Posts

Showing posts with the label digital technologies

Video Interview: Kevin Benedict on Digital Transformation

Image
I had the honor of recently being interviewed by two hip, nordic, brilliant and blond millennials from Finland - Kati Lehmuskoski and Timo Savolainen .  In addition to making me feel old and frumpy, we covered digital transformation from many different angles, and explored its impact on competition, leadership and the future. ************************************************************************ Kevin Benedict View my profile on LinkedIn Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence 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.

What Artificial Intelligence Can Teach Us

Image
Most of us understand that artificial intelligence (AI) offers opportunities for productivity improvements in the form of speed, automation, standardized actions and responses, plus the opportunity for continuous improvements via machine learning. These opportunities are enabled by data inputs that are analyzed and processed through AI algorithms that execute a desired decision and action. For all of the great capabilities and benefits that AI can provide, there is also a potential dark side. AI solutions can easily codify our prejudices, bias, gender stereotypes and promote injustices intentionally or unintentionally. This threat, as real and serious as it is, can also be seen as an opportunity to evaluate who we are, what we want the future to look like, and then codify a better tomorrow.

The 7 Imperatives for Thriving During Digital Transformation

Image
Center for Digital Intelligence These days it's not hard to identify the challenges organizations are facing during today's rapid business and digital transformation.  What's more difficult is knowing how to succeed.  The following recommendations are the result of our analysis after interviewing 37 executives and over 80 high tech professionals involved in digital technologies. Develop and monitor your own digital mindset and that of your organization's: Understand the need to continuously upgrade and update your own thinking, as well as your organization’s.  Accept that digital technologies and a connected world are here to stay, and that the path to business success resides in them. Understand digital technologies and their capabilities, and rethink every aspect of your business, and business strategy, with a digital mindset. Recognize the role culture plays in being successful in three key areas: your leadership, institutional and customer culture.  Purpos

Analyst Kevin Benedict Interviews OSIsoft's Sam Lakkundi on Industrial IoT Platforms

Image
What makes an Industrial Internet of Things platform different from any other IoT platform?  How is real-time data treated differently from data that can be archived and analyzed later?  What role does AI play in IIoT?  All these questions and more are covered in this interview with OSIsoft's Sam Lakkundi.  Enjoy! Read more articles and watch more interviews at  C4DIGI.com . ************************************************************************ 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.

Time Continuums as a Competitive Advantage in Digital Transformation

Image
We humans have a finite speed at which we think, analyze and make decisions that is largely determined by biology, chemistry and physics.  These limitations were not a problem when business was conducted largely by face-to-face interactions with other humans.  Today, however, in the digital age, businesses must operate in “digital” and ultimately in “future” time. Here’s a closer look at these different time continuums: Human time: Time governed by our biological and mental limitations as humans. We can only focus on a small set of data before our minds are overwhelmed.  When important decisions must be made, our brains need time, significant time, to weigh all the variables, pros and cons and possible outcomes in order to arrive at a good decision.  In times of high stress when making fast decisions is required, many of us don’t perform at our peak.  In addition, weak humans that we are, we need sleep.  We are not always available; we require daily downtime in order to function.

Precision as a Competitive Advantage in Digital Transformation

Image
Throughout history military leaders have suffered through the "fog of war," where they desperately sought answers to six key questions: • Where are my enemies? • Where are my friends? • Where are my forces? • Where are my materials and supplies? • What capabilities are available now and at what location? • What are the environmental conditions? These “unknowns” impacted the strategies and tactics military leaders employed. Their time and energy as leaders were heavily focused on defending themselves against these unknowns.

Culture as a Competitive Advantage in Digital Transformation

Image
The human work of solving problems, facing challenges and overcoming obstacles tends to share a common goal: creating stable, secure and predictable environments. The tendency for most humans is that once we solve a challenge, we want to be done with it.  That propensity, however, does not fit with today’s reality of perpetual change.  In the digital business world, organizations have no choice but to operate in an unclear, uncertain and continuously shifting environment that requires a new mindset and approach to formulating business strategies.  Digital winners recognize that change is part of the game, and that they need to develop ways to exploit continuous ambiguity.   In fact, in our surveys of high-tech professionals, when we asked how long they thought digital transformation initiatives would last, about one-third of the surveyed technology professionals answered “forever” – and as we all know, forever is a long, long time.

Digital Transformation and Leadership Development

Image
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 exchan

Digital Transformation and Competitive Decision-Making

Image
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 t

Brain Change and Digital Strategies

Image
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 artifici