BE A FORCE OF CHANGE OR BE CHANGED BY THE FORCE!

Are you part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution?

Atique Naqvi | Boston

Human and digital integration will only increase in the future. 

The digital revolution is happening for real, we are all part of it in one way or the other. Business leaders are scratching their heads, scientists are warning about it and thinkers such as Professor Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of World Economic Forum, have written a book on this. Professor Schwab’s book is aptly titled as “The Fourth Industrial Revolution”.

We are all living this revolution, but we must ask a question to ourselves. Where do we fit in this digital revolution?

In words of former NASA astronaut Jim Lovell, who is renowned for being the commander of the fateful Apollo 13 Mission: “There are people who make things happen, there are people who watch things happen, and there are people who wonder what happened. To be successful, you need to be a person who makes things happen.”

Businesses around the world are at different stages in the wide canvas laid out by the digital revolution. Per Dell Technologies’ Digital Transformation Index, only 5% of the businesses are digital leaders, 14% are digital adopters, 34% are digital evaluators, 32% are digital followers, and 15% are digital laggards.

The Index, a result of a survey of 4,000 business leaders in 16 countries, says that 45% of the business leaders fear that their business will become obsolete in the next 3-5 years, and 48% are unaware of what their industry will look like in 3 years.

It’s not easy to gauge the huge change as we are not just undergoing a digital transformation but it’s rather a digital mutation. Professor Schwab explains: “When compared with previous industrial revolutions, the Fourth is evolving at an exponential rather than a linear pace. Moreover, it is disrupting almost every industry in every country. And the breadth and depth of these changes herald the transformation of entire systems of production, management, and governance.

“The possibilities of billions of people connected by mobile devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, and access to knowledge, are unlimited. And these possibilities will be multiplied by emerging technology breakthroughs in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and quantum computing,” writes the founder of the World Economic Forum.

While Professor Schwab talks about current realities and opportunities, Dell Inc., in a recent research report shared with the author, talks about what this digital wave will do to businesses in the decade or so.

The report last week by Dell Technologies, The Next Era of Human-Machine Partnerships, says: “In 2030 every organization will be a technology organization and as such businesses need to start thinking today on how to future-proof their infrastructure and workforce.”

The report forecasts that emerging technologies, supported by massive advancements in software, big data and processing power, will reshape lives. Society will enter a new phase in its relationship with machines, which will be characterized by:

• Even greater efficiency and possibility than ever before, helping humans transcend our limitations
• Humans as “digital conductors” in which technology will work as an extension of people, helping to better direct and manage daily activities
• Work chasing people, in which by using advanced data-driven matchmaking technologies, organizations can find and employ talent from across the world
• People learning “in the moment,” as the pace of change will be so rapid that new industries will be created and new skills will be required to survive

Dell Technologies says it commissioned the study to help companies navigate an uncertain world and prepare for the future. Today, digital disruption is ruthlessly redrawing industries. For the first time in modern history, global leaders can’t predict how their industry will fare further down the line. According to Dell’s Digital Transformation Index, 52 percent of senior decision makers across 16 countries have experienced significant disruption to their industries as a result of digital technologies. And nearly one in two businesses believes there’s a possibility their company will become obsolete within the next three to five years.

Digital currency such as Bitcoin will be part of the future of business

“Never before has the industry experienced so much disruption. The pace of change is very real, and we’re now in a do-or-die landscape. To leap ahead in the era of human-machine partnerships, every business will need to be a digital business, with software at its core,” said Jeremy Burton, chief marketing officer, Dell. “But organizations will need to move fast and build capacity in their machines, ready their infrastructure and enable their workforce in order to power this change.”

“We’ve been exposed to two extreme perspectives about machines and the future: the anxiety-driven issue of technological unemployment or the over optimistic view that technology will cure all our social and environmental ills,” said Rachel Maguire, research director, Institute for the Future, which led the research for Dell. “Instead we need to focus on what the new relationship between technology and people could look like and how we can prepare accordingly. If we engage in the hard work of empowering human-machine partnerships to succeed, their impact on society will enrich us all.”

Other report highlights include:

• In 2030 humans’ reliance on technology will evolve into a true partnership with humans, bringing skills such as creativity, passion and an entrepreneurial mindset. This will align with the machines’ ability to bring speed, automation and efficiencies, and the resulting productivity will allow for new opportunities within industries and roles.
• By 2030 personalized, integrated artificial intelligence (AI) assistants will go well beyond what assistants can do now. They’ll take care of us in predictive and automated ways.
• Technology won’t necessarily replace workers, but the process of finding work will change. Work will cease to be a place but a series of tasks. Machine learning technologies will make individuals’ skills and competencies searchable, and organizations will pursue the best talent for discrete tasks.
• An estimated 85 percent of jobs in 2030 haven’t been invented yet. The pace of change will be so rapid that people will learn “in-the-moment” using new technologies such as augmented reality and virtual reality. The ability to gain new knowledge will be more valuable than the knowledge itself.

Whether we like it or not, we are part of this change. However, the biggest challenge for entrepreneurs and business leaders is figuring out their roles in this change. Are they at the driving seat of this digital revolution, or are they watching it, or are they wondering what happened today in the digital world? Where you'd put yourself? 

Click here to see infographics by Dell Technologies on this subject.