Digital technology advances - How it impacts companies and the way we live and work

The digitalization of business & society and technological advancement in recent years is breath taking and has major impact on companies and each of us individuals.

Here a list of key trends & abilities that leading companies are already implementing:

Physical and digital sensors supported by high capacity networks create large, ubiquitous data streams.

In analytics powerful modelling techniques search for patterns in the data – crunching vast amounts per se or based on hypothesis – bring self-awareness to seemingly isolated activities and enable a constant cycle of feedback, learning and improvement. It helps analyze trade-offs, offer decision alternatives, empower independent machine-to-machine communication,

Software translates physical objects into data files, which then can drive programmable tools such as robotics and 3 D printing.

In cognitive augmentation technologies learn by observation and off load routine knowledge work to automated assistants. Voice & gesture recognition, natural processing language will blur separation between human and robotic team mate.

In physical augmentation automatic robotics can sense, interact with their environments and insert themselves into human work flows; a hybrid human-robot work flow results.  

In collaborative augmentation software directly improves the ways that employees work and co-create new products through social networking, real time video conferencing, virtual task and project management, crowdsourcing, discussion forums, online file sharing,

In real time adaptation digital assistants provide decision support where humans lack information or understanding and thus achieving higher productivity and operational flexibility.

In concert with intelligent machines, humans will be able to project themselves through remotely controlled avatars.

Visualization allows operators to see systems. The same tools that enliven social networking sites are migrating to the factory floor and office environment enabling communication and real-time work flow adjustments.

Work processes are increasingly structured around quick design-build-test cycles allowing for fast, cost efficient, experiment-driven design, based on digital modeling and simulation.

All comes to together

All mentioned above technologies & methods are being already implemented. A comprehensive approach can help to systematically integrate those. For example, Ubiquitous data streams and Analytics & Modelling feed Rich Digital Data representations, which then empowers, cognitive, physical and collaborative augmentation and other techniques.

(For frameworks, please refer to my other blogs)

Impact on organizations changes in management and employee roles

Becoming a digital company requires change and transformation in operational model, skills, roles, culture, and management practices. Using latest technologies is not enough to become truly digital.

Key changes are already taking place on an organizational, management and employee level:

-          Impact on organizations

o   Collaboration across remote locations, time zones and work/life space changes our office set up and employment arrangements.

o   Decision making is pushed to the most customer facing people. In edge centric decision employees make decisions locally based on rich data streams, contextual knowledge and analytics support achieving higher customer satisfaction.

o   Socio-technical approaches and Lean Design teach the need for mutual adaptation of people and technology. It is no longer the quest to find the one best way, but to create smart systems that combine the right technical solutions in the right human context.

-          Impact on Employees and Workers

o   The work force of the future will require new key skills: ability & willingness to embrace data, leverage digital tools, team with machines and technology, experiment, adopt fail quickly/ fail cheaply, continuously learn and adapt, shift from rule-following to finding solutions and adding value and exercise judgement (the key remaining difference between humans and new machine intelligence, and effectively collaborate across ecosystem).

o   Interestingly, amassing knowledge is not as important anymore. Rather, an employee must be able to quickly find, assimilate new information and make best decision relying increasingly on intelligent devices.

o   Each worker and employee can and must become much more customer focused as new digital tools manage traditional operational tasks. Engineers are already directly engaging with customers to get feedback on their design & development resulting in much shorter cycles.

o   There is a massive trend to downsize the existing work force through technology. The remaining people will need to upscale their skills. Remaining shop sales people will move from placing sales to forecasting them.

-          Impact on management

o   Managers need to create an environment where people can experiment, learn, fail and succeed.

o   Must experiment with and adapt management style based on circumstances and results.

o   Necessary skills: Coach employees through experimentation, quick failure/ learning cycle; strong numeric, communication and interpersonal skills; initiate, listen, inspire and encourage;

o   Replace dominant upfront planning with approach of re-planning and adapting to new data, insight and fast changing market conditions.

Summary:

We are at the brink of a new area, which will change the way we manage companies, work as people and life as human beings. Increasingly less people will be required in a traditional way to produce products & services. Intelligent machines and software will take their place.  

Those who want to work need to upscale their skills and smartly position themselves in roles where they can extend beyond intelligent machine limitations.


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