Above Trends, Beyond Insights is written in English by choice. Babini Mazzari works in a European technology landscape where companies, teams, regulations and sources increasingly cross national borders. English gives this newsletter a common language for that conversation, while allowing us to stay close to much of the original research and reporting behind each issue.

We know, however, that not everyone prefers to read in English. If you use Gmail, you can translate the newsletter directly from the message: open the More menu and select Translate message, or use the translation prompt that Gmail may automatically display at the top.

When the product becomes a dataset

On 20 July, the European Commission made the Digital Product Passport Registry operational, moving one of the most consequential elements of the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation from policy design into implementation.

The Passport is intended to make reliable information about products, components and materials accessible across their lifecycle, while the new registry provides the common infrastructure needed to identify and validate those passports across the Single Market. Six harmonised standards covering areas such as identifiers, interoperability, APIs, data exchange and storage have already been published, and the first mandatory implementation deadline arrives in February 2027 for certain categories of batteries.

What looks initially like another regulatory requirement may have a deeper effect on how companies manage products. Information that often sits across ERP systems, supplier portals, technical documents and spreadsheets will increasingly need to become structured, traceable and interoperable. That shifts product data from administrative residue to operational infrastructure: a missing material attribute, an unreliable supplier record or an inconsistent identifier can affect not only reporting, but compliance, repairability, recycling and the ability to exchange trusted information across a value chain.

The change also exposes a familiar tension between efficiency and dependency. Companies that treat the Passport as a document-generation exercise may satisfy the immediate requirement while preserving fragmented data underneath it; those that use it to establish clearer ownership, lineage and standards for product information gain something more durable than compliance.

As physical goods acquire persistent digital identities, the quality of the data describing a product starts to become part of the quality of the product itself.

TREND TRACKER

Passive radiative cooling: when materials do the work

Passive radiative cooling uses specially engineered materials to release heat through a wavelength range in the atmosphere that allows thermal energy to escape toward space. Applied through coatings, films, roof materials or other surfaces, the technology can reduce temperatures without requiring additional electricity, complementing traditional cooling systems rather than replacing them.

Interest is growing as cooling demand becomes a larger constraint for buildings, industrial facilities and digital infrastructure, increasing both energy consumption and pressure on local grids. Passive materials introduce a different efficiency model: instead of making mechanical systems work harder or smarter, they reduce part of the thermal load before energy needs to be consumed. For organisations exposed to rising cooling costs, heat stress or limited grid capacity, materials themselves may become part of the infrastructure strategy.

Want to learn more?

• Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2026 - World Economic Forum

• The Future of Cooling - International Energy Agency

• Towards practical applications of radiative cooling - Nature Reviews Clean Technology

QUICK INSIGHT

Redesign onboarding before the wallet arrives

European Digital Identity Wallets are expected to become available from 2026, allowing citizens and businesses to identify themselves, hold digital credentials and share specific verified information with public and private services across the EU. The most useful preparation is not to begin with the wallet technology itself, but with the customer journeys that currently depend on documents, repeated data entry and manual verification.

• Map the high-friction journeys. Identify onboarding, account opening, registration or eligibility processes where users repeatedly upload documents, prove identity or provide the same information more than once.

• Separate required evidence from habitual collection. For every document or data field, determine which underlying fact actually needs to be verified. A process may need proof that someone is over a certain age, for example, without needing to retain the full identity document used today to prove it.

• Define the minimum attribute set. Specify which verified attributes would be sufficient to complete each step. This helps prevent a new digital identity layer from simply reproducing existing over-collection practices.

• Identify integration points. Locate where verified attributes would enter existing CRM, IAM, KYC, HR or customer-service systems, and which downstream processes currently assume that identity data arrives as documents rather than structured credentials.

• Prototype a parallel journey. Design an alternative flow that uses wallet-based verification while keeping the current journey available. Compare completion time, failure points, manual interventions and the amount of personal data exchanged.

• Review trust and retention rules. Decide what evidence needs to be stored, for how long and for what purpose. A verified credential should not automatically become another reason to accumulate data that the organisation does not need.
  
  The opportunity is not merely to replace one login method or document upload with another. Used well, digital identity can remove entire verification steps from a process. Preparing for it therefore starts with process design: understanding which proofs are genuinely necessary, which frictions are historical leftovers and which parts of the customer journey can disappear once trust becomes machine-verifiable.

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