Future Tech , livre ebook

Future Tech
Future Tech
How to Capture Value from
Disruptive Industry Trends
Trond Arne Undheim
Contents Introduction: What drives change What the industrial revolution taught us about today’s changes Unbundling the second industrial revolution of the 20th century The 21st century’s challenges: what future tech is all about Micro-view: how individuals respond to disruption Key takeaways and reflections 01 The forces of disruption How to pick which technologies to focus on? Five spheres of future-oriented activity Disruption of demand The social biosphere of innovation Key takeaways and reflections 02 How science and technology enable innovation Tech discovery approach #1: grasp how technology platform businesses work Tech discovery approach #2: understand how taxonomies work Tech discovery approach #3: visualize the relationship between technologies Tech discovery approach #4: track specific technologies Conclusion Key takeaways and reflections 03 Policy and regulation moderate market conditions The five roles of government 1 Government as questioner 2 Government as facilitator and limiter 3 Government as risk taker (scaling) 4 Government as tech innovator 5 Government as protector Government’s role in regulating technology Government standardization of technology The key policy areas to watch out for Conclusion Key takeaways and reflections 04 How business forces upend technologies, markets,
and society How industry taxonomies illustrate technology change Spotting emerging business models—a challenging task Platform tech—last decade’s dominant approach How startups upend markets Strategy frameworks—business models put into a larger context Conclusion Key takeaways and reflections 05 Social dynamics drive adoption How a futurist thinks of social dynamics How individual consumer habits influence technology’s impact The impact of social groups on technology The impact of social dynamics on technology: case studies Conclusion Key takeaways and reflections 06 Five technologies that matter and why The future of artificial intelligence The future of blockchain The future of robotics The future of synthetic biology The future of 3D printing Conclusion Key takeaways and reflections 07 How to become a postmodern polymath T-shaped and beyond Beginning a journey of combining insights from several domains The greater aim—adding value to society Conclusion 08 Personalize your insight ecosystem What is insight? Readily available insight tools Your personal insight and growth toolkit The way to track insight for growth Tech discovery approach #1: personalize your approach Tech discovery approach #2: develop your insights beyond 101 Tech discovery approach #3: understand the scientist as well as the science Conclusion Key insights and takeaways 09 Merge with technology to achieve a cognitive leap Integrating with machines Setting boundaries for machines Stewardship and ethics of machines How brain–computer interfaces are transforming everything Why we develop new machines Tweaking machines How to access advanced technology? Conclusion Key insights and takeaways Conclusion Be aware of macro-trends Act on micro-trends Understand the stakes of missing the picture on tech Appendix Types of platform technologies Nasa’s Readiness Levels Productivity tools 10 thought leadership events that matter Resources for artificial intelligence Resources for blockchain Resources for robotics Resources for synthetic biology Resources for 3D printing Polymaths throughout history My personal insight ecosystem Bibliography Index
LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 The socio-biological forces of industrial disruption Figure 1.2 Subforces of disruption Figure 1.3 Visualizing disruptive technologies Figure 1.4 Industry sector disruption grid Figure 2.1 Evolving platform technologies Figure 2.2 Deep dive into tech disruption forces Figure 2.3 Technology tag cloud Figure 2.4 Top 15 tech taxonomy Figure 2.5 Technology disruption subforces overview Figure 2.6 The field of computer science Figure 2.7 Disruptive tech forces exercise Figure 2.8 Disruptive emphasis exercise Figure 2.9 Visualizing technologies exercise Figure 2.10 Technology overview exercise Figure 3.1 The five roles of government Figure 3.2 The governmental forces of policy and regulation Figure 3.3 Government forces exercise Figure 3.4 Government forces emphasis exercise Figure 4.1 Business subforces Figure 4.2 Industry timeline Figure 4.3 Tech-enabled business models Figure 4.4 N+1 combinations of business models Figure 4.5 Strategy frameworks Figure 4.6 Emerging business models exercise Figure 5.1 The subforces of social dynamics Figure 5.2 Segway’s product success vectors Figure 6.1 AI as a force of disruption Figure 6.2 Blockchain as a force of disruption Figure 6.3 Robotics as a force of disruption Figure 6.4 Synthetic biology as a force of disruption Figure 6.5 3D printing as a force of disruption Figure 7.1 Polymath disruptive model Figure 8.1 Personalized disruption matrix Figure 8.2 Disruption insight matrix exercise Figure A.1 AI taxonomy
LIST OF TABLES Table A.1 Big data management tools Table A.2 Productivity tools Table A.3 Top tech, innovation and startup events
Introduction: What drives change
In the introduction, I chart the concept of change through a historical lens, tracing it back to the major thinkers on the industrial revolution, Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. I then turn to technological waves in a historical context, tracing them all the way to our contemporary technologies and concerns and through to coronavirus and what might come next. That becomes the backdrop for a quick tour of the structure of the book, which has two parts. The first part is dedicated to a macro perspective on technology. The second part is designed to help you, as an individual, respond to technological change, both as an individual and in the groups you find yourself in (at work, in social movements, in your social life, or in your family).
Change is a misunderstood concept. When weather, seasons, emotions, or people change, all of us are driven to oversimplify. We look for a single cause, even though we know that change is typically caused by a myriad of factors. Why? Because simplifying things helps us cope. Our psychological reaction precedes an intellectual explanation.
Technological change is particularly complicated. Historically, we tend to overvalue technology’s role in change. That phenomenon even has a name—technological determinism. Even though this is a book called Future Tech , I will try not to fall victim to that determinism. Instead, I will go behind the technologies and look at what created them and what sustains them. Subsequently, I will get in front of them and chart what lies ahead, based on other equally salient disruptive forces, such as influences from government, business, society, or even the physical environment that surrounds us, Earth’s ecosystem.
The future of technology is, of course, not an exact science. I share the fate of many futurists who have, wisely, stepped back a bit from prophecies. Instead, we chart scenarios. We model likely developments based on the forces of disruption we see in play already today. That can be done only by having a clear idea of how contemporary society is put together, a necessarily incomplete and simplified model of how things generally tend to work, which in turn requires an awareness of history.
To start with, let me just note that social change is usually equally important in terms of shaping technology as technology is in shaping social change. To prove that point, it is tempting to quickly begin to summarize the lessons of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. That event indeed has set the context for an enormous amount of change—and it came from the environment (an animal carried the virus), to society (manifesting itself first in China, then in Italy, then across Europe, and in Iran, spreading to the United States, and then to Brazil), and only subsequently influencing sci-tech (stimulating a massive vaccine effort among all the world’s top life science labs combined).
However, an even better perspective is gained from looking a bit further back in history. I would like to bring your attention to the industrial revolution. The reason I do that is that even though we call it an “industrial” revolution, the emphasis is often on technology when, in fact, it was social upheaval in cities that created the incentive and opportunity for such massive changes to take hold.
What the industrial revolution taught us about today’s changes
The industrial revolution of the 18th century caused migrations, upheaval, and economic progress, and created new winners and losers, individually and collectively. German thinkers Karl Marx and Max Weber, and French sociologist Emile Durkheim, and others, each attempted to explain this change—Marx and Weber found the driving forces to be at the individual level, Durkheim found them mostly to be at the collective level. Both ways of looking at it can be fruitful.
Marx’s observations on change
Marx’s (1990) explanation, largely based on UK data, focused on how individuals respond to the class struggle. He held that class struggle (within the capitalist system) was inherent to the new industrial production of goods. A worker’s identity was tied to the goods that were produced. To realize their true selves, workers had to rise above their status as servants to the technology to become owners of the instruments of production.
In other words, technological progress had to go hand in hand with changes in the ownership of the instruments of production. In Marx’s mind, progress stems from the conflicts that necessarily arise out of people exercising their true interests. Marx’s writings are commonly misunderstood as calls to action instead of explanations of the process of social and technical change, yet they were both. Any true revolutionary has a deep understanding of the society they are trying to chang