On February 24, 2022 14 Digital Leaders out of the Benelux met to exchange ideas on how to deal with fast changing technology in an online meeting organized by Pointury initiated by a presentation of Hylke Sprangers, lecturer at the Erasmus University Rotterdam.
How do we deal with uncertainty such as the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, fast developing new technologies such as AI, enhanced reality, blockchain, quantum computing, etc. bringing us into the “age of intelligence transformation”. Digital acceleration and value creation are now happening more and more across industries. The boundaries between industries are indeed disappearing. We are moving from raw materials, to products, to services and finally to experiences. Things are moving faster, with more uncertainly, in a complex world, with more ambiguity.
Not all organisations are responding well to the multiple layers of change, probably because there is too much uncertainty and changes are happening too fast.
Hylke categorizes 4 categories of uncertainty in accordance to the Donald Rumsfeld model
Black Swans
Some organization, in particular financial institutions, do a risk analysis or stress tests yet very often these exercises did not prepare for those unexpected events that actually occurred. More important seems to be the agility and speed of reaction of the organization.
Known unknowns
Examples are new technologies in IT (quantum, AI, blockchain, robotics, ransomware,…) yet also new technologies in manufacturing, nano & bio-technology and other areas. In this case it is recommended to stay informed about the trends, to experiment with selected new technologies and to subsequently adapt innovation initiatives based on the learnings from these first experiments. Hylke recommends to categorize the different trends so as to keep an overview the trends.
Unfortunately, most CIO’s do not have the time to keep an eye on all trends. It may also depend on the culture and strategy of an organization. It also requires a certain discipline to spend some time on new technology trends as you may be absorbed completely in daily operational work. Prioritization is required as resources (money, IT people, time of business people,…) are always constrained.
Peter Drucker told us “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. As an analogy Hylke says “Strategy eats innovation for breakfast”. Many companies are used to combine the traditional top-down strategy with bottom-up agile innovation cycles. The participants in the meeting felt indeed that while they embrace an agile way of working, they still need to have the long term vision to guide the short term cycles of innovation.
Innovation can be incremental, trying to extend the current business, or aim at growing new business or bet on a game changer with a breakthrough technology.
The participants mentioned as the biggest game changers 5G, AI driven advice, ecosystems, cloud, new service models, lean, RPA, data driven user journeys, semantic automation, process modeling and orchestration and also the fast developments and experiments in the gaming world.
Last but not least adoption of innovation will be a critical success factor. Innovation will be measured by its adoption.
If you are interested to learn more from Hylke Sprangers, check the “the New-CIO-CTO-CDO” program at the Erasmus University Rottterdam. The New CIO-CTO-CDO is a boardroom level program for executives in digital & technology. Topics at the sweet spot of leadership, economics, technology and governance that will be covered include 'defining and executing the digital and tech strategy', 'leading innovation and transformation', 'the relationship with the CEO and regulators' and Harvard Business Cases.