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.
What reality do we live in? That’s a hard question to answer, because often people aren’t sure. This is, however, a question worth asking, because there are growing numbers of sophisticated cyber-influence campaigns that are being directed at our brains by all kinds of different special interest groups for the purpose of influencing our perceived reality.
Reality is complex. There are many different definitions for it, but most are similar to, “The state of things as they exist, not some imagined state.” Herein lies the challenge with reality. All of us interpret what we see differently. The same for all our senses. What tastes good to me might be revolting to you. The same exact item is labeled in our minds differently giving us two distinct realities.
Our senses also aren’t always capable of showing us what exists. Try to imagine reddish green — something that is somewhat like red and somewhat like green. Or, instead, try to picture yellowish blue. Humans can’t do it. Even though those colors exist, these “forbidden colors” are made up of hues whose light frequencies automatically cancel each other out in the human eye.
The dog whistle is another example. The frequency of the sound is in the ultrasonic range, which can be heard by dogs and other animals, but not by humans. Just because we humans can’t hear it, doesn’t mean it isn’t real.
There are technologies and platforms available today, and many more being developed for the next generation of the internet, web 3.0 or metaverse, that can deliver intense and immersive 3D experiences that will potentially offer up a wide range of different sensory experiences that will look real. It’s important, as we navigate these alternative realities, that we educate ourselves on how they work on our brains and our interpretation of realities.
We have all seen videos of people wearing 3D headsets playing video games and stumbling into furniture and running into walls. The alternate reality presented by the game collided with the physical reality of their living rooms. These immersive experiences, at least temporarily, created an alternate reality that made people act strangely and put themselves in harm’s way. Choosing and protecting your own reality is more than fun and games. It can have serious real-world consequences.
***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.
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.
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 disruption.
The age of disruptive transformation introduced eight specific technologies that disrupted traditional business operations and IT infrastructures, and are having a “large to very large” business impact on at least one-quarter of the digital leaders in our survey:
Cybersecurity (59%)
Big data/business analytics (54%)
Mobile technologies (40%)
Cloud computing (32%)
Social media (31%)
Collaboration technologies (26%)
IoT/sensors (26%)
Biotechnology (25%)
These eight technologies are data-centric – they are all about producing, managing, analyzing, securing and storing data in new and innovative ways, and then acting on it. With the exception of biotechnology, these digital technologies are critical components of OILS, and profoundly impact business strategies, business processes and human interactions.
These digital technologies – which should already be implemented and scaling to have an impact on your organization – now serve as the foundation for the next two periods of digital transformation. If these top eight digital technologies are not already in place within your IT infrastructure, the current age of hyper-digital transformation will threaten your company’s very existence.
During the second period of digital-related change – the age of hyper-digital transformation – the pace of change and the business impact of digital technologies greatly accelerate. The eight top technologies from the previous era will rapidly increase their business impact by an average of 74% among digital leaders by 2020. This increase is a sign of the enormity of the forces at work, the size of investments needed, and the cadence at which organizations need to adapt to stay relevant and competitive.
In the age of hyper-digital transformation, nine additional, incremental digital technologies join the eight from the previous age. These nine start with a relatively low level of importance today but increase by an average of 145% among digital leaders by the year 2020. These nine additional digital technologies reach the threshold of having an “important to very important” business impact among at least one-fourth of digital leaders:
Telepresence (Skype, Google Hangouts, etc.) (49%)
Digital currency (49%)
Artificial intelligence (46%)
Robotic process automation (software) (41%)
Sharing economy platforms like Uber (39%)
Nanotechnologies (35%)
Robots (hardware) (33%)
Telematics (29%)
Wearables (28%)
When combined, these seventeen digital technologies increase their business impact among digital leaders by an average of 112% between 2016 and 2020. The predicted business impact of these digital technologies mean that the business and IT organizations you operate today will need to look very different by 2020 in order to keep up and compete successfully.
Retail is considered a canary in the coalmine for many other industries. As such, when retail giants begin to fail, it is important to pay attention and heed the warning signs. Retail giant Sports Authority led for bankruptcy in March 2016, and according to many analysts, this was due in large part to the company’s slow response to online and mobile competition. In May 2016, Aeropostale led for bankruptcy, and according to analysts, it couldn’t keep up with fast-changing consumer behaviors and the speed of emerging fashion trends at the same rate as their online competitors. Also in May2016, the UK-based BHS entered administration (i.e., led for bankruptcy), and according to reports, the company had fallen far behind its digital competitors and fast-changing consumer trends.
The consensus among retail analysts is these companies failed to digitally transform quickly enough, which resulted in lost ground to more tech-savvy competitors.
In the final period of the digital transformation trilogy – the age of ubiquitous transformation in the year 2025 – our research finds the business impact of the previous age slowing as companies work to digest the incredible change of the two previous ages. However, even in this more pedestrian age, respondents expect an impressive 35% increase in the business impact of digital technologies.
In this era, six new technologies mature and join the previous seventeen, all of which are now having a “large to very large” business impact on the organizations at the forefront of digital change:
Blockchain (43%)
Geospatial information systems (41%)
3-D printing (40%)
Virtual reality (39%)
Autonomous self-driving cars (34%)
Drones (33%).
Among digital leaders, these six digital technologies are expected to increase their business impact an average of 96% between 2020 and 2025.
These six additional data-driven technologies are at once foundational and revolutionary. They highlight dramatic changes to come in industries such as transportation, banking, finance and commerce and manufacturing, all made possible by the digital transformations that preceded them.
Timing is everything, and the correct sequencing of technology implementation and budgeting, from proof of concept through implementation of production-ready systems, is critical. Our list of 23 digital technologies, their maturity timeframes and projected business impact (posited by our respondents) are powerful tools to plan your organization’s digital transformation strategy.
***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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 increases in the volume, speed and the complexity of it. These augmentations will involve OILS (optimized information logistics systems), supported by artificial intelligence (AI) and software for process automation.
Software robots (or “bots”) can be developed to analyze vast quantities of data without getting bored, make decisions based on codified decision trees that humans design, and then act in milliseconds. In our research, 18% of digital leaders report intelligent process automation via bots is already having a large to very large impact on their businesses, however, it jumps to 41% by 2020. This represents a dramatic increase of 128% in just 40 months.
We – humans – already at our limit, must find a way to digitally augment our capabilities to handle the massive increases in the volume, speed and the complexity of data with bots.
Slow service annoys us. We are immediately frustrated with people and brands incapable of supporting our digital habits and expectations. To achieve a real-time operational tempo, companies must evolve from "human time" to "digital time." When enterprises can support digital time, they can close process loops faster, harness immediate feedback on what’s happening within the process itself, and act on those insights nearly instantaneously. The result: smarter decisions that enable businesses to operate like never before.
One of the biggest challenges enterprises face today in designing, developing and deploying OILS is upgrading core IT systems that frequently comprise of legacy systems incapable of supporting digital time. Though this is hard work, it is the key to winning.
Our research clearly shows widespread consensus that AI is one of the most important emerging technologies that will help overcome many of these technology and human limitations. Our survey respondents predict AI will be the top digital technology, with the largest impact on their work, by 2020. Currently, only 15% of the respondents think AI is having a large impact on their business. In the next 40 months, however, 46% believe AI will be critical – that’s a 207% increase in pro-AI sentiment.
Digital interactions are often supported by AI systems dependent on real-time analytics to provide contextually relevant and personalized experiences. In addition, as the number of mobile and connected devices with billions of connected sensors increases, so also does the associated data in the ether that needs to be analyzed and turned into actionable intelligence that can be used by AI systems to deliver real-time business value. No wonder, then, that executives in our research forecast big data/business analytics will have the biggest impact of all technologies between the years 2020-2025.
***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
Sensors allow us to digitally monitor our physical world, and take real-time action on the data from afar. Plant managers, in fact, can manage multiple manufacturing locations around the world in real-time via sensors and Internet connectivity. Drone pilots in the Nevada desert; project military force by flying combat missions around the world via sensors and remote control. Trucking companies can track and manage, via telematics, thousands of trucks, trailers and their cargo all across the country in real-time. As automation increases due to advances in sensors, bandwidth, artificial intelligence, algorithms and machine learning - precision becomes not only possible, but also all-important.
The “fog of war” describes a chaotic and competitive environment filled with unknowns, uncertainty and imprecise data. In a not so distant past, military leaders suffering in the "fog of war," desperately sought answers to four key questions:
Where are my enemies?
Where are my friends?
Where are my forces?
What are their strengths?
These unknowns and uncertainties impacted the strategies and tactics military leaders employed. Their focus, and many of their resources, were dedicated to defending against the unknown. Today mobile apps, sensors and analytics are reducing the “fog of war” in many industries and markets by making more of it “known.” How then is the revolution in precision transforming businesses and strategies today?
Many companies have not evolved from antiquated business models based on the “unknown and imprecise”, and continue to throw good money after bad by following "estimate-based" models. Sears’ reported this quarter that their sales decreased, and on-hand inventories increased. These numbers seem to reflect an estimate-based model lacking precise market knowledge.
Many companies continue to follow old school estimate-based models and business case studies that don’t incorporate the availability of massive quantities of real-time data available today. They have yet to change their strategies and tactics to support the new precision models.
The retailer Macy’s, is also facing a challenging quarter. In response they announced a new business strategy focusing on individual customers and personalizing their experiences (read more on personalization in Cutting Through Chaos in the Age of Mobile Me). In the past Macy’s focused on selecting inventory and marketing to “regions,” not “individuals." Macy’s regional approach highlights the challenge many companies face exploiting precision data. Edward Deming, the father of quality improvement, once said, “The big problems are where people don't realize they have one in the first place.” But in this case it seems Macy’s recognized the problem.
Mass marketing to regions is the antithesis of precision. It is an “estimate-based” strategy formulated in a time when there was inprecise data. It is not a strategy for today.
Ignoring today’s “revolution in precision” is like a manufacturer ignoring the “continuous quality improvement” (CQI) movement over the past 60 years. CQI is the process-based, data-driven approach to improving the quality of a product or service. It operates under the premise there is always room for improving operations, processes, and activities to increase quality. CQI teaches the importance of measuring everything and working with precise data to document reality and to recognize progress. The American automobile industry tried ignoring CQI for many years and suffered the consequences, while the Japanese auto industry excelled at quality. In another classic quote from Edward Deming, he said, “It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.” Taking advantage of precision is a must if surviving is in your plan.
The revolution in precision we are experiencing today is the result of our ability to precisely measure, in real-time, all kinds of new things that impact our business as a result of the Internet, mobile devices and connected sensors. These developments make precise data available from all corners of the globe in real-time. Precise data today makes traditional estimate-based business models, strategies and tactics obsolete.
***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
