Any significant business process that can be documented and best practices identified - will be. Any defined process that can be standardized - will be. Standardized processes that can be codified and automated (through robotic software automation), will be - if the volume justifies it. If the process is repeatable across many companies it will be offered as a shared service on a platform in a cloud.
If you agree with these technology maxims, then you are likely to agree that most existing business processes offer little competitive advantages in the long run, and the advantages of new innovations are fleeting so must be captured early. They will eventually become part of a shared services platform followed and used by your competitors. For example, 20 and 40 foot shipping containers offered a competitive advantage for shipping companies and ports that were early adopters, but only for a very short period of time. After a quick few years the entire world standardized on them and the competitive advantage disappeared.
Kevin Benedict is a TCS futurist and lecturer focused on the signals and foresight that emerge as society, geopolitics, economies, science, technology, environment, and philosophy converge.
Making the Hard Decisions in Digital Transformation
How can an organization with decades worth of accumulated ERP customizations and configurations, IT systems and customized software applications digitally transform fast enough to keep up with the rapidly changing behaviors of digital customers? That is a hard question most organizations are wrestling with today. Often complex custom IT environments served a purpose in a past era, but today where IT speed and agility are required, they serve as anchors restraining an organization from moving forward and digitally transforming fast enough to compete.
Like a CEO that closes down or sells a profitable business unit because it no longer fits with where the organization is going, CTOs and CIOs must rapidly shut down or replace IT systems and processes that no longer support the reality of today, or the vision of the future based on the best information available today - not yesterday. Keeping an outdated IT system or business process for the purpose of achieving a positive return on the original investment is a strategy based on pride, not logic.
Like a CEO that closes down or sells a profitable business unit because it no longer fits with where the organization is going, CTOs and CIOs must rapidly shut down or replace IT systems and processes that no longer support the reality of today, or the vision of the future based on the best information available today - not yesterday. Keeping an outdated IT system or business process for the purpose of achieving a positive return on the original investment is a strategy based on pride, not logic.
The Center for Digital Intelligence Interview: IoT Platforms with Hitachi's Rob Tiffany
I had the honor of interviewing and disrupting the vacation of Hitachi's CTO for Industrial IoT, Rob Tiffany today. In this interview we talk all about IoT platforms, big data analytics, architectures, digital twins and solution stacks for industrial IoT. I learned a lot and hope you will too.
Read more from Kevin Benedict here:
Read more from Kevin Benedict here:
- Digital Transformation and the New Rules for Start-Ups
- Digital Transformation and Leadership Development
- Digital Transformation and Competitive Decision-Making
- Combinatorial Nature of Digital Technologies and Legos
- Digital Transformation from 40,000 feet
- Winning in Chaos - Digital Leaders
- 13 Recommended Actions for Digital Transformation in Retail
- Mistakes in Retail Digital Transformation
- Winning Strategies for the Fourth Industrial Revolution
- Digital Transformation - Mindset Differences
- Analyzing Retail Through Digital Lenses
- Digital Thinking and Beyond!
- Measuring the Pace of Change in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
- How Digital Thinking Separates Retail Leaders from Laggards
- To Bot, or Not to Bot
- Oils, Bots, AI and Clogged Arteries
- Artificial Intelligence Out of Doors in the Kingdom of Robots
- How Digital Leaders are Different
- The Three Tsunamis of Digital Transformation - Be Prepared!
- Bots, AI and the Next 40 Months
- You Only Have 40 Months to Digitally Transform
- Digital Technologies and the Greater Good
- Video Report: 40 Months of Hyper-Digital Transformation
- Report: 40 Months of Hyper-Digital Transformation
- Virtual Moves to Real in with Sensors and Digital Transformation
- Technology Must Disappear in 2017
- Merging Humans with AI and Machine Learning Systems
- In Defense of the Human Experience in a Digital World
- Profits that Kill in the Age of Digital Transformation
- Competing in Future Time and Digital Transformation
- Digital Hope and Redemption in the Digital Age
- Digital Transformation and the Role of Faster
- Digital Transformation and the Law of Thermodynamics
- Jettison the Heavy Baggage and Digitally Transform
- Digital Transformation - The Dark Side
- Business is Not as Usual in Digital Transformation
- 15 Rules for Winning in Digital Transformation
- The End Goal of Digital Transformation
- Digital Transformation and the Ignorance Penalty
- Surviving the Three Ages of Digital Transformation
- The Advantages of an Advantage in Digital Transformation
- From Digital to Hyper-Transformation
- Believers, Non-Believers and Digital Transformation
- Forces Driving the Digital Transformation Era
- Digital Transformation Requires Agility and Energy Measurement
- A Doctrine for Digital Transformation is Required
- Digital Transformation and Its Role in Mobility and Competition
- Digital Transformation - A Revolution in Precision Through IoT, Analytics and Mobility
- Competing in Digital Transformation and Mobility
- Ambiguity and Digital Transformation
- Digital Transformation and Mobility - Macro-Forces and Timing
- Mobile and IoT Technologies are Inside the Curve of Human Time
Kevin Benedict
President, Principal Analyst, Futurist, the Center for Digital Intelligence™
Website C4DIGI.com
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Technologies
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
New Rules for Start-Ups in the Age of Digital Transformation
I have had the opportunity to work for and around a good many start-ups during the course of my career. Often the start-up founders would simply define a problem, develop a solution and launch a company. The marketing department would then do their very best to identify the individuals in each target company that experienced the problem and had a budget to fix it. This was always a challenging task, but it is even harder today.
Today, start-ups must not only identify a problem that needs solved, but they must compete against "digital transformation" initiatives in both the business and IT organizations that are trying to reduce complexity through the elimination of applications, customized software solutions, IT systems, multiple instances of ERPs and vendors.
The goal of many organizations today is to simplify the IT environment, and to make business processes much faster and agile. I see many companies seeking to standardize on a handful of platforms like Salesforce.com, SAP, Adobe, Ariba, SuccessFactor, etc. Too many systems in an IT inventory, means too much complexity and the increased risk that data will be compromised, and that systems will be too expensive to maintain, secure and upgrade. In this age of fast changing digital consumer behaviors, flexibility and simplicity equal organizational speed to keep up with their markets.
What is the answer for start-ups? Start-up solutions must appeal to the digital transformation goals of their target customers. It means their solution must be cloud based and automatically upgraded to stay aligned with customer's core platforms and systems. It means offering artificial intelligence enabled robotic process automation, chatbots and machine learning that can improve predictability, simplify complexity and eliminate troublesome areas of service and performance. It must not result in any additional layers of complexity, rather new solutions need to solve big problems, while at the same time reducing complexity, and increasing agility and the operational tempo of the business.
************************************************************************
Today, start-ups must not only identify a problem that needs solved, but they must compete against "digital transformation" initiatives in both the business and IT organizations that are trying to reduce complexity through the elimination of applications, customized software solutions, IT systems, multiple instances of ERPs and vendors.
The goal of many organizations today is to simplify the IT environment, and to make business processes much faster and agile. I see many companies seeking to standardize on a handful of platforms like Salesforce.com, SAP, Adobe, Ariba, SuccessFactor, etc. Too many systems in an IT inventory, means too much complexity and the increased risk that data will be compromised, and that systems will be too expensive to maintain, secure and upgrade. In this age of fast changing digital consumer behaviors, flexibility and simplicity equal organizational speed to keep up with their markets.
What is the answer for start-ups? Start-up solutions must appeal to the digital transformation goals of their target customers. It means their solution must be cloud based and automatically upgraded to stay aligned with customer's core platforms and systems. It means offering artificial intelligence enabled robotic process automation, chatbots and machine learning that can improve predictability, simplify complexity and eliminate troublesome areas of service and performance. It must not result in any additional layers of complexity, rather new solutions need to solve big problems, while at the same time reducing complexity, and increasing agility and the operational tempo of the business.
************************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
President, Principal Analyst, Futurist, the Center for Digital Intelligence™
Website C4DIGI.com
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Technologies
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
Digital Transformation and Leadership Development
I have read several articles recently about projects designed to
teach digital systems to think more like humans. For example one article was about teaching
chatbot systems to communicate empathy to humans. It seems ironic that we are developing
digital systems to think more like humans, while at the same time much of my
work is focused on teaching humans how to think more like and about digital
systems and their capabilities. Let me
explain.
Competitive battles in most industries today are increasingly centered
on digital technologies and digital strategies, and as a result, it benefits
leaders to have a deep understanding of how digital systems work, and how the
impact of new digital innovations will change the behaviors of customers,
competitors and partners.
A few of the areas that I think leaders should really understand
are:
- Simple programming concepts and computer logic
- Small World, social networks and swarming theories
- Industry and technology data exchange standards
- Platforms, Cloud computing, Containers and System thinking
- Internet and network architecture and design
- Big Data and real-time analytics
- GPS, GIS and Mapping
- Mobile and wireless technologies
- Sensors, embedded wireless devices and IoT
- Data and device security and authentication
- Databases and data lifecycle management
- Online catalogs, shopping carts and digital payments
- Digital marketing, personalization and contextual relevance
- Digital content and delivery: websites, blogs, videos, podcasts, social media (e.g. Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.)
- Robotics, automation, AI and machine learning
- Virtual and augmented reality
There are many more items that
could be added to this short list, but I hope you get the idea. If we can agree that digital technologies are
fundamental to our future success, then we must understand them, or at least
their capabilities.
To read more about how
digital transformation is impacting strategies read this article 15 Rules for Winning During the Age of Digital Transformation.
************************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
President, Principal Analyst, Futurist, the Center for Digital Intelligence™
Website C4DIGI.com
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Technologies
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
Digital Transformation and Competitive Decision-Making
The winning trinity in competitive decision-making includes
people, ideas and things according to the renowned military strategist John
Boyd. Although competitive decision-making is not yet an Olympic sport, it affects
us all. Leaders (people) must become
trained experts at using digital technologies to make fast decisions. Leaders must use the right strategies and
methodologies (ideas) to make wise decisions fast, and they must collect the
needed data and analyze it fast enough using the best solutions (things). If any component of this trinity is weak, it
will be hard to compete.
In a recent survey of high tech VP level and above
executives that I conducted, few companies have a formal training program in
place to help develop their leaders to be skilled at digital transformation and
competitive decision-making. Most
enterprises are just rolling the dice on the skill levels of their leadership. Given the emerging challenges that digital
transformation introduces to a complex business, I would strongly advise
companies to invest in formal digital leadership development.
Some of the key goals of digital transformation are to speed
up and improve interactions with digital customers, and to be able to react
faster to new information. As digital
technologies (things) provide more real-time data, and real-time data analysis,
new strategies (ideas) for making real-time decisions must be implemented by
leaders (people) or their proxies. In
the future, more and more proxies involved in real-time decision-making will be
in the form of robotic process automation systems using artificial intelligence
and machine learning.
Any business process where there is a documented best
practice for how best to respond to various data inputs can be automated. As data inputs become more real-time, human leadership
decision-making becomes the source of latency in the system. I predict that decision-making will increasingly
be a source of competition, and that decisions will soon be divided into those
where there is a defined best option already which allows for rapid automation,
and those that have ill-defined options and require humans' capacity for
creativity to solve.
My latest video from the field:
My latest video from the field:
Kevin Benedict
President, Principal Analyst, Futurist, the Center for Digital Intelligence™
Website C4DIGI.com
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Technologies
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
Brain Change and Digital Strategies
The renowned military strategist John Boyd taught that
people and institutions collect favorite philosophies, strategies, theories and
ideologies over a period of time, and then try to align the future to fit
them. The problem with this is the future
is rarely like the past, and trying to fit new data into old paradigms often
forces us to perform irrational mental gymnastics, which leaves us farther from
the truth.
Our resistance to change and unwillingness to question our
beliefs in the face of mounting evidence, leads us to analytical and execution
failure. A more productive habit would be to continuously review our mental
constructs to find out how to modify our interpretations to align with new
evidence. This action, however, goes
against our human nature that seeks stability and resists change. We see the consequences of these challenges
weekly as we read about companies (especially retail) failing as a result of
their resistance. In the future, developments in artificial intelligence and machine
learning will have the potential to help us overcome many of our own mental
weaknesses that cause us problems in our pursuit of truth.
In the digital era, our ability to change our thinking
becomes even more critical as it must happen at a faster rate. I remember when updates to an enterprise’s
mobile apps required all users to bring their mobile devices into the office to
get them loaded and tested. This was a
slow, tedious and expensive process.
Today, as we all know, this can be done worldwide instantly and for very
little money through cloud based app stores.
Digital transformation equals speed and accelerated change.
In a world of integrated digital platforms and systems, new digital innovations can impact markets instantly and competitors must be able to react.
The bottom line - one of the biggest factors determining the
digital transformation winners of tomorrow will be the brains of leaders –
their mental constructs. Can executives
and boards look at new evidence and innovations without biases, resistance to
change and prejudices, and grasp how economies, industries, markets and
competition will be impacted? Can they
learn about new digital innovations, understand the breadth of the impact, and
develop new business strategies based on the new realities? Can they overcome
themselves?
It is quite the irony that digital winners will be not
simply those with the best digital technologies, but those that can best
overcome their own human brains.
****
I invite you to watch my latest video on digital technology trends.
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict, connect with me on LinkedIn or read more of my articles on digital transformation strategies here:
- Combinatorial Nature of Digital Technologies and Legos
- Digital Transformation from 40,000 feet
- Winning in Chaos - Digital Leaders
- 13 Recommended Actions for Digital Transformation in Retail
- Mistakes in Retail Digital Transformation
- Winning Strategies for the Fourth Industrial Revolution
- Digital Transformation - Mindset Differences
- Analyzing Retail Through Digital Lenses
- Digital Thinking and Beyond!
- Measuring the Pace of Change in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
- How Digital Thinking Separates Retail Leaders from Laggards
- To Bot, or Not to Bot
- Oils, Bots, AI and Clogged Arteries
- Artificial Intelligence Out of Doors in the Kingdom of Robots
- How Digital Leaders are Different
- The Three Tsunamis of Digital Transformation - Be Prepared!
- Bots, AI and the Next 40 Months
- You Only Have 40 Months to Digitally Transform
- Digital Technologies and the Greater Good
- Video Report: 40 Months of Hyper-Digital Transformation
- Report: 40 Months of Hyper-Digital Transformation
- Virtual Moves to Real in with Sensors and Digital Transformation
- Technology Must Disappear in 2017
- Merging Humans with AI and Machine Learning Systems
- In Defense of the Human Experience in a Digital World
- Profits that Kill in the Age of Digital Transformation
- Competing in Future Time and Digital Transformation
- Digital Hope and Redemption in the Digital Age
- Digital Transformation and the Role of Faster
- Digital Transformation and the Law of Thermodynamics
- Jettison the Heavy Baggage and Digitally Transform
- Digital Transformation - The Dark Side
- Business is Not as Usual in Digital Transformation
- 15 Rules for Winning in Digital Transformation
- The End Goal of Digital Transformation
- Digital Transformation and the Ignorance Penalty
- Surviving the Three Ages of Digital Transformation
- The Advantages of an Advantage in Digital Transformation
- From Digital to Hyper-Transformation
- Believers, Non-Believers and Digital Transformation
- Forces Driving the Digital Transformation Era
- Digital Transformation Requires Agility and Energy Measurement
- A Doctrine for Digital Transformation is Required
- Digital Transformation and Its Role in Mobility and Competition
- Digital Transformation - A Revolution in Precision Through IoT, Analytics and Mobility
- Competing in Digital Transformation and Mobility
- Ambiguity and Digital Transformation
- Digital Transformation and Mobility - Macro-Forces and Timing
- Mobile and IoT Technologies are Inside the Curve of Human Time
************************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
President, Principal Analyst, Futurist, the Center for Digital Intelligence™
Website C4DIGI.com
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Technologies
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
Combinatorial Nature of Digital Technologies and Legos
I came across the brilliant blog site of Futurist Frank
Diana this week. In one of his most recent articles he discusses the
concept of combinatorial nature. He states, "We
are seeing exponential convergence across the areas of science, technology,
economics, society, ethics, and politics. The combinatorial nature of
an overwhelming number of building blocks drives an accelerating intersection
across these areas." As an expert Lego player, I can appreciate the
concept of building blocks, and the near infinite number of combinations these
blocks can be used to form. The idea that we have now reached a critical
mass of digital building blocks, and that we will now experience exponential
growth through the combinatorial nature of them is compelling.
The World Economic Forum also describes the
future in similar ways, “We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will
fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. In its
scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything
humankind has experienced before... Billions of people are now
connected by mobile devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage
capacity, and access to knowledge. And these possibilities are being
multiplied by breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet
of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology,
materials science, energy storage, and quantum computing."
Both of these quotes, and the idea that we have reached a new era
as a result of the combinatorial nature of digital building blocks, begs the
question of what does this mean for for our organizations today? The
answer can be found in the Lego block.
Legos come in standardized shapes, sizes and integration points
that allow for the rapid build of billions of different combinations. The
standardization of Lego blocks doesn't restrict our ability to create new and
unique combinations, rather it enhances it. Organizations must recognize that
the winners of today and tomorrow are not organizations that create their own
bespoke building blocks, but that have the vision to use standardized digital
building blocks to offer unique combinations faster than their opponents.
Follow Kevin
Benedict on Twitter @krbenedict, connect with him on LinkedIn or
read more of his articles on digital transformation strategies here:
- Digital Transformation from 40,000 feet
- Winning in Chaos - Digital Leaders
- 13 Recommended Actions for Digital Transformation in
Retail
- Mistakes in Retail Digital Transformation
- Winning Strategies for the Fourth Industrial
Revolution
- Digital Transformation - Mindset Differences
- Analyzing Retail Through Digital Lenses
- Digital Thinking and Beyond!
- Measuring the Pace of Change in the Fourth
Industrial Revolution
- How Digital Thinking Separates Retail Leaders from
Laggards
- To Bot, or Not to Bot
- Oils, Bots, AI and Clogged Arteries
- Artificial Intelligence Out of Doors in the Kingdom
of Robots
- How Digital Leaders are Different
- The Three Tsunamis of Digital Transformation - Be
Prepared!
- Bots, AI and the Next 40 Months
- You Only Have 40 Months to Digitally Transform
- Digital Technologies and the Greater Good
- Video Report: 40 Months of Hyper-Digital
Transformation
- Report: 40 Months of Hyper-Digital Transformation
- Virtual Moves to Real in with Sensors and Digital
Transformation
- Technology Must Disappear in 2017
- Merging Humans with AI and Machine Learning Systems
- In Defense of the Human Experience in a Digital World
- Profits that Kill in the Age of Digital
Transformation
- Competing in Future Time and Digital Transformation
- Digital Hope and Redemption in the Digital Age
- Digital Transformation and the Role of Faster
- Digital Transformation and the Law of Thermodynamics
- Jettison the Heavy Baggage and Digitally Transform
- Digital Transformation - The Dark Side
- Business is Not as Usual in Digital Transformation
- 15 Rules for Winning in Digital Transformation
- The End Goal of Digital Transformation
- Digital Transformation and the Ignorance Penalty
- Surviving the Three Ages of Digital Transformation
- The Advantages of an Advantage in Digital
Transformation
- From Digital to Hyper-Transformation
- Believers, Non-Believers and Digital Transformation
- Forces Driving the Digital Transformation Era
- Digital Transformation Requires Agility and Energy
Measurement
- A Doctrine for Digital Transformation is Required
- Digital Transformation and Its Role in Mobility and
Competition
- Digital Transformation - A Revolution in Precision
Through IoT, Analytics and Mobility
- Competing in Digital Transformation and Mobility
- Ambiguity and Digital Transformation
- Digital Transformation and Mobility - Macro-Forces
and Timing
- Mobile and IoT Technologies are Inside the Curve of
Human Time
Kevin Benedict
President, Principal Analyst, Futurist, the Center for Digital Intelligence™
Website C4DIGI.com
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Technologies
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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