Paul Katigbak, President, Dell Technologies Commercial Sales Canada
By: Paul Katigbak, President, Dell Technologies Commercial Sales Canada
At Dell Technologies our mission is to drive human progress, and today, as powerful emerging technologies are transforming the world, that mission has never been more timely.
Major innovations are already in motion and changing how we live and work. To better understand the impact emerging technologies will have on the world, we’ve been partnering with the Institute for the Future (IFTF) to examine what the world will look like in 2030.
The Dawn of a Friction-Free Economy
In exploring the impact of emerging technologies on the economy by 2030, we see that our increasingly interwoven partnership with machines has opened up new opportunities for organizations around the globe. Today, technologies are transforming many of the fundamentals of commerce and productions, as well as dismantling barriers to economic participation. As we look to the next 5 years, 82% of business leaders expect to see integrated teams of humans and machines within their organization. These partnerships will transform our economy, remove age-old frictions and usher in new ways of doing business and creating value. We believe that three key shifts will drive progress across the world, impacting the future of the economy, including:
- Autonomous Commerce. The first shift we anticipate is machines evolving into consumers. They’ll use a mix of sensors, software and AI to assess the needs of the people they serve.
Advances in smart distributed ledgers and AI will enable machines to fulfill human tasks. Intelligent objects will shop and compare products based on quality and cost, as humans do. This concept isn’t as foreign as you may imagine. A global study of 4600 business leaders showed that 70% would welcome people partnering with machines/robots to surpass our human limitations.
- Anticipatory Production. Secondly, long production cycles will be transformed by micro-manufacturing, over-the-air software updates and the work of enthusiast communities and innovators.
Technology will enable us to turn defects into improvements in real time based on customer feedback and predictivity. We’ll also likely witness the rise of ‘meta-making’ – people with limited resources manufacturing and marketing their outputs to a global audience. More than three-quarters of business leaders will use emerging tech to predict customer demand, allowing for more intelligent production.
- Leapfrog Economies. The final shift we expect to see is technical advances enabling smaller economies around the world unburdened by old, outdated systems, allowing them to leap forward.
Emerging technology will help less developed economies overtake others with aging infrastructures by offering new ways to create value and go to market. Our research showed that 54% in emerging market would transact more via blockchain – compared to 41% in developed markets.
What we found was a future brimming with opportunities, and a new era of human-machine partnerships emerging.
Forecasting the Future of Work
Beyond a friction-free economy, in the coming decade IFTF sees human-machine partnerships radically shifting the face of work as technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Extended Reality (XR), IOT, Edge and multimodal interfaces transform the workplace. These technologies are set to revolutionize decision-making and collaboration throughout organizations, creating more equitable workplaces.
IFTF is, again, forecasting three shifts that could help shape a more inclusive, empowering and rewarding work environment:
- Inclusive Talent. Human and machine partnerships will create more equitable workplaces by evaluating candidates based on their capabilities, rather than gender, age or class.
- Empowered Workers. Employees will collaborate in entirely different, immersive ways using technologies such as XR, empowering workers more than ever before.
- AI Fluency. AI will complement and augment human capabilities rather than replace them, and a deep understanding of AI and human and machine systems will unlock human potential and set workers apart.
Many organizations are already aware of the transformative implications of emerging technology. In a survey of 4600 business leaders, Dell’s research found that 86% plan to use emerging technologies to improve their workforce productivity, and 70% welcome people partnering with machines to surpass human limitations.
Transforming the data-driven workforce
Changes to work and learning in 2030 will be enabled by the maturation and proliferation of today’s emerging technologies and powered by data. Organizations that modernize infrastructure, inspire employees and deploy software will have an advantage over organizations that struggle with legacy systems, data deluge and workforces that are resistant to change.
There will, of course, be challenges and complexities to realizing the potential of human-machine partnerships in the workplace. IFTF cited algorithmic bias, digital skills gap and workers’ rights and protections, to name a few. However, these challenges are solvable, and are already being addressed by some of today’s most digitally forward organizations.
Click here to read the full report and consider what you can do now to prepare yourself and your organization for the future of work. Join us on our journey to help drive human progress and realize 2030!
