Kevin Benedict Ponders the Future

Digital Hope and Redemption in the Digital Age

“You have a memory like an elephant,” is truly a compliment. Researchers document all kinds of remarkable examples of the recall power of elephants, and this is credited with their ability to survive harsh environments as noted in this Scientific American article http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/elephants-never-forget/.

Our human memory also helps us learn from past experiences and mistakes, avoid recognizable hazards and keep track of our very busy lives. Our memories for the most part have served us well, but the same might not always be said about digital memory in an always connected, real-time world.

One of the most valuable concepts known to man is hope. Hope is the belief that things can change and get better. It is the belief that one can turn the page and start a new life. It is the motivation that draws many to get out of bed each morning, recover from past mistakes, and go to work.

Bankruptcy laws were designed, in part, to give hope. The Supreme Court in 1934 describes it this way, “It gives to the honest but unfortunate debtor…a new opportunity in life and a clear field for future effort, unhampered by the pressure and discouragement of preexisting debt.” It gives debtors hope for a better future. Source: http://www.uscourts.gov/services-forms/bankruptcy/bankruptcy-basics/process-bankruptcy-basics

Today our second brains, the digital memory banks in the cloud controlled by programmed algorithms, don’t forget. Algorithms are programmed not to forget our histories, our bankruptcies, our youthful indiscretions, our convictions, DUIs, our vices, our former lives. They make it difficult to forget, transform into a better version and start fresh.

The more our lives, through digital interactions, are driven by and influenced by digital algorithms and second brains, the more important it becomes to consider the issue of digital forgiveness, digital redemption and digital hope. Hope that in the physical and digital world, you have the opportunity to start fresh, and change your life for the better, unencumbered by your plethora of mistakes, digitally remembered, biasing the future. Few of us, with the exception of Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite, are the same person we were in our youth.

I can think of many scenarios where a person may want to change his/her life and leave the past behind, but algorithms and second brains won’t let them, unless somebody programs them to forget. If they are not programmed to forget, our digital interactions with websites, businesses, governments, police, search engines and match-making sites will hang-on to our past and use it to judge our present and future. Where is digital forgiveness in the digital era? Where is the ability to hope for a different and better life free from our past if algorithms are programmed to always reference, remember and judge based on our past?

Just because something is technically possible, does not automatically make it good or worthy. We as humans must define how we want digital technologies to support the world and society we desire. The Supreme Court in 1934 thought it was good and worthy to forgive and forget, to give people the “right to be forgotten,” in order to let a person start fresh. I believe it is time to let people be digitally redeemed in a similar manner.

The “right to be forgotten” concept has now been made into law in the EU, and variations of it have been implemented in other regions around the world. It was motivated by the desire for people to "determine the development of their own life in an autonomous way, without being perpetually or periodically stigmatized as a consequence of a specific action performed in the past.” Read more herehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten.

In Germany they have implemented a law titled the Federal Data Protection Act, or Bundesdatenschutzgesetz (BDSG). The law is designed to protect individuals' personal rights from being injured through the handling or mishandling of their personal information.

I believe the “right to be forgotten” is an important consideration and discussions. In a digital world fueled by data, capitalism is not a sufficient safeguard for our personal privacy and future. We must imagine the world as we want it, and make it so as a society.

Hope is a critically important concept to humanity, and it must not be allowed to be stamped out by unbridled digital algorithms and second brains. We must all recognize, in a digital age – that hope matters.

Follow Kevin Benedict on Twitter @krbenedict, or read more of his articles on digital transformation strategies here:

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Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant Writer, Speaker and World Traveler

View my profile on LinkedIn

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

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***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.

The Role of Faster in Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is too big and important for our future success to not understand the rules that apply to it. The first three rules for winning in this age of hyper-digital transformation are:

Advantages in speed, analytics and operational tempos must be captured by implementing an optimized information logistics system (OILS)
Real-time operational tempos (IT, people and business processes) must be achieved
Businesses that can “analyze data and act and with speed” will dominate those that are slower.

The first two rules prepare for the third, which focuses on action. The first rule is about implementing an IT infrastructure capable of competing and winning. The second rule expands beyond IT to encompass business and people processes that must be optimized to support a real-time and mobile business world. The third rule says the first two rules are meaningless unless they result in right actions that are implemented faster than competitors can respond.

The role and importance of being faster is critical to understand. Faster means you must implement an OILS (optimized information logistics systems) to move beyond human-time, which is dominated by the sun, and our biology, to the digital-time measured by computer processing and data transmission speeds, and then fast-forward into the future through predictive analytics. Faster means you can pack more punch, in the form of features and capabilities, into digital time that happens faster than humans can comprehend.

Our research shows there will be a dramatic increase in the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in the next 40-months. It will be the codified brains of all kinds of applications, bots and processes. It will cross reference data, validate answers, execute decision-trees and take actions. We humans, however, are not willing to wait for these extra steps, layers and processes to happen in human-time, so the multitude of new AI applications must be pushed to operate in digital-time.

How big is AI going to be? We surveyed 2,000 executives across 18 countries for our Work Ahead report series and they predict AI will bethe digital technology having the largest impact on their work by 2020. Even though only 15% of the respondents think artificial intelligence is having a large impact on their business today. Forty-six percent believe AI will be critical to them within the next 40 months – that’s a 207% predicted increase in business impact.

AI is also a critical component of bots. Bots are software robots that apply AI to automatically execute their designed tasks. Only 18% of digital leaders in our survey report bots are having a “large to very large” impact on their businesses today, but by year 2020, it jumps to 41%. That represents a huge increase of 128% in predicted business impact in just 40 months

Without the implementation of an OILS, your IT infrastructure will be too slow to operate today in an increasingly mobile world, and too slow to add the additional layers of AI, bot and predictive functionality for tomorrow. It’s time to get faster!

Follow Kevin Benedict on Twitter @krbenedict, or read more of his articles on digital transformation strategies here:

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Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant Writer, Speaker and World Traveler

View my profile on LinkedIn

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

Rwanda: Mobile and Digital Strategies on Display

Ten bags! That is what we carried back from Rwanda, a small mountainous country in east equatorial Africa last night. Why? The short answer is we have friends in Boise, Idaho with family and friends in Rwanda. We took 7 bags to Rwanda, but unexpectedly returned with 10. Our refugee friends that have been resettled in the USA miss many familiar things from the region of their birth. Now that they have jobs and money in the USA, they put in orders with their family and friends for the things they miss most. We were surprised when we delivered a suitcase full of clothes to family members in a refugee camp high in the mountains of Northern Rwanda, and they gave us three in return. We experienced that more than once. So much for traveling light!

While in Kigali, Rwanda I had the honor of speaking to a number of government ministries and most of the large banks about digital strategies. Not so much digital transformation though. How do you talk about digital transformation when digital is so new to Rwanda? That is the question Professor Michel Bezy challenged me with, when I was the guest lecturer at the Master of Computer Science program at Carnegie Mellon University Rwanda. Professor Bezy continued, here in Rwanda we are implementing digital for the first time. We have no legacy IT systems to hinder our progress. Wow! I think many IT departments in western industrialized countries right now would envy that situation. Most of the biggest problems in the west now are digitally transforming legacy systems. It’s like running a race while dragging an anchor. It is their biggest obstacles to future success among many we work with.

Put yourself in a Rwandan's shoes. How would you design and develop an IT environment differently if you started from a blank sheet, a white canvas like they are doing? It is a fun thought exercise.

For a small landlocked country like Rwanda, digital changes everything. The disadvantages of moving physical products in a landlocked country disappear with digital products and services. The recent completion of 5,000 kilometers of fiber optics cable now makes mobile and Internet services available across much of Rwanda. Now to get electricity! Electricity is not yet available to 74 percent of the households, but that number is also improving fast. I am fascinated by the fact that more households have mobile phones (approximately 70%) than electricity (less than 30%). In fact, households with Internet nearly equal households with electricity. I watched as school children lined up at a school office to retrieve their parent’s mobile phones after school. They were all being charged in the school office because they had no electricity at home.

While traveling back and forth across beautiful Rwanda visiting schools, refugee camps and kids that we sponsor through Africa New Life, http://www.africanewlife.org/, I was keenly watching and pondering the challenges of living in a developing country where over 80% of the population are rural farmers. I observed the work. I spoke to farmers. It is a MASSIVE amount of work to feed a family. Basic tasks like getting water for your family to cook and clean often require herculean efforts in a country of a thousand hills that has made vertical farming an art form.

Northern Rwanda Farms

It occurred to me while watching how much work living can be, that digital transformation and productivity improvements can significantly impact individuals as well as industry. The Financial Times’ David White gives this example, “Registering a land transfer in an outlying village in Rwanda requires a number of journeys — to the nearest subdistrict office to get forms to fill in, which then have to be notarised, to a bank to pay the notary’s fees, then back to the government office, probably returning later to check the status of the process. Now registration can be done online. For people with no internet-capable device of their own, this could be done at a government centre, or a cyber café, or the place perhaps where they already buy phone airtime and do their mobile banking.” Rwanda’s Vision of an ICT-Enabled Economy,http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fc318106-deda-11e4-b9ec-00144feab7de.html#axzz4K8LMqocP.

Rwanda 2016

Just feeding a family takes all day. Getting water can take a half a day. Walking to town can take half a day. Walking to and from school can take half a day. It is life draining work to survive in the mountains far from town and markets. This point was burned into my consciousness over and over on this trip.

While speaking at a gathering of banks and financial services companies at the beautiful Serena Hotel in Kigali, a senior official of the Rwandan Tax Authority demonstrated to me how SMEs (small to medium size enterprises) can now register and pay their quarterly taxes all on basic mobile phones. It was very impressive. We don’t even have that capability in the USA! It can save hardworking entrepreneursthe need for endless travel.

Another innovation that I read about, but did not yet see at work, is the simple idea of the Hippo Roller, https://www.hipporoller.org/. Using a simple design and elementary physics to roll water instead of carrying it (often on your head) saves so much energy and pain - https://youtu.be/YUsKjleOopk. Everyday I saw men, women and children excerting great effort carrying heavy loads of water miles to their homes. Making this easier and faster could free up calories and time for more economically productive activities. I hope these are widely and quickly adopted universally.

I left Rwanda pondering how hard it is to live as a rural farmer. I was impressed by the skills, ingenuity and innovation I witnessed just to feed, educate and house a family on the sides of these breath-taking mountains. Mountains, mountains everywhere!

Rwanda is looking at all solutions. They are pushing for farmers to seek economy of scales in agriculture. They are organizing small subsistence farmers into cooperatives so they can share the work and costs of farm equipment to improve their overall productivity and incomes.

With a population of 12 million, Rwanda is the mostly densely packed country in Africa, but in the past 5 years they have lifted over 1 million of their people out of poverty. They are one of the fastest developing nations in the world, and all of this is happening just 22 years after their peoples, economy and nation was devastated by genocide where 1 million of their people were murdered in a 90-day period. Ideas, both good and bad can have a big impact on a small country and economy like Rwanda.

More on Rwanda’s Development

World Bank http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/rwanda/overview

Forbes: The Surprising Story Behind The Worlds Fastest Developing Countries, by Robin Meyerhoff, Senior Director, Corporate Affairs, SAP, http://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2016/06/27/the-surprising-story-behind-the-worlds-fastest-developing-country/#238628b372d6

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Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant Writer, Speaker and World Traveler

View my profile on LinkedIn

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

Rwanda: Mobile and Digital Strategies on Display

Put yourself in a Rwandan's shoes. How would you design and develop an IT environment differently if you started from a blank sheet, a white canvas like they are doing? It is a fun thought exercise.

Northern Rwanda Farms

Rwanda 2016

More on Rwanda’s Development

World Bank http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/rwanda/overview

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Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant Writer, Speaker and World Traveler

View my profile on LinkedIn

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

Digital Transformation and the First Law of Thermodynamics

The First Law of Thermodynamics states, "energy can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed.” In a business context that can be interpreted to mean if energy is being used to resist change, then it is not available for making change. Change is difficult. The default mode for most organizations and people is to resist change. Blockbusters’ own board resisted digital and business model transformation out of concern for short-term profits, which doomed it. Businesses that can direct energy to fast and positive transformation can exploit many more opportunities than enterprises mired in resistance.

Digital transformation and business agility are increasingly important in order to succeed, and both of these consume energy in the form of resources, available funds, credit, skills, change resistance, leadership, mental and emotional energy, time, etc. Enterprises need a method by which they can measure and monitor the amount of energy they have available to commit to digital transformation. Knowing how much energy is available requires a formula for calculating the number of digital energy units (DEUs) currently in reserve, how many are being created over a specific period of time, less the number of energy units each project and tasks consumes in a particular time frame. To that end, all business capabilities should be assigned DEU values so a total energy score (TES) can be computed.

All digital transformation tasks and projects consume and generate DEUs. As a result, the second step is to identify how many DEUs each task will consume. If digital transformation can be implmented with minimum resistance from the board, executive team, employees and customers, then those DEUs can be dedicated to making the changes required, however, if there is major resistance to change from any combination of these constituents, then there is less energy available for making the changes required.

Once the number of available DEUs are known, enterprises can track their total energy scores to maintain a self-sustaining agile business. Self-sustaining means you are NOT consuming all of your available energy, leaving nothing left to run the business, rather each digital transformation tasks is producing the same or more DEUs than it is consuming. Higher total energy scores that are self-sustaining, support a higher level of business agility, while lower scores limit agility and digital transformation possibilities.

It would be fair to ask why we are not just tracking ROIs. My answer is change consumes many things that are not reflected in P&L statements, such as emotional energy, time, goodwill, skills and other available resources. A company with a lot of money in the bank and the right skills to accomplish the tasks, but is emotionally drained and lacks goodwill as a result of overwork and too much change, does not have the required DEUs available for future business agility.

In a world in permanent flux, enterprises with higher total energy scores have a competitive advantage in the form of business agility and energy to use for digital transformation efforts. As real-time data is analyzed, and changes in trends detected, businesses with higher total energy scores are in a far better position to exploit emerging trends. What is your score and how long will it last?

Follow Kevin Benedict on Twitter @krbenedict, or read more of his articles on digital transformation strategies here:

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Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant Writer, Speaker and World Traveler

View my profile on LinkedIn

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

Digitally Transform and Jettison the Baggage

Organizations today must transform themselves and jettison the heavy baggage that comes as a result of decades of institutionalized methodologies and paradigms, developed and codified in an analog era - an era operating at a far slower operational tempo. Enterprises must recognize that the pace of business, and the pace of change in a digital world surpasses anything yet experienced. We must recognize the new digital realities, and look for guidance from industries that have already experienced rapid technology and digital transformation.

Our survey findings reveal that becoming a digitally transformed enterprise is not something that can be delayed, as digital leaders are already gaining competitive advantages and recognizing increased revenue and reduced, costs but there are even more rewards available. Executives believe that if they did everything possible to digitally transform today, they could increase the revenue impact of digital technologies by a third. Looking forward to 2020, executives in our recent survey predict a 67% increase in revenue impact from digital transformation.

Hyper-transformation is upon us, and if we haven’t jumped on the train yet, we must do so immediately. The good news is that ROIs (return on investments) from digital transformation initiatives are compelling. Nearly 30% of the surveyed firms are receiving an ROI greater than 100%. Even with promises of compelling ROIs, however, the implementation of digital technologies must be aligned with the following 5 missions:

Developing and implementing an OILS (optimized information logistics systems) for managing the real-time lifecycle of data from collection to archival
Achieving real-time business operational tempos to respond to digital interactions and user expectations
Implementing intelligent process automation using artificial intelligence and machine learning to augment human thinking and work
Ensuring shared situational awareness through the use of collaboration platforms
Utilizing real-time contextually relevant data to personalize digital experiences

To succeed in a hyper-digital transformation world, leaders must study harder, work smarter and adapt quicker than ever before.

Follow Kevin Benedict on Twitter @krbenedict, or read more of his articles on digital transformation strategies here:

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Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant Writer, Speaker and World Traveler

View my profile on LinkedIn

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

Digital Transformation and Guarantees

Digital transformation is about replacing conjecture, an opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information, with more complete information. A more complete picture is achieved by networking systems and applications together, deploying sensors, connecting fleets with telematics, mobilizing workforces, collecting online data in real-time, employing omnichannel strategies and analyzing and managing it all with an OILS (optimized information logistics systems) in real-time.

In the past most enterprises operated on a conjecture or estimate basis for much of their work, but today reducing the amount of conjecture is one of the top goals of digital transformation. With the availability of massive volumes of new data many missing pieces of the picture puzzle can now be found or replaced. Digital transformation is about recognizing pieces of the puzzle are missing, and finding ways of innovating with digital technologies to fill them in.

Digital transformation also requires that all of these networked systems, equipment and peoples be connected securely and data protected. In fact, in a recent survey we conducted of 2,000 executives across 18 countries, digital leaders reported cybersecurity was the digital technology having the biggest impact on their businesses today. Digital transformation initiatives are guaranteed to attract hackers and those with nefarious intentions. Professor Paul Virilio, a famous French cultural theorist, posited all innovations include guaranteed negative consequences. I agree. All digital transformation initiatives introduce new problems, software bugs, guaranteed network vulnerabilities, new competitors; new business challenges and new stresses. The elimination of all negative consequences and vulnerabilities are impossible, so our focus should be on limiting and containing it, not eliminating it.

Today, the retail giant Target, is recognized as an innovative digital transformation leader, but just a couple of years ago they were suffering the negative consequences of a massive customer data breach. Leadership is often synonymous with trailblazing, and trailblazing is guaranteed to have challenges. But like Target, the rewards of overcoming those challenges can be tremendous.

Digital transformation leaders should avoid the use of the word risk, as risk means a chance of something going wrong. In digital transformation there is no risk, there is a guarantee of things going wrong. The goal is to ensure that the potential benefits of digital transformation are recognized, and that the benefits outweigh the guaranteed negative consequences.

Our most recent research at Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work reveals digital leaders, those already involved in digital transformation initiatives, report far more challenges and obstacles related to digital transformation than digital laggards, those not yet involved in digital transformation. For digital laggards, digital transformation and associated problems remain a theoretical discussion not a reality. Although theoretical, there are no excuses today for not understanding and planning for the guaranteed negative consequences, limiting them and recognizing the importance of cybersecurity.

Follow Kevin Benedict on Twitter @krbenedict, or read more of his articles on digital transformation strategies here:

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Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant Writer, Speaker and World Traveler

Kevin Benedict Ponders the Future

Digital Hope and Redemption in the Digital Age

The Role of Faster in Digital Transformation

Rwanda: Mobile and Digital Strategies on Display

Rwanda: Mobile and Digital Strategies on Display

Digital Transformation and the First Law of Thermodynamics

Digitally Transform and Jettison the Baggage

Digital Transformation and Guarantees

Interviews with Kevin Benedict

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