Exploring the Future Ep 4: Six facets of strategy for emerging technologies

In a short segment I recorded in Bangkok at the Oracle Impact Summit recently, I discuss the six facets of strategy for emerging technologies with some simple visual illustrations.

You can read more about the six facets of strategy for emerging technologies here.

The transcript is below. To subscribe to my future vlog episodes click here! :-)

I’m at the Oracle Impact event in Bangkok, Thailand which looks at how emerging technology such as AI, IoT and Blockchain can transform your organization.

I gave the keynote this morning on technology leadership in an accelerated world and will be moderating the executive luncheon for C-level executives, delving into how IT organizations need to transform.

In my keynote, I looked at 6 facets of the strategies for emerging technologies. In this world, we see that technology leaders need to be working with boards and executives in order to frame the opportunities and the possibilities moving forward.

At the center of this needs to be a vision. A vision for what the future organization can be, how its strategy can shift to be able to create more value in a changing world. And technology leaders need to be able to work with the board and executives to be able to shape that vision around what is possible.

That starts with education. Being able to help them look at, not just what the technologies are, but how they can be applied. What their impact on supply chains, on organizations, on industries might be.

Governance needs to shift. Of course, we need organizational governance, and IT governance, but there’s also more and more around new aspects of governance, for example, around privacy, around data, around things such as bias in AI, or transparency in machine learning models which create decisions that impact people.

There needs to be a roadmap which maps out, reveals the map from where you are today to where you are going, looking at over the next 3 months the next 6 months, next 12 months, next 2 years. What are the steps? What will the journey look like? What are the things which you would be doing in order to be able to tap the potential of these technologies?

But at the same time as having a roadmap you also need to recognize you can’t anticipate how these technologies might be used, what the possibilities are. So you need to also experiment and explore. To be able to build in structured ways. To be able to learn how these technologies might create new possibilities inside your organization.

In addition to all of these you need to be, at the same time, simultaneously building your capabilities. Anticipating what your capabilities, as an IT organization, need to be in the future. Which can include things like being able to attract and develop talent. To be able to build effective data strategies and governance. To be able to understand which platforms you’re going to be able to use. To build the right culture for experimentation.

These elements starting with the vision and around that, having the education, the governance, the roadmaps, the experimentation, and the capability development over time are fundamental to how organizations can tap the extraordinary potential of emerging technologies such as AI, IoT, Blockchain and many others.