Artificial Intelligence is about to transform management from an art into a combination of art and science. Not because we'll be taking commands from science fiction’s robot overlords, but because specialized AI will allow us to apply data science to our human interactions at work in a way that earlier theorists like Peter Drucker could only imagine.
Within the next five years, it is expected that forward-thinking organizations will be using specialized AIs to build a complex and comprehensive corporate “knowledge graph.”
The rise of the knowledge graph will affect the practice of management in three key ways:
1. Meaningful organizational dashboards
Managers will be able to access sentiment analysis of internal communications in order to identify what issues are being most discussed, what risks are being considered, and where people are planning to deploy key resources (whether capital or attention). AI-powered dashboards will provide forward-looking, predictive intelligence that will deliver a whole new level of insight to managerial decision making.
2. Data-driven performance management
The knowledge graph will allow managers to identify the real contributors who are driving business results. You’ll be able to tell who made the key decision to enter a new market, and which people actually took care of the key action items to make it happen.
3. Increased talent mobility
The knowledge graph will make onboarding and orientation far more rapid and effective. On the very first day on the job, the worker will be able to tap the knowledge graph and understand not just her job description, but also the key network nodes she’ll need to work with.
For more information, please, read Reid Hoffman's article in Sloan Management Review (June 14, 2016).
A recent study of digital business found that maturing digital businesses are focused on integrating digital technologies, such as social, mobile, analytics and cloud, in the service of transforming how their businesses work. Less-mature digital businesses are focused on solving discrete business problems with individual digital technologies.
The ability to digitally reimagine the business is determined in large part by a clear digital strategy supported by leaders who foster a culture able to change and invent the new. While these insights are consistent with prior technology evolutions, what is unique to digital transformation is that risk taking is becoming a cultural norm as more digitally advanced companies seek new levels of competitive advantage. Equally important, employees across all age groups want to work for businesses that are deeply committed to digital progress. Company leaders need to bear this in mind in order to attract and retain the best talent.
The following are highlights of key findings:
Digital strategy drives digital maturity. Only 15% of respondents from companies at the early stages of what we call digital maturity — an organization where digital has transformed processes, talent engagement and business models — say that their organizations have a clear and coherent digital strategy. Among the digitally maturing, more than 80% do.
The power of a digital transformation strategy lies in its scope and objectives. Less digitally mature organizations tend to focus on individual technologies and have strategies that are decidedly operational in focus. Digital strategies in the most mature organizations are developed with an eye on transforming the business.
Maturing digital organizations build skills to realize the strategy. Digitally maturing organizations are four times more likely to provide employees with needed skills than are organizations at lower ends of the spectrum. Consistent with our overall findings, the ability to conceptualize how digital technologies can impact the business is a skill lacking in many companies at the early stages of digital maturity.
Employees want to work for digital leaders. Across age groups from 22 to 60, the vast majority of respondents want to work for digitally enabled organizations.
The research and analysis for this report was conducted under the direction of the authors as part of an MIT Sloan Management Review research initiative in collaboration with and sponsored by Deloitte University Press. You can download the report by clicking on the link below:
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/projects/strategy-drives-digital-transformation/
A diverse range of breakthrough technologies, including batteries capable of providing power to whole villages, “socially aware” artificial intelligence and new generation solar panels, could soon be playing a role in tackling the world’s most pressing challenges, according to a list published today by the World Economic Forum.
The top 10 technologies to make this year’s list are:
1. Nanosensors and the Internet of Nanothings – With the Internet of Things expected to comprise 30 billion connected devices by 2020, one of the most exciting areas of focus today is now on nanosensors capable of circulating in the human body or being embedded in construction materials. Once connected, this Internet of Nanothings could have a huge impact on the future of medicine, architecture, agriculture and drug manufacture.
2. Next Generation Batteries – One of the greatest obstacles holding renewable energy back is matching supply with demand, but recent advances in energy storage using sodium, aluminium and zinc based batteries makes mini-grids feasible that can provide clean, reliable, round the clock energy sources to entire villages.
3. The Blockchain – Much already has been made of the distributed electronic ledger behind the online currency Bitcoin. With related venture investment exceeding $1 billion in 2015 alone, the economic and social impact of blockchain’s potential to fundamentally change the way markets and governments work is only now emerging.
4. 2D Materials – Graphene may be the best-known, single-atom layer material, but it is by no means the only one. Plummeting production costs mean that such 2D materials are emerging in a wide range of applications, from air and water filters to new generations of wearables and batteries.
5. Autonomous Vehicles – Self-driving cars may not yet be fully legal in most geographies, but their potential for saving lives, cutting pollution, boosting economies, and improving quality of life for the elderly and other segments of society has led to rapid deployment of key technology forerunners along the way to full autonomy.
6. Organs-on-chips – Miniature models of human organs – the size of a memory stick – could revolutionize medical research and drug discovery by allowing researchers to see biological mechanism behaviours in ways never before possible.
7. Perovskite Solar Cells – This new photovoltaic material offers three improvements over the classic silicon solar cell: it is easier to make, can be used virtually anywhere and, to date, keeps on generating power more efficiently.
8. Open AI Ecosystem – Shared advances in natural language processing and social awareness algorithms, coupled with an unprecedented availability of data, will soon allow smart digital assistants help with a vast range of tasks, from keeping track of one’s finances and health to advising on wardrobe choice.
9. Optogenetics – The use of light and colour to record the activity of neurons in the brain has been around for some time, but recent developments mean light can now be delivered deeper into brain tissue, something that could lead to better treatment for people with brain disorders.
10. Systems Metabolic Engineering – Advances in synthetic biology, systems biology and evolutionary engineering mean that the list of building block chemicals that can be manufactured better and more cheaply by using plants rather than fossil fuels is growing every year.
For more information, download the Top 10 Emerging Technologies 2016 Report by clicking on the link below:
http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GAC16_Top10_Emerging_Technologies_2016_report.pdf
Companies that want to engage innovators, and enable these behaviors in others, should offer incentives to keep them engaged and set them up as role models for the rest of the organization. But who are the innovators within large corporations?
A recent case study lists their main characteristics:
They are equipped to address difficult dilemmas. More specifically, they employ a diverse combination of capabilities to solve problems that aren’t being addressed by organizations as part of their everyday operations. Innovators use soft skills, including the ability to imagine new solutions and enlist others in the process through passionate persuasion, and hard skills, becoming experts in the science underlying their ideas.
They don’t go it alone. Innovators reach across aisles to bring others on board. Innovators find partners, attracted financing, and cultivated a community of internal supporters.
They proceed on the cheap. Given their limited resources, innovators are able to reuse existing resources, repurposing an underutilized resources as opposed to creating new ones. They might proceed on their own time and with a very limited budget.
They are driven by passion. Propelled by their fascination with the idea itself and a deep desire to solve a particular problem, these individuals begin at the edges of organizations and persevere until they can create a path to the center.
For more details, please, read the recent Harvard Business Review article:
https://hbr.org/2016/06/what-it-takes-to-innovate-within-a-corporate-bureaucracy?utm_campaign=HBR&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social
Dr. Zoltán Csedő, Managing Partner of Innotica Group, has been re-elected to a further term of office as Member of the Board of Hungarian Association of British Alumni, at the Association's General Assembly, yesterday.
The Hungarian Association of British Alumni is a non-profit organization open to the former British graduates and all those experts who have been in contact with the UK in the field of education, science or arts.
The Association was founded in 1995, and is currently Central Europe’s largest British alumni organisation. Members come from a wide variety of professional background, from energy industry to banking, technology, marketing and law, public administration, design etc. with a membership of more than 250 people. Some of the members are former Chevening scholars.
The patron of the Hungarian Association of British Alumni is Her Majesty’s Ambassador to Hungary, Mr. Iain Lindsay.
Dr. Csedő serves as Member of the Board since 2008. He leads the international networking initiatives of the Association. Since more than three years, with his leadership, British alumni in Visegrad countries share their knowledge and leadership experience in order to increase the innovativeness and competitiveness of the Visegrad countries.
