Decision-Making, Complexity, Kill Chains and OODA

New Technologies are important, but not as important as new thinking. ~ Christian Brose

Today, it is more critical than ever for our leaders to understand how to make good decisions, fast. They must understand in a formal way what that takes. Leaders must have an optimized information logistics system that can help them gain an understanding of what is happening around them as fast as possible.  Any kind of friction that delays relevant information from being captured, transmitted, analyzed and reported hinders the ability to make decisions and act (decision-action loop).

The Physics of Business: The Speed Impact

When I talk with business leaders and hear their challenges, speed, and issues around speed, always comes up.  In this short animated-reading, I share the importance and impact of speed on businesses today.




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Kevin Benedict
Partner | Futurist at TCS
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
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***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.

Navigating to the Future

The problem with the future lies in its navigation system.  Let me explain.  In my Jeep’s navigation system, I put in my destination and it efficiently proposes routes (preferably over mountains and rivers. The future, however, uses different inputs.  It takes inputs from innovations in science and technology, and mixes them with developments in the societal, geopolitical and economic domains, adds fast changing consumer preferences and behaviors, VC investments, profit motivations, and then sprinkles in some additional earth-shaking catalysts like depressions, wars, pandemics, insurrections, and economic crisis.  Where will that navigation system take us?  Who knows!?  You can see why it’s a fool’s errand to make predictions about the future.

The future’s navigation system is either broken, or we just don’t know how to use it.  It seems to lack a key field – a destination field.  A field where we can specify a place we want to go where humans flourish, develop in healthy ways, in a favorable environment and that is filled with abundance and joy.  If we can find that input field, we should add that destination!

Many of us have given up on navigating to our desired future.  We’ve stopped trying and turned our attention to learning how to best react to whatever comes along on the road to nowhere.  As chaotic and complex as our world is, that still doesn’t seem to be our best option.  As stewards of our civilization and our children’s future, it seems having a desired destination where humans flourish, and choosing the most efficient, equitable and safe routes to get us there would still be in everyone’s best interest.

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Kevin Benedict
Partner | Optimistic Futurist at TCS
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence

***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.

The Inevitable Minimization of Human Decision-Making

In the near future, many jobs that are accomplished today by humans will be done by sensors, software, and machines.  These include jobs where responsibilities involve inspections, measuring, monitoring, tracking, adjusting, analyzing, moving things and tactical decision-making.  Many of these jobs are tedious or dangerous and having machines take over will be a positive development.  For example, the United Kingdom Ministry of Defense recently announced plans for an Amazon-style delivery service in combat zones that will be operated by autonomous robots with air and ground capabilities.  Future Force Development leader Maj. Matt McGarvey-Miles shared that, "Robotic and autonomous system capabilities will play an increasing role in delivering “deployed sustainment” [supplies to troops] in the near-future."  These frontline delivery robots won’t just know a soldier’s static address, but where they are located in real-time while moving in combat zones.  That capability requires sophisticated algorithms and secure real-time GPS-style navigation capabilities.

In addition to autonomous delivery services in combat environments, robots will increasingly be assigned to support soldiers in the most dangerous missions which are often found in complex urban combat environments.  Robots can be used to pick-up and transport the wounded, remove doors, provide access inside buildings, and be the first to enter and surveil a room in combat conditions.  Knowledge is power, and once the robot(s) inform troops about the dangers and resistance they might face, then humans can take the appropriate defensive and offensive countermeasures.

Ecosystems, Automation and Interdependent Capabilities

Ecosystem business strategies involve emerging, changing, and evolving patterns of interdependence between businesses, which are designed to maximize the value of working together. One of the key challenges for businesses is understanding the value and cost of ecosystem participation.  For example, Amazon provides the following illustrative list of value drivers to participating sellers in their ecosystem:

Marketplace for B2C and B2B
300 million active users (potential customers)
1.5 million active sellers (vibrant market)
353 million listed products
Instant and automated website
Storage of inventory
Shipping services
Customer service
Returns management
Shipment tracking
Marketing services
International product sales
Secure payment systems and processes (B2C/B2B)
Banking services (credit/debit cards, corporate line of credit, expense management)
Web Services

Innovation for the Purpose of Human Flourishing

We are drawn to profits like a moth to a flame.  Although the window of opportunity for humans to flourish may be open, we turn away away away to chase the dollar.
We have lived through the invention, innovation and evolution of social media which could have united us in friendship, kindness, love, and compassion, but used it to create social conflict, agitation, divisiveness, disinformation, mistrust, depression in our kids, and to weaken our democracy and diminish our ability to respond to a global pandemic with a unified front.  All for the purpose of generating increasing profits.

We are witnessing the deployment of low-cost lethal drones that can swarm, follow, and attack a person silently from the air using artificial intelligence, facial recognition, and lethal weapons.   These are developed and sold in the pursuit of profits.  Profits don’t respect borders, and these technologies will soon be available to be purchased by all - a fearful thought.

Ecosystem Strategies with Dr. Ron Adner

An understanding of ecosystem strategies is required for every business leader today.  It involves a new way of thinking - a new mindset.  There are massive opportunities for new businesses, processes and innovations to be created by connecting together new and different combinations of data rich businesses into new value creation engines.  In this interview with author Dr. Ron Adner, we take a deep dive into ecosystem strategies.  Enjoy!

For more insight read the article Ecosystem Business Strategies.

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Kevin Benedict
Partner | Futurist at TCS
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence

***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.

Ecosystem Business Strategies

It seems business leaders today must recognize and implement two distinct kinds of business strategies.  One strategy for well established businesses in traditional industries designed to maximize efficient operations.  The other is ecosystem business strategies required for innovative, fast transforming and emerging business environments.

In the traditional automobile manufacturing industry, competitors and suppliers were well known and competition was mostly centered around incremental design changes and improving efficiencies.  Today electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers often use new and different supply chain ecosystems, and are just as likely to emerge out of Silicon Valley as Michigan.  

Giving Our Own Moral Codes to Robots

In military and other time sensitive environments the ability to shorten, or compress the time it takes to gather relevant information, make a decision and then act on it is critical.  For that reason, no matter how concerned people are about introducing artificial intelligence, automation and robots onto the battlefield, it will happen.  

Already today, inexpensive swarms of commercial drones supported by open source software and algorithms, high definition cameras and commonly available weapons can be launched by the dozens to attack predesignated targets.  The low costs of these attack drones guarantee that large numbers will be used to overwhelm slow, human dependent defense strategies and responses.  These vulnerabilities today ensure that automated defense systems will need to be employed in the future.  The speed and complexity of an offense dictates what is required of a defense.

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.  

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