Emerging Trends in Digital Transformation

                                                                                                          nanos gigantum humeris insidentes 

It means to discover the truth by building on previous discoveries. This phrase was loosely translated and still is loosely attributed to Sir Isaac Newton in the oft-quoted, ‘If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.' 

The original in Latin above belongs to the twelfth-century French Neo-Platonist, scholar and administrator, Bernard of Chartres, a man who, preferred the long-term outlook to the study of dialectical treatises as was the norm back then - and went on to become those giant shoulders for us today. In short, he went against the well-known Aristotle and lesser-known Bomaethius - Bernard’s contemporaries - for a simple reason that he saw it coming - he saw it, apart from food, cloth and shelter, a man is made for something more. 

In today’s terms, we stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter how we live, work, and relate to one another. Our discovery of the truth should begin with acknowledging the change unfolding itself. We need to respond to it. This response must be integrated and comprehensive, and involve all the stakeholders of a business entity - from the business owner to the consumer that uses the product or service the business offers. When we decide to act upon it, we need to look back and start connecting the dots to see where this dotted line can go. We, at Celeix Digital, thought hard and long and in this blog, we are going to show whether it’s the coming of winter or the rays of sunshine. 

The first transformation story started when the power of steam was used to mechanise production. The second was the power of electricity to create mass production. The third, which most of us were a part of, was the power and electronics and information technology to automate production. Today, the fourth transformation is happening. It is characterised by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres. Also, the first was longer than the second, the third was shorter than the second, and the fourth - the digital transformation is shorter than the third in its velocity, scope and impact. The speed of digital transformation has no precedent such that it is disrupting almost every industry in every country.

Step back, think about it for a moment... 

Today, we are looking at the possibilities of billions of people connected with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, and access to knowledge; with emerging technology breakthroughs in fields such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), autonomous vehicles, and even quantum computing. If you accidentally came upon this blog, the proof of Artificial Intelligence all around us. Impressive progress has been made in AI in recent years, driven by exponential increase in computing power and the availability of vast amounts of data. In layman's terms, digital fabrication technologies are interacting with the biological world daily. Engineers, designers, and architects are combining computational design, manufacturing, materials and engineering, and synthetic biology to pioneer a symbiosis between microorganisms, our bodies, the products we consume, and even the buildings we inhabit. 

Every transformation proved its potential to raise global income levels and improve the quality of life for populations around the world. This transformation, the digital one, is enabling the consumers to afford and access that digital world and as a result, the digital income. The technologies of digital transformation are making it possible for new products and services to increase the efficiency and pleasure of our personal lives. It is moving on to lead a supply-chain miracle with long-term gains in efficiency and productivity. Because of digital transformation, transportation and communication costs are dropping, logistics and global supply chains are becoming more effective, and the cost of trade is diminishing opening new markets and driving economic growth. Automation today is substituting for labour across entire economies. 

The raw meaning of it all is that talent, more than capital, will represent the critical component of digital transformation. And the largest beneficiaries of innovation tend to be the providers of intellectual and physical capital - the innovators, shareholders, and investors. The early adopters of digital transformation will luck it out in the end. The latecomers to the field of digital transformation will also have to fight with experiencing a pervasive sense of dissatisfaction and unfairness. For starters, this is going to be a winner-takes-all economy that offers only limited access to the ones who embrace digital transformation early on, head-on.  

How the mighty fall!

More than 30% of the global population now uses social media platforms to connect, learn, and share information. In an ideal world, these interactions should provide an opportunity for cross-cultural understanding and cohesion. In our world, we are creating and propagating unrealistic expectations as to what constitutes success for an individual or a group, as well as offering opportunities for extreme ideas and ideologies to spread. Because of these factors, the acceleration of innovation and the velocity of disruption are hard to comprehend or anticipate and these drivers constitute a source of constant surprise. Disruption is flowing from agile, innovative competitors who, thanks to access to global digital platforms for research, development, marketing, sales, and distribution, can oust well-established incumbents faster than ever by improving the quality, speed, or price at which value is delivered. 

Another key trend is the development of technology-enabled platforms that combine both demand and supply to disrupt existing industry structures, such as those we see within the ‘sharing’ or ‘on demand', economy. On the whole, there are four main effects that digital transformation has on business - on customer expectations, on product enhancement, on collaborative innovation, and organisational forms. A world of customer experiences, data-based services, and asset performance through analytics, meanwhile, requires new forms of collaboration, particularly given the speed at which innovation and disruption are taking place. And the emergence of global platforms and other new business models, finally, means that talent, culture, and organization forms will have to be rethought. 

Overall, the inexorable shift from simple digitisation (as in the blog you are reading now) to innovation based on combinations of technologies (the digital transformation that Celeix Digital can do for you) is forcing companies to re-examine the way they do business. The bottom line, however, is the same - business leaders and senior executives need to understand their changing environment, challenge the assumptions of their operating teams, and relentlessly and continuously innovate.