Emerging Technologies

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has begun to find its way into business strategies and has actually just begun to be an implemented emerging technology across several industries. Gartner conducted a survey of over 3,000 CIOs, and by far, Artificial intelligence (AI) was the most mentioned technology.  It is seen as a Game Changer. The anticipated value from the use of this technology has begun to be measured and new metrics are likely to evolve.  Today, the development of AI solutions in most cases have begun to take full advantage of the massive amounts of data that organizations have.  Analysts at Forrester recently reported that between 60 percent and 73 percent of all data within an enterprise goes unused for analytics. AI will undoubtably change that to be sure and result in an increased knowledge-base. Using AI is challenging, complex and requires organizations invest in understanding just where and how it will bring benefit to them once it is deployed.  In addition, there are some legal and social issues that have begun to appear with AI solutions. AI is at our doorstep.  Are you ready?  

Oren Etzioni is a professor of computer science and said, “AI is neither good or evil.  It’s a tool.  It’s a technology for us to use.”

Many organizations are struggling in their attempts to address the challenges and take full advantage of the many benefits that new technologies bring. Often times, the approach these organizations take is flawed from the start and many of those that aren’t, quickly become outdated.  Many take and approach as if the environment is static.  They suffer from technology singularity, when multiple emerging technologies (sometimes combine) are quite disruptive to their current models and must be addressed. In addition, they are focused on the possibilities that are either pragmatic or strategic.  Very seldom do they leverage both sets of values.  Keeping pace with the accelerating rate of emerging technologies is no small challenge to be sure.  A cohesive set of tactics that leverages a strategic and pragmatic approach further complicates this challenging issue. Those who take full advantage of today’s emerging technologies will bring about a transformation that is strategic, pragmatic and allow rapid organizational adaptation to the continuously changing world in which we operate.

Executive thought-leader Jason L. Ma said, “Passionately develop a positive and pragmatic psychology; a fine skill set; strategic thinking; and execution effectiveness.”

Rapidly-evolving emerging technologies have begun to change the future of work.  They have begun to eliminate repetitive tasks.  The essence of emerging work is moving away from focusing on task and activity completion.  Instead, future work will demand problem-solving, interaction with humans and machines, digital communication, listening, analysis, and creative design will all be in dominance when it comes to future work. The emerging job pool will demand creative decision making, as well as the ability to dynamically think, create and strategically think.  The true impact of emerging technologies requires organizations to go well beyond looking at their financial contribution to the bottom line and efficiency and look at their demand for organizations to create the workforce of the future that they will without question require?

The filmmaker Tiffany Shlain said via Pew Research, “The skills needed to succeed in today’s world and the future are curiosity, creativity, taking the initiative, multi-disciplinary thinking and empathy.”

There are many misconceptions about emerging technologies that are becoming a huge roadblock in the digitization movement.  One report stated that over 60% of digital transformation projects fail to achieve their objectives.  This is driving the approach to implementing emerging technologies and digital transformation to adopt an incremental development approach to aide in organizations change initiatives.  This approach reduces risks and decreases the human impact that accompany many of these initiatives.  It is essential that we all recognize that these changes impact each person differently and plan to address these impacts!

The English writer Max McKeown said, “Adaptability is about the powerful difference between adapting to cope and adapting to win.”

What is your organization's definition of adaptability - cope or win?

Nearly every executive I talked to believes that the accelerating pace of change is now a top challenge and major risk and these issues did not begin in 2019. Perhaps the biggest challenge is the impact of the change is showing to be far more reaching than many are prepared for. It took television 13 years to reach 50 million users.  It took the Internet 4 years to reach 50 million users.  It took Twitter 9 months!  It took Poke^’man Go only 19 days!  What is likely to be next and how fast with that happen? Possibly hours? Digital transformation is a much broader business strategy than just technology. Think about all the programs and projects.How prepared are you and your organization to deal with the continued acceleration of change that is driven by emerging technologies?

The time to act is now.  You can lead, . . . quickly follow, . . . or be aggressively pushed aside.

Albert Einstein said, “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change”