Businesses are changing right before our eyes as the digital transformation takes place around the world.
Technology- and data-based transformation has arrived in full force. And if you think that your company or industry is immune, think again.
Robots Might Not Take Your Job—But They Will Probably Make It Boring
“For many support workers, robotic surgery is much less satisfying than open surgery. There’s a huge amount of solitary setup work to allow the robot to work, then there’s a big sprint to get the robot draped and docked to the patient. And then…everyone watches the procedure on TV. While the surgeon is operating via an immersive 3-D control console, the scrub folds his arms and waits. The nurse sits in the corner at a PC entering data, or sometimes checking email or Facebook. There’s not a lot to do, but you always have to be ready. Compared to open surgery, it’s clean, safe, and dull work.” www.wired.com/story/robots- Matt Beane ROBERT DEYRAIL/GETTY IMAGES
AI cancer detectors
“Researchers suggest artificial intelligence is now better and faster at detecting cancer than clinicians. Squamous carcinoma. An AI system distinguishes dangerous skin lesions from benign ones. More accurate than dermatologists. An AI system developed by a team from Germany, France and the US can diagnose skin cancer more accurately than dermatologists. In the study, the software was able to accurately detect cancer in 95% of images of cancerous moles and benign spots, whereas a team of 58 dermatologists was accurate 87% of the time.” theguardian.com/technology/ Steve Gschmeissner/Getty Images/Science P
5 Leadership Traits Required For Digital Transformation Success
“Businesses are changing right before our eyes as the digital transformation takes place around the world. And yet many dinosaur leaders, as I like to call them, are still in these businesses risking extinction if they can’t adapt to this ever-changing environment. It’s true that leaders must be willing to accept change in order to remain competitive. However, I believe it goes even further than that. Change-agile leaders must be forward-thinkers who believe that the future is important above all else. They must be able to change quickly and fluctuate as the business world changes – sometimes on the daily. 1. Change-Agile Leaders Have Clear Purpose 2. Forward-Thinking Opportunists 3.They Fix What’s Broken 4. Risk-Takers and Experimenters 5. They Strive for Partnership.” forbes.com Daniel Newman Shutterstock
The Right Way to Try to Predict the Future
“If, for instance, a company has a product development cycle of 18 months, then it should look at least 24 months to 36 months into the future. Why? Because we know that if it spots any emerging trend or opportunity that may emerge in less than 18 months, it probably won’t be able to respond (since its own product development cycle is 18 months long). With this in mind we can say that if you are doing trend spotting or future forecasting, you should look at a future from 1.5 to 2 times your product development cycle. There are caveats to this of course. In an industry with aggressive competition and shrinking product development and product life cycles, you may want to look further out to skip generations. In other, longer life cycle industries you may want to consider the life expectancy of your product.” inc.com/jeffrey-phillips Jeffrey Phillips Getty Images
Competing in the age of disruption
”Technology- and data-based transformation has arrived in full force. And if you think that your company or industry is immune, think again. Only twelve percent of the Fortune 500 companies who were in business in 1955 are still around. Before stepping down as CEO of Cisco Systems in June of 2015, John Chambers spoke at a conference and bluntly told attendees, “40 percent of businesses …unfortunately, will not exist in a meaningful way in 10 years. If I’m not making you sweat, I should be. In an era of constant disruption and economic volatility, more and more companies are being forced to confront the reality of diminishing profits, stagnating growth and organizational uncertainty. Regaining the agility to compete comes down to more than simply cutting costs. It’s about embracing new ways to drive cost-consciousness and transparency, identifying mispent (sic) resources in order to unlock new sources of revenue and growth, and creating an operating model that can deliver on business strategy while supporting a culture of continuous transformation.” partneredcontent.fortune.com/accenture/arc-of-agility/ Paid Content from Accenture Strategy . The Foundry. Meredith Corp.
Turo, The Airbnb Of Car Rental Companies, Offers Corvettes, Ferraris, Teslas
“Turo has a stable of owners who want to rent out their vehicles. Then there are people like me who want to try different makes of cars. Based in San Francisco, Turo makes its money on the margin between what the car owner charges it and what the rental customer is willing to pay, less its costs for insurance, overhead, etc. The company has been around since 2009, but under a different name, RelayRides. It was rebranded in 2015, and has grown exponentially. Turo is now in 49 states (not New York, for insurance reasons) and has about six million customers and 250,000 cars up for rent, according to a company spokeswoman. Satellite operations are now in 56 countries. Once I installed the Turo app on my iPhone and signed up for the service, I put in the dates that I wanted my Corvette, and where I wanted to pick it up.” forbes.com Jim Clash One of Turo’s Corvettes for rent.
How Cloud Can Boost Innovation
“Hosting applications on cloud platforms is becoming increasingly common, if not an enterprise standard. Among the potential benefits are rapid scalability and elasticity—enabling systems to grow with changing business demands while minimizing costs—as well as on-demand availability, providing agility and faster deployment. Such benefits can be particularly valuable for innovation, which may help explain why cloud computing is growing so quickly. Worldwide, public cloud services revenue is expected to reach $411 billion by 2020, up from $306 billion this year. Any time spent on capacity planning, procurement, or waiting for requested infrastructure means less time spent finding solutions to problems and delivering value to the business, says Ragu Gurumurthy, principal and chief innovation officer with Deloitte Consulting LLP. “Every business needs to be digital to survive,” Gurumurthy says. “The cloud offers increased agility and speed to market as well as lower costs and access to cloud-native technologies.” http://deloitte.wsj.com/cio/ Sponsored Content. CIO Insights and Analysis from Deloitte
MIT’s new tech turns power plants and data centers into water sources
“A typical 600-megawatt power plant used at half capacity to handle peak power demand uses as much water as 100,000 people would in a year. Cooling towers at power plants use massive amounts of water–in the U.S., around a trillion gallons a year–to cool down high-temperature steam. Right now, much of that water is just goes back into the atmosphere as plumes of vapor. Varanasi estimates at a 600-megawatt plant, the new technology could save 150 million gallons of water per year.For power plants, or other buildings with cooling towers, using the new equipment could save millions on water bills, in some cases. Industry could reuse the captured water directly. But because the cooling towers create distilled water, it could also be treated further and used for drinking water. “If you install a cooling tower, it’s like doing desalination,” says Varanasi, who estimates that the technology could offset the need for building 70% of new desalination plants in the next decade.” fastcompany.com · By Adele Peters
Who Knew Blockchain Could Make Government This Easy? This Italian CIO, That’s Who.
“With blockchain technology, South Tyrol can create a chain of certification that authenticates and maintains people’s data indefinitely — instead of having to verify every instance of someone’s data each time a citizen enters their personal information. Moreover, Gasslitter believes blockchain can act as an integration layer to help simplify the province administration’s IT landscape. He says, “We have more than 1,000 different software applications to store and use citizens’ data. Every agency is like a small kingdom and doesn’t share data. Our goal is to simplify processes and increase transparency. We’re creating a model of data sharing within South Tyrol that we hope can be scaled across Italy.” medium.com/sap-innovation-spotlight/ robin_meyerhoff
Steps:
6) Anticipate changing circumstances and economic cycles.
7) Persist and pivot to navigate external threats and opportunities.
17) Sketch out your trajectory in 5-year timeframes. Will we fall into another recession? Absolutely. Will you be ready this time with future-proofed strategies?
19) Anticipate the growing shifts in life and business. Nobody wants to swim upstream if the current is moving everything in the opposite direction. Clue your fans in.