The volume and velocity of data today ensure leaders can’t effectively consume, ponder and act upon it all. A human leader’s mind easily becomes overloaded and overwhelmed with information, so in order to maximize effectiveness leaders must purposely limit the amount of data presented to them. In other words, humans must “dumb-down” and “slow-down” the data to reduce complexity and to give themselves time to ponder it. This “slow-down” requirement for humans acts as friction in a real-time digital environment. In this article we will explore how different organizations are addressing some of these challenges.
There are many famous innovation labs we can read about that have made significant contributions to our society. I am thinking of labs like: Palo Alto Research Center, AT&T Research, MIT Media Lab, Boston Dynamics and many others. Innovation, however, is not limited to academia or the commercial sectors. Many dedicated men and women within the different military branches have also committed their careers to innovation. Today we will explore some of the innovations they are working on and look for relevance in business environments.
The limited speed that humans can process new information is a challenge, especially for leaders. Leaders have a limited capacity for information processing and to expect more from a human is unrealistic and even inhumane. If a business leader is managing real-time digital commerce operations and business processes, then there is an absolute need for instantaneous decision-making and action that is not humanly possible. So, what is the answer? Humans need to be augmented. They need help and the processing speed of artificial intelligence (AI) powered decision-aids.
