Lessons from one era often cannot be applied to the next. In the 50s and 60s, IBM’s singular focus and investment proved decisive.
The only way to defend ourselves is to build codes that even the most powerful machines conceivable cannot crack.
When can an era’s key success factors be applied to the next? Why do so many digital transformation initiatives fail? And what about block chain? Is your industry about to fall prey to its disruption?
Disruption. Chaos. Innovation. Cancer. Graphene. Quantum. A quick update.
Disruption
Why So Many High-Profile Digital Transformations Fail.
“With innovative information technology, however, executives sometimes lose their rational decision approaches. Certainly it’s true that in times of radical technological change there’s a lot of figuring out to do. Executives have to understand what new technologies can do, and understand their impact on markets, products/services, and distribution channels. These decisions are inevitably influenced by hype from vendors and the media, expensive consultants offering “thought leadership” insights, many high profile experiments, and a few exciting success stories that keep people wanting more. A charismatic CIO or Chief Digital Officer may make it even harder to be level-headed in those heady times.” Thomas H. Davenport George Westerman Harvard Business Review
9 Industries That Will Soon Be Disrupted By Blockchain.
“As new technologies are developed, affected industries are forced to adapt or be replaced. The newest technology that is quickly becoming the next major disruption is blockchain technology. Blockchain is a digital ledger system used to securely record transactions. It is poised to impact the way business is done across the globe. Here are nine prominent industries that are slated to be overhauled by blockchain technology in the near future. 1. The Banking Industry 2. The Real Estate Industry 3. The Healthcare Industry 4. The Legal Industry 5. The Cryptocurrency Exchange Industry 6. Politics 7. The Startup Industry 8. The Video Industry 9. The Education Industry.” John White CREDIT: Getty Images
‘Asking Really Big and Bold Questions.’ Experts Debate the Power of Design to Disrupt.
Moderator: Clay Chandler, Brainstorm Design
Photograph by Stefen Chow/Fortune
“Big data and rapid technological development pose a myriad of challenges to giant firms to start-ups alike—and design can help surmount them through its ability to disrupt. That was the conclusion of the Disruption x Design panel concluded on Wednesday at Brainstorm Design, the Fortune, Time and Wallpaper* conference held in Singapore. “For me, start-ups equal disruption,” says Charles Hayes, a partner and executive managing director of innovation consultancy firm IDEO in Asia, who has been based in Shanghai for the last nine years. “This is a world where you have young leaders who don’t necessarily have a deep expertise in a field, but are asking really big and bold questions,” says Hayes.” CASEY QUACKENBUSH Stefen Chow/Fortune
Chaos
Chaos Theory, The Butterfly Effect, And The Computer Glitch That Started It All.
“Yet if you do have enough wind velocity information, combined with an array of readings from barometers, thermometers, and such, you might ask a weatherman, particularly a trained meteorologist with access to state-of-the-art computers and software, to make a sound forecast. We often plan our outdoor activities these days with the help of newscasts, websites, apps, and voice assistants that provide reasonable forecasts hours or days in advance. It is rather amazing that meteorology can perform such a feat. Lorenz not only discovered chaos, he also identified its key mechanism. When he graphed his data along several axes, he noted the strange property that iterating (plotting the trajectory over time) any two nearby points resulted in their separation. The gap would grow greater and greater with each iteration until the mathematical “offspring” of the two points would be so widely separated that they be in completely different regions of the cloud of information.” Paul Halpern, Forbes. Hellisp of Wikimedia Commons / Created by XaosBits using Mathematica and POV-Ray
Innovation
Three Steps To Developing An Innovative Instinct — And The Questions To Ask Yourself To Get There.
“My core innovation principles are very simple no matter if I share it with my students, my employees, or my kids,” added Dror. “Have more dreams than achievements. Chase your dreams as fast as you can and fail fast if needed, but always, always ask ‘WHY?’.” Take a step back from what you do, and reflect on how you do it. Analyze the tasks and the roles you perform. Ask yourself a few questions.” Jay Sullivan , Forbes, Shutterstock
4 Things You Need To Do To Win In The New Era Of Innovation.
“Lessons from one era often cannot be applied to the next. In the 50s and 60s, IBM’s singular focus and investment proved decisive. A generation later, agility and speed to market became core competitive attributes. Today, were entering a new era of innovation in which the basis of competition will shift from disruptive to fundamental technologies. This will become even more true in the new era of innovation, when we struggle to leverage technologies that we do not fully understand. Firms that want to be on the cutting edge are actively participating in a wide range of collaboration platforms, from manufacturing hubs to open source communities. So in this new era, we will find it even more essential to focus on networks rather than nodes. The best way to become a dominant player will be to become an essential partner.” Greg Satell inc.com Getty Images
Cancer
Army of Nanorobots Successfully Strangles Cancerous Tumors.
“The precision of the nanorobots, which is what makes their potential for safe cancer treatment so great, is due to their meticulously crafted structure. The drug-holding “package” is made up of DNA sheets, measuring 60 by 90 nanometers, that wrap around thrombin molecules. On the outside of the folded sheets are molecules that zero in on nucleolin, a protein that’s present in the lining of blood vessels associated with growing tumors. These nanorobots show great promise, but they aren’t ready for humans yet. To get there, the researchers are seeking out clinical partners to further develop this treatment pathway. Still, the fact that it seems to work in mice and pigs makes it likely that nanorobots like these will be available as cancer treatments within our lifetimes.” Peter Hess inverse.com
Graphene
Graphene film makes dirty water drinkable in a single step.
“Now, researchers have developed a process that can purify water, no matter how dirty it is, in a single step. Scientists from Australian research organization CSIRO have created a filtration technique using a graphene film with microscopic nano-channels that lets water pass through, but stops pollutants. The process, called “Graphair”, is so effective that water samples from Sydney Harbor were safe to drink after being treated. And while the film hails from graphene, Graphair is comparatively cheaper, faster and more environmentally-friendly to make, as its primary component is renewable soybean oil, which also helps maximise the efficiency of the purifying technique’s filter counterpart”. Rachel England, Engadget CSIRO
It turns out graphene has been deceiving us this whole time.
“In a paper published to the journal Carbon, the team eventually discovered that trace quantities of manganese contamination from the original graphite or reactants actually hide within the graphene lattice. When the graphene enters the right conditions – such as in a fuel cell – those minute metal bits activate the ORR. The reason that analysis was unable to discover this until now is because the contrast between carbon and manganese atoms is so slight that the tools used to analyse them weren’t sensitive enough.” Colm Gorey Image: Angel Soler Gollonet/Shutterstock
Quantum
Intel just put a quantum computer on a silicon chip.
“The researchers used a special type of qubit (the quantum version of a classical computer’s bits) called spin qubits to run two different quantum algorithms on a silicon chip. Other quantum systems, like Intel’s breakthrough 49-qubit computer, rely on superconductive materials and near perfect-zero temperatures. A spin qubit doesn’t require either, it’s an electron that’s been agitated by microwave pulses. While other quantum systems are closer to being useful, the idea here wasn’t to create a better computer but one that would work with existing infrastructure. Intel, it’s worth mentioning, is the world leader in silicon chip sales.” TNW · Tristan Greene
Quantum Theory Bends The Limits of Physics, Showing Two-Way Signaling May Be Possible.
“Consider the simplest scenario, where two players, Alice and Bob, want to exchange a simple bit of information, i.e. either 0 or 1,” Dakić explained to Lisa Zyga at Phys.org. “They encode their respective bits or messages at the same time, directly into the superposition state of a quantum particle. Once the information is encoded, the partners send their parts of quantum particle towards each other.” What’s then needed is some kind of smart device and mechanism between our two players, which can route the parts of the particle depending on its contents. “For example, if the particle ends up with Alice, she would know that Bob’s bit was just opposite from her bit, and vice versa,” says Dakić. Alice and Bob have therefore sent and received a message in the same time as it would take a message to pass from one to the other under a classical physics system.” DAVID NIELD, ScienceAlert (ktsimage/iStock)
Unbreakable: The race to protect our secrets from quantum hacks.
“The danger lies in the fact that, before long, someone will build a quantum computer that can crack our most powerful encryption methods – the mathematical tricks that turn data into unreadable secret code to hide it from prying eyes. The only way to defend ourselves is to build codes that even the most powerful machines conceivable cannot crack. Which is exactly why some of the world’s smartest mathematicians have been attempting to invent a whole new class of encryption algorithms. Having submitted their best designs to the post-quantum cryptography group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Maryland, scores of teams are now engaged in a global race to identify the most secure by trying everything they can think of to crack each other’s codes. If we find an algorithm that survives every attack, it will emerge as the 21st-century’s gold-standard digital padlock.” Michael Brooks. newscientist.com Raymond Biesinger
Google thinks it’s close to “quantum supremacy.”
“It’s not the number of qubits; it’s what you do with them that counts. Here’s what that really means. – Though there are some potentially promising applications, such as precisely designing molecules (see “10 Breakthrough Technologies 2018”), classical machines are still going to be better, faster, and far more economical at solving most problems. “Using a quantum computer would be like chartering a jumbo jet to cross the road,” says Oxford University’s Benjamin. He suggests that rather than “quantum supremacy,” we should be talking about attaining “quantum inimitability”—in other words, specific tasks that only quantum computers can do. Other researchers have suggested names like “quantum advantage” or “quantum ascendancy.” Martin Giles and Will Knight MIT Technology Review GOOGLE
Steps:
(19) Anticipate the growing shifts in life and business. Nobody wants to swim upstream if the current is moving everything in the opposite direction.