What does "Next Level" actually mean?

Anyone who wonders why everything that is a little different from what has gone before is now immediately referred to as the "next level" is right to do so. Because not everything that is different is also better. Mostly it is just different. Nevertheless, in meetings, presentations and comment columns on LinkedIn and the like, everything seems "next level" at the moment. Next level, that is. And means: one higher, better, more creative than the previous one. Why is that?

Perhaps those who search for the origin of the term and ask themselves why it has established itself so rapidly will gain some insight. If you do, you'll quickly find yourself in the world of gamers and their favorite incentive: gamification. Because that's exactly where the word found its way into our industry. Cohorts of gamers flooding the working world have brought it with them. At first, they were ridiculed for their lingo, but it has since become standard.

While the SpaceInvader, PacMan and SuperMario generations are slowly retiring, their children are the new workforce and also prompters of buzzwords. They not only have a different language, they also adapt new things as if they were a computer game. They have learned since childhood how to gain superpowers, solve special weapons and reach next levels. And they want to be rewarded for it. Now they've arrived in real life and are just rocking the working world at the same speed they're moving in the digital world. The older members of the industry are left to marvel - or to parrot.

Gaming industry as enabler of AI

Without realizing it, these same gamers have accelerated the processing of data with their desire for ever larger computers and even more realistic 3D representations, paving the way for the next level: the breakthrough of AI. The large amounts of data that used to make the hard disks and later the fiber optic cables glow in earlier computer games demand enormous computing power. One company in particular has been producing these since 1995: NVIDIA.

It is one of the largest developers of graphics processors game consoles, PCs and servers. In 2010, it developed the world's fastest supercomputer, and a year later it sold its one billionth graphics processor. Co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang's company was one of the drivers in AI's breakthrough. After all, what AI needs to answer all our questions within fractions of a second is computing power and data processors. So what Amazon's AWS is to servers, Nvidia is to processors. No wonder the two giants have been working together as of late. What they presented and discussed at the Snowflake Summit last month in Las Vegas on the topic of generative AI's and their power to revolutionize the topic of data processing in and for companies makes you sit up and take notice.

Generative AI is the kind of artificial intelligence that can create a variety of data such as images, videos, audio, text and 3D models and will roll over us at a pace that no industry, no business model will be spared. It brings back memories of the late nineties, when the Internet was similarly disruptive, but somewhat more leisurely, changing every industry.
So the game suddenly becomes serious. Professions will die off like the enemies in the baller games, but new ones will be added. Those with even more flexibility, power and energy. And maybe in the end we'll even have more time for gaming or living more consciously. It will definitely be different. We'll see if it gets better.

* Benno Maggi is co-founder and CEO of Partner & Partner. He has been eavesdropping on the industry for over 30 years, discovering words and terms for us that can either be used for small talk, pomposity, excitement, playing Scrabble, or just because.