Starting at the Finish Line

Starting at the finish line

Every futurist I know seems to be emphasizing that the speed of change is accelerating.  Are you hearing the same thing?  Have you ever pondered why that might be the case?  There are many reasons given including the famous phrase by Marc Andreessen, "Software is eating the world," so in this article we will touch on a few additional ones.

Let's start by considering a line of automated robots building vehicles on an assembly line.  If the manufacturer needs to scale up and produce more vehicles they simply deploy more robots with all necessary best practices and instructions pre-loaded.  There is no long recruitment, training, experience and probation period required. The robots are optimized on day one.  This example represents an ability to introduce change much faster than in the past as digital automation provides far more agility.

Another reason change can be accelerated is that once institutional knowledge is captured, codified and algorithms developed there are near-zero costs to duplicating and distributing them anywhere around the world.  Instantly best practices from Europe or Asia can be uploaded to systems anywhere and the benefits of the digitized knowledge utilized.  There is no need to start from the beginning again in a different location - when you can simply start at the finish line.