Emerging Technologies

Looking at a number of ongoing discussions on professional blogs, social responsibility is now a growing requirement for every organization and I would add professional. Interestingly enough, the project management profession is far from being exempt from this responsibility. An organization’s products, services, policies and programs are under increased scrutiny with respect to the implications these elements have on society. A subtle movement has been taking place for years that focuses on holding organizations accountable for fulfilling their civic duties and monitor their efforts to benefit society in general. It looks at an organization’s efforts to benefit the planet, people, prosperity and peace. All noble efforts to say the least. Some find this troubling because in many cases these undertakings run contrary to maximizing profits, which has been a primary focus for decades.

Emerging technologies bring with them some unique capabilities that some find troubling. There are some that are so troubled by one or more of these technologies, they take action. Artificial intelligence is one of the emerging technologies that has taken center stage when it comes to some being troubled.  An interesting example became well publicized when Google employees and other protesters/critics voiced their concerns when Eric Schmidt delivered his keynote address at Stanford University’s AI conference. Another example came late in 2018 when workers at Amazon’s warehouse in Europe spoke out saying ‘we are not robots’ in their protests. Once again, these show a derivative implication from the disruption of emerging technologies. Could the protests impact programs and projects – yes. As a profession and as the person on point for delivery of initiatives that might be disputed, it is a risk that must be assessed and managed.  On the other side of the coin, we may all be managing programs and projects that are clearly an organization’s undertaking within their social responsibility efforts.

THOUGHT:  Carrie Underwood, American singer, songwriter, and fashion designer said, “Successful people have a social responsibility to make the world a better place and not just take from it.”

Check out the results of my poll asking if those responding organization was socially responsible.
Link: https://www.projectmanagement.com/polls/587748/How-socially-responsible-is-your-organization-

I wanted to take a moment and thank those that have called me and emailed me about contributing during my role at Internet pioneer NETSCAPE to the #1 Influential Projects of the Past 50 Years – the World Wide Web.  Netscape was the creator of the very first web browser that all but eliminated technical skills from surfing the Internet.  We grew at 65,000 % in under 5 years.  At that point we merged with AOL and about a year later we merged with the multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate, Time Warner.  I was chief strategist at Netscape and worked with many organizations around the world in their efforts to understand and exploit the capabilities of the Internet.  It was by far the greatest job of my career and that is not to short my time at Deloitte and CSC. 

Again thank all of you for your thoughts.

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”

An interesting question came up in an executive briefing and thought it would be interesting to get your thoughts on it.  How dependent will your business be on technology in the next 3 to 5 years?

Please comment below and take the poll at the web address below.

https://www.projectmanagement.com/polls/540198/How-dependent-will-your-business-be-on-technology-in-the-next-3-to-5-years-