10 Transformative Technologies (yes including AI)… and Why You Shouldn’t Focus on Any of Them
It seems like every year there is another hot technology that everyone is clamouring to adopt as the differentiating factor in their company’s offering. Working on over 30 innovative projects over the past 6 years, I have been able to experience some of these trends, even with the small sample size of…me. Pre-September 2023 it seemed like EVERYTHING had to be on the blockchain. Startups and enterprise organisations alike were pitching product ideas as “It’s like X but on the blockchain” or “By using blockchain technology, we will be able to increase/decrease Y by Z”. A couple of years ago, a similar phenomenon occurred but with augmented/virtual reality. And maybe you have noticed that EVERYTHING is now about utilising AI. I was speaking to a client about golf and he informed me that you can buy a £500 driver from a major manufacturer that claims to “utilise AI”. This isn’t about the merits or de-merits of golf clubs with artificial intelligence or whether that is a good product strategy for that particular company. However, I do think it is somewhat indicative of the technology being the flavour of the month.
Just because everyone else is doing it, it doesn’t mean that you should. It doesn’t even mean that they should! There are many technologies that are still very underutilised that could provide a substantial benefit to organisations before they start trying to grab on to the newest one. A Gartner report published in November 2023 says that they expect “70% of tech workloads to be running in a cloud environment by 2028, up from 25% today”. Amazon Web Services (AWS) was launched in 2002 and EC2, which allowed companies to run their applications on a cloud network was introduced in 2006. Google and Microsoft entered the cloud computing space with Google App Engine in 2008 and Microsoft Azure in 2009. This was a huge deal. It’s one of the “this changes everything” technologies. Cloud computing is still evolving and these three dominant players are continuing to iterate their offerings, but with nearly 20 years since EC2 was introduced why are so few (25%) tech workloads operating in a cloud environment?
So here are the 10 big digital transformation technologies that are likely to be in play over the foreseeable future. Startups will undoubtedly provide some of these as their core offering, hoping to become a key supplier to one of the giants or an acquisition. Some are more mature than others with an equally varying degree of mainstream adoption.
1. Cloud Computing
This provides scalable infrastructure and software solutions so that businesses can reduce costs, increase agility and rapidly deploy services — whether new or old. Cloud computing is integral to nearly all IT strategies in one form or another from data storage to complex applications. Despite being one of the more mature technologies, as mentioned above, it is still largely underutilised.
2. Mobile
Once referred to as “second screen” in relation to a user’s viewing experience, mobile has quickly become the primary device on which many consumer activities take place. Since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, mobile has extended far beyond communication and astute organisations design many consumer applications with a “mobile-first” view. Limited visual real-estate has caused “audio-design” to become a part of mobile-first tactics. Enterprise applications have also helped to facilitate the remote working wave, increasing flexibility and worker engagement.
3. Big Data and Analytics
Facilitated in part by the previous two, organisations can gather large amounts of data and have learned to leverage this to improve decision-making, predict customer behaviour and personalise services. Big data started to come to the fore in the early 2010s and is already core to operations in finance, healthcare, retail and marketing communications across industries.
4. 5G
5G is facilitatory for some of the other technologies, providing significantly faster connectivity, enabling more reliable communication between devices. Mobile and IoT applications as well as autonomous vehicles and augmented reality will accelerate their development due to 5G capabilities. Since it’s mainstream adoption started in 2019 the infrastructure required has continued to expand and this will be a huge feature of future technological advancement.
5. AI/ML/LLM
You may have heard of this one. I put artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and large language models (LLM) in the same bracket because all of these are referred to as “AI”. Far beyond ChatGPT, AI enhances decision-making, research and personalisation of customer experiences. With increasing end-user capabilities to “train” AI through popular tools, this technology has countless applications in every industry. This may very well be the most disruptive technology in the last 10+ years. Starting to gather a head of steam in the 2010s, the past few years have seen an explosion in AI products and applications. As far as the limits of its capabilities, we are just scratching the surface.
6. IoT
Connecting physical devices to exchange and collect data (see big data and 5G), this technology enhances operational efficiency, especially in the predictive maintenance and smart supply chains. Since the initial adoption in mainstream commerce in the 2010s, IoT has mainly been implemented in manufacturing, logistics and urban development. The wider applications are starting to come to the fore over the last few years with the technology continuing to iterate.
7. Blockchain
Last seasons, hot topic. Much more than just bitcoin and NFTs. There’s been enough written about blockchain so I won’t go into too much detail. The basics are that it provides a secure and transparent ledger for recording transactions and managing data. This started to appear on our radar around 2005 with cryptocurrencies but supply chain, record management and contracts also have existing applications. This will mature significantly once people can move past the NFT fiasco and revisit the core application of this technology.
8. Robotic Process Automation
Not quite iRobot but more considering how machines are able to automate mundane and repetitive tasks to free up human labour for more complex (and enjoyable) tasks. Boston Dynamics has a big part to play in what many of us see as robotics (is this terrifying or exciting) but existing applications in banking, insurance and healthcare have existed for the past 10+ years. Car manufacturing , even longer.
9. AR/VR/MR
A few years ahead of blockchain, this was a joke a while back. Confined to video games and images of people walking into walls or getting motion sickness whilst sitting down. The ability to have immersive experiences for training, simulation, and customer engagement, as well as enhanced learning and buying experience has catapulted this technology into the mainstream. Consumer products pioneered by the usual suspects in the last 5 years have further put the experiences of this in the category of the commercially viable.
10. 3D Printing
This has been around for some time but still hasn’t reached it’s potential in terms of applications and adoption. Great for rapid prototyping and on-demand production, the main applications of this tech have been seen in aerospace and the automotive industry. I expect to see additional ways that this can add value to consumers as well as new enterprise solutions. If this became viable consumer hardware, it could change how we buy physical products.
Conclusion
As you can see, some of these are so widely accepted as core technologies that you could be mistaken for forgetting what things were like before them. Others may still seem like they fell off a page of a sci-fi novel. But one thing is certain: the technology should not be your focus. Pivoting towards the newest technology in hopes of it being a fix-all for your organisation is like under-7s football (soccer). If you’ve ever watched a game of U7s football, you will see no structure to their game. When the ball is kicked to the left, everyone runs to the left, someone gets there first and kicks the ball to the right, so everyone runs to the right. At some point, there is a skirmish near the goal and sometimes the ball will pinball it’s way into the net. What the 6 and 7 year olds never seem to do (because they are 6 and 7), is to a) think about the longer term goal of winning the game and b) position themselves in a better way to win.
Of course, this is a facetious example but the point rings true. Digital transformation should be aligned with organisational strategic objectives based on creating the most value for the end-user and appropriating the most value for the organisation. By focusing on individual metrics or implementing the latest tech, your organisation’s technology strategy will be akin to a goal-mouth scramble of 7-year-old footballers. Find out what your customers value, work out how to create that value and build a plan to capture some of that value for yourself (without cannibalising the value you’re already creating). Then and only then, transform your organising with the appropriate (not most recent or popular) technology to facilitate those goals. Not the other way around.
