Digital transformation is universal

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Following on from the quote about digital transformation from Russell Davies, here’s the Economist’s economics editor in his newspaper’s The World in 2015 supplement:

Virtually every firm in every industry is being shaken up by the digital revolution. No chief executive can ignore the onslaught of mobile computing, big data, artificial intelligence and the like. These new technologies offer the promise of huge efficiency gains, but also the threat of being walloped by some upstart from Silicon Valley.

Just in case there was any doubt…

He goes on to say that the financial crisis may have slowed the impact of digital, but that as the world economy picks up, so will the rate of disruption. It’s only just begun, people.

 

Misfit minds: why mental illnesses and learning difficulties can be useful

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Image: Don’t stay too close to the pack… 

The classic liberal text, On Liberty by John Stuart Mill made a big impression on me years ago. What stayed with me above all was Mill’s insistence that liberty and tolerance were essential for a healthy society, since they permitted diversity.

Diversity of thought, behaviour, beliefs, ideas keep societies alive because they mean that there is an edge (not that Mills used this term – that’s more John Hagel) where new ideas can be born and taken back into the mainstream. When you start trying to make everyone adhere to a norm, become a single homogenous mainstream, things stagnate – essentially because there are no new ideas.