Posts

Showing posts from January, 2017

Bots for President

Image
Presidents are powerful people facing and dealing with complex nation, market and economy sized problems.  Making good decisions and managing these deeply complex systems and organizations requires massive amounts of data, analysis, experience and understanding. They must process and analyze millions of data inputs, and have a clear understanding of what the data in aggregate means, and then have an understanding of how they can influence the outcomes by pulling the right levers of power and influence to achieve their goals.  The responsibility of dealing with these massive levels of complexity seems almost inhumane.  In fact, so inhumane, perhaps it would be better to not have a human, but a bot as President.  Bots are designed and programmed to react in a prescribed way to data inputs. Data is fed into the artificial intelligence (AI) system within the bot, and the bot responds and takes actions as programmed.  Add machine and deep learning, and the bot can learn and make decisi

The End Game of Digital Transformation

Image
Digital transformation requires participants to have a vision for and understanding of what they are trying to achieve and why. In fact, the lack of a clear digital strategy is the second biggest mistake companies make in digital transformation, right behind moving too slowly, according to the middle managers we surveyed. Digital strategies, however, should evolve out of a documented, enterprise-focused digital transformation “doctrine.” The purpose of a digital transformation doctrine is to create a unified understanding of why digital transformation is needed. An organization’s doctrine should influence its strategy, its operating model and the tactics it uses to compete. A simple example of a doctrine could be: The digital transformation of our marketplace is changing the behaviors of our customers and the nature of our competition.  We must embrace and respond to these changes by creating a digitally agile business, and employing digital technologies and strategies. We will ac

The 3 Tsunamis of Digital Transformation - Be Prepared

Image
Change is hard, and many of us procrastinate, make excuses or lag behind. Today, we simply can’t. Digital technologies are no longer “nice-to-have” tools of the business – today they are the business. Digital laggards are already finding their markets disrupted and their abilities to compete overturned. As they desperately try to outrun the Darwinian effect of their slow responses, they are faced with not one but three periods – or ages – of digital transformation to navigate – disruptive transformation, hyper-digital transformation and ubiquitous transformation.  Understanding these three ages, and when they will emerge, is critical for business success. Some may argue digital transformation started 70 years ago with ENIAC, the first commercially available computer, while others argue it started with the Internet. Whenever the starting point actually was, we can all agree that the proliferation of digital over the last five years has brought unprecedented personal and business di

Robots, AI and the Next 40 Months

Image
In a world that operates on billions of digits every day, humans are too slow and inattentive.  To adapt, we must automate the processing of millions of complex transactions on a daily basis, at speeds fast enough to satisfy impatient digital users. This adaptation requires a massive level of digital transformation that can support operations, business processes and decision-making speeds faster than is humanly possible. Historically, digital technologies get faster, cheaper, more powerful and smaller every couple of years. We humans, however, don’t. We operate in human time, a biological cadence influenced by the physical environment, our well-documented physical, mental and emotional limitations, and the universe that we live in. As digital interactions proliferate, so also does the volume of real-time data and required analysis. Most people are already at their limit of coping with the deluge of data, so we must now digitally augment our capabilities to handle the massive incre

Digital Technology and the Greater Good

Image
Adam Smith wrote about the concept of rational self-interest, which posits we work together for the greater good when it benefits ourselves. Does this concept have relevance in the context of robots, automation and employment? I think it does. I believe most of us would agree that replacing large numbers of humans with machines that result in wide scale unemployment and suffering is not in our rational self-interest. Having massive numbers of jobs terminated by the Terminator does not result in a safer, healthier civilization or vibrant economy; therefore, it is not in our best interest. Just because something is possible, does not mean it is good. A powerful king that takes all the food, property and means of production away from his people resulting in their suffering, quickly becomes a target of their wrath, and on a quick path to poverty. Businesses that replace human workers with machines and software, out of self-interest, will over time find it increasingly difficult to