution Could Change Road Travel as We Know It

    As the number of vehicles surges around the globe, road congestion is increasing – making it harder to predict journey times and decreasing air quality. Building more roads is certainly no guarantee of faster travel or a healthier environment. What if we showed you how Jacobs and Volterra planned out how present U.K. fuel and vehicle excise duties can be replaced by a road user charging system that results in faster and safer journeys, guaranteed journey times and less congestion and pollution? 

In the News

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Our visionaries, thinkers and doers share their insights and experience through podcasts, publications, interviews and other stories.

 

Explore our Jacobs In the News

Jacobs Podcasts

Discussions with the visionaries, thinkers and doers inspiring a more connected, sustainable tomorrow.

  • If/When Podcast Hero
    Beyond If

    The world we’ll be faced with tomorrow demands big ideas today. In Jacobs’ series of If/When interviews with some of today’s leading industry and academic problem solvers, we discuss the Ifs and Whens of disruption - those phenomena with the potential to unsettle the status quo, as well as those now imminent and emerging.
     

  • Sparks Podcast
    Beyond If

    From clean energy innovations in Scotland, to sustainable buildings in Dubai, we’ll be interviewing global green leaders, financiers, and entrepreneurs about the policies, investments and innovations that are accelerating our progress towards a resilient and sustainable world. Our podcast hopes to educate and inspire, sparking real conversations with the intention to Collaborate. Act. Commit. to real change.

  • Inflection Points
    Beyond If

    Inflection points are events that result in significant economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal and technological changes that shape our world. Our Inflection Points provide background on these critical issues, the challenges at their core and the actions we’re taking to create a more connected, sustainable world.
     

Want quick access to some of the podcasts?

We’ve put some suggested episodes below for you to enjoy.