Looking at the history of transformation through the lens of technological shifts such as the invention of electricity or the adoption of the Internet we see that change always takes longer than expected.
For example, the first commercial farm tractor went on sale in the US in 1907. It is hard to imagine a more transformative technology with a sounder business case, yet it was not until the 1950’s that more than 50% of US farms owned a tractor.
Historically this is not down to technology maturity, but driven by prevailing management thinking. The tendency is to initially focus on efficiency gains (minor benefits) and only later comes the more fundamental thinking about what we do today and why we do it.
It is at this point that the world changes suddenly, and change becomes an all or nothing game with industries and functions changed fundamentally and forever.
In our recent article in IMD magazine we illustrate this with some examples and ask a fundamental question: “how can we do what could not be done before?”
We believe this is the key to unlocking the real power of Artificial Intelligence.