Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

There are many tools and techniques for exploring and investigating the impact of technology, and evaluations are often performed as part of the risk assessment process, such as those recommended by the standards bodies. Here we outline some of the technology assessment methods currently in use.

In this article, Paul Clermont suggests that our mostly positive history of adjusting to technological innovations may not be a trustworthy guide to the future when we consider the extraordinary scope and pace of IT innovation. To assume that any backlash against IT is no more than the latest futile manifestation of Luddism may be too optimistic.

Society lacks the time to detect and purge the worst of the bad ideas before widespread adoption. This responsibility is left to technologists.

This article explores some of the historical roots behind technology backlashes related to automation introduction and its impacts on employment. It then looks at the generator of technology unemployment backlashes, namely the automation job destruction/creation cycle. Finally, it examines whether today's fears of technological unemployment are well founded or, as in the past, overblown.

To the optimists, pushing back against technology is about as effective as King Canute trying to stop the tides. However, backlashes do sometimes influence the future direction of a technology. The disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl definitely heightened the perceived risks of nuclear power and checked nuclear power plant construction around the world. Similarly, the perceived risks of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have significantly slowed their acceptance globally Nor is automation immune. While Terminator-type robots may not be just around the corner, weaponized drones with autonomous "fire" decision capability certainly are, and thus the UN has begun discussions on whether to ban the development and use of "killer robots."Scholars are also debating what controls may need to be put into place before self-driving cars or robots become ubiquitous.

When it comes to analyzing the unintended consequences of technology acceleration, it resembles a scenario often quoted in management guru Eliyahu M. Goldratt's book Theory of Constraints. According to the scenario in an industrial context, it wouldn't help if the production unit alone runs efficiently and perfectly unless the sales and marketing department works at the same pace and clears the inventory. The idea here is not to pursue local unit-level optimization for productivity improvements and elimination of bottlenecks; that would only lead to excess inventory and increased costs. Instead, the company must consider and optimize the whole system, its parts, and their relationships/dependencies in order to improve the overall performance of the system.

At a conference in Monaco, James Dow, VP Global Engineering at Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) stated that the banking sector now regards technology companies as serious competitors in the finance industry. Dow further pointed out that several US technology companies were each in a position to purchase the entire shareholding of multiple major banks in all-cash transactions.