The Tech Age – Living in Unique Times
Success in business is hard won and well earned. It depends on multiple factors, large and small as well as some good old fashioned luck. You need the right product/service at the right time with the right people making the right decisions. You need effective leadership and a strategy that evolves and works.
And a huge part of that strategy today is online presence and activity. Business and tech are irreversibly bonded to a degree we have never seen before.
We are living in an age of untethered rapid change and progress, and this is certainly the case where business and tech converge. Never before has technology moved so quickly, continually morphing, evolving and influencing in ways not even considered only a few years ago.
And on a business level we are currently living in a brief and unique era, one that hasn’t happened before and won’t be repeated. We have a fascinating intersection
of three generations at the highest end of the Executive chain creating a single, never-to-be-repeated moment in time.
Where business decisions are made, we have three different eras at work, each one has been differently informed, trained and experienced, spanning a time way before what we now regard as ‘tech’, to the full-blown technological revolution that is reshaping the world as we know it.
Those in their later 50’s, 60’s and older were forging career paths long before ‘tech’ was even part of the vernacular, before PCs, long before mobile devices and “digital” was reserved for a new-fangled kind of watch.
Business leaders in their mid to late 40’s have clear memories of days before home computers, the internet and ‘gaming’. And by the time they embarked on their working lives, websites were new, rare and seen as something of an indulgence, emails languished way behind landline phone calls were the standard point of contact and conventional postage outstripped electronic mail exchange. Car phones were very much an executive tool, and personal mobiles were comically large and rare.
This age group was the first to be old enough to know ‘life before…’ but young enough to be first in line as the tech tide washed in and altered things workplace function forever. What simply didn’t exist at the beginning of the 90’s was commonplace by the middle of the decade and unrecognisably advanced by the time the world welcomed the new millennium. Businesses now grew up up around new technology, they existed because of it and were dependent on it, and those working with it were riding the highest wave of progress.
The newest tier of ambitious, successful Chief Executives are in their 30’s and have grown up knowing nothing other than PCs, mobiles, apps, wifi and an ever increasing arsenal of technological business aids to help companies operate more efficiently, effectively and accountably. Their lives revolve around them, their business environment and working methods are inextricably entwined; they always were and
they always will be.
Each era has plenty to learn from the other. The experience and wisdom of the oldest working generation remains invaluable, whilst the embracing and understanding of the very latest advances and disruptors, the willingness to set aside perceived norms and conventions of the youngest leaders drives, strives and propels us forwards.
The Law of Accelerating Returns (Kurzweil – ‘The Age of Spiritual Machines’) is starkly born out in the tech world. At the current rate of technological evolution, we will see 32 times more tech development over the next five years (1). In 10 years time we will have seen that leap to a remarkable 1000% (2). Much of the reason is that tech and business aids that were the preserve of major corporations, governments and major educational bodies have filtered down into smaller organisations thereby becoming mainstream. And that trickle-down effect will continue.
The tech landscape in business has changed beyond recognition in recent years and it is estimated that by 2025, tech will have grown/evolved/improved 1,000,000 times over since the year 2000 (3). A growth curve never before seen by humanity.
The fact is we are in the grip of an evolutionary process that operates much like biological evolution. Based on what is occurring now, the next moves and shifts are towards something better, more efficient, increasingly powerful, fitter for purpose…
“The more capable methods resulting from one stage of evolutionary progress are used to create the next stage”. (Ray Kurzweil - ‘The Singularity is Near’).
The obvious difference with biological evolution is speed. Instead of gradual change over vast timescales we are now hurtling at the speed of ambition and thought. Every decade the rate of this evolutionary progress doubles. Applying basic maths
shows us that, at today’s rate, over the course of this century, we will actually achieve 20,000 years of growth.(4)
To stand still is to go backwards. To stand still for too long is to go backwards at an accelerating pace into the distance, becoming lost, irrelevant, obsolete.
Technology in business is a colossal force. This evolutionary juggernaut can be the most direct, smooth and obstacle free course towards business success. The future is upon us in wave after wave and failure to identify and ride these waves can only lead to floundering and drowning.
Leaders who are not prepared to Adopt, Adapt, Improve and Disrupt through the use of all the tools available to them will go the way of everything else that has failed to keep moving and keep up.
“An organisation’s ability to learn and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage”. Jack Welch
References:
1, 2 & 3 – The Emerging Future
4 – Ray Kurzweil: ‘The Singularity is Near’
* A generalisation based on Moore’s Law that computer processing speeds are doubling every 18 months. The average band releases an album every 12-18 months.
