Some thoughts on future scenarios.
Premises
Consequences
Premises
- information and related technology continue to increase in economic and societal importance
- existing information technology evolves further down the path towards commoditization
- connections increase between people and people, people and things, and things and things
- artificial intelligence becomes more advanced and significant
- disintermediation and democratization continue to disrupt the market place, also stimulating growth of the shared economy
- consumers’ dissatisfaction with providers’ uncompromising algorithms and inconsiderate people fuel the experience economy
- inequality of distribution of income and wealth increases
Consequences
- the increasing significance of information results in it being promoted to an item on the financial balance sheet, attracting management attention
- the increasing significance of artificial intelligence results in more emphasis on digital ethics (e.g. damage mitigation strategies in self-driving cars)
- internal centralized IT departments make way for multiple decentralized I&T functions within business divisions/units, with a more fluid division of demand and supply, and with the emphasis on decision-making regarding investments and value realization
- externally available IT services increase in number and usefulness, resulting in user organizations focusing on differentiating applications of readily available I&T
- more pervasive artificial intelligence increases the divide between empowered and emasculated citizens/consumers
- the experience economy stimulates the development of digital enterprises in which the interaction with the enterprise’s digital ‘hologram’ is experientially equivalent with the interaction with the enterprise’s analogue manifestation
- full time employment is for many people no longer possible and/or desirable, the latter resulting in knowledge continuity challenges for enterprises
- the increased recognition of the complex adaptive nature of systems (in the broadest sense) drives smaller-scale, multidisciplinary, and experimental/emergent ways of working
