Acts of nature helped create the Dust Bowl; AI-enabled acts of man will stir up the Digital Dust Bowl

Myriad developments such as inexperience with newly automated methods of farming, topsoil shifts, and periods of drought and high winds triggered the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, which exacerbated the ongoing decline of the U.S. economy. Today, the high affordability and rapidly spreading use of analytics and machine learning software reduce the amount of labor necessary to perform complex tasks. In short, we are farming our labor pool in different ways and destabilizing our labor markets in a manner similar to the way automated machinery destabilized our topsoil and helped trigger the Dust Bowl, a calamity with far-reaching economic consequences that compounded the troubles of a country suffering through the Great Depression, cemented in history in the John Steinbeck classic “The Grapes of Wrath.”

We are, in essence, creating a Digital Dust Bowl of displaced manufacturing, clerical and middle-management workers whose jobs will be replaced by automated machines and different methods of establishing trust in a wide range of economic transactions. Technology executives and strategists comprehend this better than most other business and political leaders as we have lived in this world for decades. Ways to mitigate the disruptive economic and social impacts to these accelerations have yet to gain broad-based consensus within the policy making institutions as evidenced by the current political climate at the national level. It is this lack of consensus that hinders our ability to mitigate the impending economic impacts of the accelerating rate of technological innovation.

Major economic shifts pressure the interdependencies between citizens, businesses and governments

Figure 1 outlines the main intersecting domains of people (laborers and consumers), businesses, and government and trust institutions tasked with regulating and certifying the activity between individuals and businesses as well as with “protecting the commons.”

In the Internet of Things (IoT) era, successful companies will innovate constantly, at all levels of the organization. The most successful of these companies will change their culture and processes to foster this innovation. For many companies, IoT will trigger organizational change, which, in turn, will drive innovation in other areas as well as IoT. TBR believes that IoT is not a technology revolution, but rather a business revolution that will change how companies operate and evolve.

Innovation will occur at every level of the organization, and IoT and IoT-related solutions will proliferate. To prevent sprawl and consequent security and efficiency implications, IT will set standards and provide standard resources where practicable. At the same time, IT will facilitate innovation by being responsive, and by providing and supporting horizontal IoT tools. Successful IT vendors will serve the needs of IT departments supporting distributed IoT innovation. Dell EMC’s concept of “IT transformation,” which is one of supporting innovation, describes this model very well.

IoT everywhere

IoT and IoT-related solutions will proliferate because IoT offers many valuable potential solutions for many business processes, particularly as additional lower-cost solutions become available. Despite its long history, IoT is immature. The near future will bring many more prepackaged solutions, easy-to-use components and more efficient data utilization. These changes will lower costs, improve ROIs and make many more solutions feasible. Many new solutions will require no new data, but will integrate or analyze IoT-generated data to deliver more value.

IoT’s value potential is not confined to companywide transformative projects. There are opportunities for valuable solutions at every scale and in many different business units and departments within each company. Therefore, successful companies will enable the development and refinement of new IoT solutions throughout the organization, not just in designated departments or groups.

The Collision conference highlighted the dynamic world of startups, particularly those chasing growth opportunities around disruptive technologies — similar to the business strategies established IT players such as IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Accenture (NYSE: ACN) are moving toward. Though unequipped for enterprisewide, consulting-led digital transformation engagements, startups will likely increasingly challenge traditional systems integrators (SIs) for discrete digital projects by offering lower pricing, deep niche expertise, more agile delivery, and emphasis on solving clients’ business needs instead of upselling additional services. Startups also threaten larger vendors in the digital talent war by creating cultures that attract highly coveted design, technology and development talent with flexible work arrangements and accelerated career paths. We expect the trend of large SIs acquiring digital startups to continue for the foreseeable future. However, as the very best startups increasingly gain visibility through successful projects with high-profile brands, we believe SIs will need to work harder (and pay more) to persuade startups to become part of larger, legacy IT services organizations.

Collision was created in 2014 as part of a series of international events hosted by the founders of Web Summit, the Dublin-based event promoted as an alternative to large-scale technology conferences such as the International Consumer Electronics Showcase and the SXSW Interactive Festival. The conference acts as a forum for startup founders, executives of leading large corporations, investors and influencers to connect and network. In its second year being held at the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, the conference welcomed more than 19,000 attendees from 119 countries. The 605 companies exhibiting products, services and technology solutions across three days included 480 “Alphas,” or very early stage startups; 88 “Betas,” or startups that have raised more than $1 million in funding; and 26 “Starts,” or growth-stage startups that have raised more than $3 million in funding. Interspersed with the exhibition booths were four stages hosting nine tracks of sessions with 357 speakers and moderators across a variety of topics, including the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, big data, SaaS, design, the future of computing, marketing, sustainability, music, sports and startup best practices (termed “Startup University”). TBR also interacted one-on-one with several startup founders and speakers