tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21347652947201987182024-03-08T12:15:43.884-08:00Future EnterpriseCharting the major social, technological, scientific, environmental and cultural trends driving the evolution of the future enterpriseDavid Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2134765294720198718.post-67013232625030071892014-06-05T03:34:00.000-07:002014-06-05T03:38:42.516-07:00Future Enterprise- The Future of Business Gaming<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Future of Enterprise Gaming</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">The Director of the Future Enterprise Research Centre- David Hunter Tow, forecasts that by 2035 advances in Gaming technology will accelerate the emergence of an advanced form of Virtual Reality incorporating physics and game theory, integrated with cultural, work, service and education practices.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">It will also assist society in coping with the impact of Global Warming and other major potential threats to the planet and at the same time radically reshape the future of the enterprise.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Gaming or game playing has now become a mainstream activity for all demographics- available anywhere, anytime and often for free. From simple combinatorial games such as Candy Crush to social and educational games such as Minecraft and Farmville- the first used as an initiative of the UN Habitat program allowing populations to redesign open recreational spaces around the world, while Farmville allows players to simulate the operations of a farm, allowing them to grow, cultivate and harvest crops.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Most are now available via the Internet, downloaded to a PC or mobile platform. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">But this is just the beginning of the gaming revolution. With the rapid penetration of the Internet, this form of simulated recreation is now becoming a part of everyday human lives for work or pleasure.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Gaming has been building as an entertainment form for many years- advancing in popularity, sophistication and financial accessability from the earliest forms of arcade video games to</span><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;"> basic black-and-white 2D format in the seventies, to largely war and conflict games in eighties and nineties such as Battlefield 3 and finally evolving to the more complex, life-like 3D</span><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;"> games of fantasy, role playing, education, graphic realism, story telling and finally the present mind blowing virtual reality format such as Second Life 2.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Infinite reams have been written in gaming blogs about the pros and cons of the various specialised consoles and game-playing platforms - consoles such as PS4, Xbox, Nintendo’s Wii U and the new Chinese entrants. And also about the rise of the new generation of powerful PCs and laptops with multicore chipsets and GPUs, based increasingly on Linux variants such as SteamOS.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">And now with the increasing popularity of the nextgen mobile Phones and Pads such as the android Tegra K1 equipped with advanced hardware and software set to match the full power of consoles, the choice is expanding exponentially. It is increasingly cross-platform offering a common technology base streamed from the Web.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Today’s massive multiplayer Internet platforms also offer limitless Cloud storage and processing capacity, capable of reaching and interacting with tens of thousands of game players simultaneously- as demonstrated at the recent Twitch Pokemon gameplay event the beginning of a new form of crowd gaming, just like a world interactive chess or football championship beamed globally.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">In the future games will also connect to home video screens and full 3D/HD holographic surround displays and cockpits, controlled by hand gestures, similar to those envisioned in the Minority Report and Star Wars Holodeck systems.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">So the world of gaming is now on a trajectory that requires it to offer ever more powerful graphics and special effects when the storyline demands it, creating more and more realism and beyond.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Enter physics.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Models based on the laws of physics can realistically replicate the physical properties of the natural world, using engines capable of generating rich 3D environments; specifically algorithms that mimic real world effects like subtle lighting and shadows, wind and rain, sky and cloud textures, the deformation of materials and the collision of particles, fire and heat as well as the movements of flocks of birds, the subtle synchrony of trees and forests and the flow of rivers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Beyond that is the physics of human and animal movement- skin texture and facial expressions, including seamless actions and reactions mirroring complex cognitive behavioural and psychological responses in realtime. Also utilising biofeedback- pulse rates, respiration, body temperature etc, allowing the delivery of personal, immersive and customisable feedback experience to the player.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">And beyond that is the physics of big data- the staple diet of the enterprise.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">As the quality and complexity of online games improves more people will spend more time playing them, until the game becomes an intrinsic part of their lives. Interactive role playing will also also become key, where the player is part of the storyline and chooses the action pathway; evolving from the early games of Battlefield Galactica to Dungeons and Dragons and SteamPunk.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">And why does this interactive trajectory of evolution relate to the enterprise?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Because games are basically interactive events and strategies with goals and processes and achievements interwoven in an ongoing narrative within a digital environment- and so are the operations and outcomes of an enterprise within a realworld social, business and economic environment. And probably the most effective cost and time way of testing the massive multiplicity of operational combinations and strategic options is to first simulate them digitally by invoking the physics of <span class="mandelbrot_refrag" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://it.toolbox.com/trd/95/7/21630/?lc=int_mb_1001" style="color: #0a5ca3; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em; text-decoration: none;">big data</a></span> and behavioural science.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">And a new set of game experiences shows how this can be most realistically done using virtual reality. Games such as Zelda, 300: Rise of an Empire, Civilisation V, Assassin's Creed, Brave New World, UE4, Ashphalt 8, San Andreas and Anomaly 2 etc are now playing out in true HD virtual reality, using ultra VR surround helmets such as the Oculus Rift and Project Morpheus as well as the lure of realistic graphics interfaces, direct brain to computer and brain to brain cognitive interfaces, linked to full holographic immersive sensory surround.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">So ultimately we find ourselves in the another space altogether- the realm of pure augmented and virtual reality. And how do we know that these exotic forms of simulated reality will mark the next phase of Gaming for entertainment and the future enterprise? Because they already do.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Virtual reality in entertainment has been around a long time - in sci-fi films such as The Matrix. But from a gaming perspective also in early prototypes such as cockpit arcade games, flight simulators and 3D Second Life, Avatar and World of Warcraft.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Now VR technology has taken a gigantic leap in the form of the Oculus Rift headset and other similar technologies that allow games to be visualised in 3D in synch with head and body movements linked to a kinetic controller. Soon they will be stanaldone consumer systems not linked to a separate computer.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Although currently still restricted to developers, such helmets and glasses will become a commodity item for players, selling at less than $100 equipped with their own computing power but also linkable to the Cloud for integrating with the realtime IT management of the future enterprise and Web.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">At the same time Augmented reality- allowing multiple layers of information and images and visual effects to overlay real world images has become almost commonplace with <span class="mandelbrot_refrag" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://it.toolbox.com/trd/95/7/9877/?lc=int_mb_1001" style="color: #0a5ca3; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em; text-decoration: none;">Google</a></span> Glass now leading the charge; allowing doctors, engineers and machine operators to work in complex, dangerous and restricted environments and planners, advertisers and marketers to target potential customers on the move with the most appealing consumer product messages. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">In the near future therefore it will therefore become increasingly difficult to separate the ‘virtual’ from the 'real' - integrating game role playing with actions in real life and the real enterprise.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">As early as 2030 most of our lives will be immersed in this shared reality- linking game playing with art, entertainment, technology, science, work and daily life routines such as shopping, entertainment, social exchange and travel. Meanwhile the new world of startups is providing more creative and efficient ways of implementing everyday processes in eCommerce, services, the media and entertainment via mobile platforms and will increasingly be implemented via a game-friendly interface.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">This will be accelerated by the Internet of Things or intelligent objects. The internet of objects will allow the built environment of human civilisation to be simulated and controlled via sensors and actuators allowing X-reality- the fusion of virtual and real processes, to become the norm.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Alternate realities will then surround us not only visually, but at all sensory levels- tactile, oral, taste and smell. They will also be populated by virtual life forms living within virtual societies, creating virtual communities endowed with their own sets of goals and behaviour patterns. These new realities will be multi- dimensional, operating in realtime as simulations; increasingly inseparable from the real reality.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Artificial life or A-Life is also being created in the computer science laboratories, based on the spontaneous computer generation of emergent behaviour that mimics the dynamics of biological evolution. A-life or virtual life organisms are programmed to carry out the basic evolutionary processes of reproduction, mutation and selection just like biological life. Virtual life avatars will also be realistic, equipped with <span class="mandelbrot_refrag" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://it.toolbox.com/trd/95/7/10241/?lc=int_mb_1001" style="color: #0a5ca3; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em; text-decoration: none;">artificial intelligence</a></span> and generating their own unique cognitive problem solving capability- supporting both individual human and enterprise needs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">By 2035 the Web will offer an all-immersive 3D environment combining elements of<span class="mandelbrot_refrag" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://it.toolbox.com/trd/95/7/21637/?lc=int_mb_1001" style="color: #0a5ca3; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em; text-decoration: none;">social networks</a></span>, virtual worlds and geolocation, linked to a dense <span class="mandelbrot_refrag" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://it.toolbox.com/trd/95/7/9877/?lc=int_mb_1001" style="color: #0a5ca3; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em; text-decoration: none;">Google</a></span> Earth matrix; allowing closer interaction with friends and contacts in their daily lives and distributed workplaces as well as remote wilderness and critical disaster areas. These physical representations or models of our earth and its social environment represent mirror worlds and virtual communities which will also be pervasive within the enterprise.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Virtual communities already exist as part of non-violent creative games such as The Sims 4 and Farmlife 2 as mentioned, limited only by the imagination of their creators- meshing with the real world of sensory information as its users navigate through their daily simulated lives.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Prototypes of virtual worlds will then no longer be limited to the relatively static domains of 20th century IMax cinemas, Museums and Planetariums- innovative as they may be. They will represent an emerging Metaverse of potential and realised realities- past, present and future. It’s then just a small step to create proto-reality spaces such as the Star Treck Holodeck, not just for entertainment and gaming but for real life enhancement, business simulation and most importantly problem-solving.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">By 2035 therefore gaming models will have transformed into an integral part of a new human reality. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">In hindsight it can be seen that virtual, augmented and X- realities are early phases in an ongoing evolutionary transition towards the acceptance of virtual forms as part of everyday human co-existence with their counterparts. In the process we have crossed the threshold into a seamless new dimension, extending human perception and interaction; linking ubiquitous sensory and actuator networks based on low cost wireless and optical technologies to create mixed realities.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Such a dense networked web will help integrate physical reality into <span class="mandelbrot_refrag" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://it.toolbox.com/trd/95/7/21633/?lc=int_mb_1001" style="color: #0a5ca3; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em; text-decoration: none;">virtual computing</a></span> platforms generating the ability to react to real-world events in autonomous fashion- a vital aspect of the future enterprise where expert decisions must be implemented on the fly. This will create a revolutionary relationship between human society and the Web, with the urgent need to understand the way our behaviour and future protocols will become inevitably shaped by its cyberspace environment.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">In other words the world is evolving its own electronic nervous system via a dense mesh of neural-type networks, eventually connecting and encompassing vast numbers of objects- living and non-living, on the planet. It is already beginning to host an immersive 3D sensory environment that combines elements of social and virtual worlds with increasingly complex location mapping applications that allow the monitoring and planning of natural and urban ecosystems- and particularly the capacity to cope with climate change and future economic shock.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">This approaching Armageddon will be a critical accelerator in the emergence of serious problem-solving game technology in Government and the enterprise.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">The implications and potential of these virtual advances are enormous, pointing the way towards the next momentous shift in the evolution of human life and our world- a fusion of real and virtual realities.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Gaming technology is already becoming mainstream in the world of business, education, science, entertainment and disaster management. This is so-called serious simulation gaming, applied to activities such as conflict resolution and negotiation, high level investment and strategic business decision-making, healthcare research, education, manufacturing, logistical and maintenance managment, scheduling, administration and workplace operational skills- all played out like an arcade or console game.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">The following examples provide some insight into the future application of gaming principles-</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">War gaming and Disaster Management-</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">This involves the application of strategic planning methods to evaluate and improve performance in response to scripted and random scenarios; testing the effectiveness of a plan or procedure or its ability to cope with unpredictable events; then mitigating the exposed risks. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Advanced gaming technologies such as Oculus Rift and intelligent agent software will be used to achieve immersive virtual reality to improve the flexibility, efficiency and quality of the decision-making involved.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Interactive Entertainment Gaming-</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Gaming in the context of live sporting and entertainment events has received a boost recently using a system to provide every fan at a sporting event with a personalised phone wifi and location connection app- Mobbra; alllowing them to receive content such as background player interviews, game statistics and augmented reality interaction with other spectators.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Crossover between virtual gaming and real life skills is also being extended to selecting gamers as trainee competitive racing drivers at Nissan’s GT academy of Gran Turismo, on the basis of their virtual driving skills.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Science and Problem-solving Gaming</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Digital games like World of Warcraft and Fold.it are compelling examples of how technology can engage thousands of players in learning and solving complex problems - even in making scientific discoveries. Research in how people learn and interact in online gaming environments can assist in designing online education for science learning- integrating gaming technologies into classrooms and research facilities.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Now this symbiosis has been taken to a new level through- Gaming Crowdsourcing- expanding the support and creativity of relative outsiders in a variety of disciplines, helping to solve complex scientific problems from biology to cosmology, through the power of many minds combining through games interfaces with computers and the power of the Web.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">For example Phylo is a game that allows users to contribute to the science of genetics by aligning sequences of dna, rna and proteins to locate similarities and learn how they have evolved over time. Humans are better at solving such visual puzzles than computers and Phylo represents such molecular groups by the alignment of vertical coloured pieces on a screen. There are currently 16,000 registered users working to solve such puzzles as well as a Facebook group to suggest Phylo improvements.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Foldit is a protein folding game, capable of solving puzzles that have challenged professional scientists for years such as the optimum folding patterns of chains of amino acid that make up the building blocks of enzymes and proteins and cracking the code of how an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus is created. It took the gamers only three weeks to create an accurate model of the solution.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Forty thousand registered users of the game Planet Hunters have identified 69 potential new planets from data retrieved from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, to find habitable planets outside earth’s solar system.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">In addition a number of phone app games have been developed by physics professionals to view 3D particle collisions on a quest to find the Higgs boson.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Education and Training Gaming</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Video games are also having an enormous impact on children and adolescents of school age. But that impact is often seen as disruptive. The aim in academic circles is therefore to change that perception and harness the creative aspects of gaming to enhance the whole education process</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">By 2035 the full power of the web will be deployed towards this new learning paradigm, including powerful simulation training environments based on immersive virtual reality.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Augmented and virtual realities will allow procedures and knowledge to be absorbed within 3D virtual worlds and games capable of simulating most services and applications, supporting the full range of training needs from trade apprenticeships to strategic management skills.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">The benefits of teaching in such VR environments include the capacity to explore real life situations without risk, as is currently practiced by pilots using flight simulators and the more objective and automatic monitoring and assessment of performance criteria.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">The application of virtual worlds to education will become a standard function of school and university teaching and research in the near future. Users are already using such technology to socialise and connect through personalised avatars. These worlds can therefore be quickly adapted to provide learning support and feedback between students, with the added potential to create teaching avatar support.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Business Gaming</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Gaming environments can also be adapted to offer support for the solution of complex real world problems in areas such finance, investment, innovation, logistics, human resources, production, planning and economic analysis.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;"><span class="mandelbrot_refrag" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://it.toolbox.com/trd/95/7/21637/?lc=int_mb_1001" style="color: #0a5ca3; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em; text-decoration: none;">Social media</a></span> sites are also creating environments where planners can experiment with new research techniques, by applying intelligent agents to simulate interacting populations.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">These are the same applications that will be most beneficial for business.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">As gaming becomes more scientific in its quest for greater realism and performance as well as in its practical application to real world problem-solving and support, there will be an inevitable convergence with the science of Game Theory.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Game Theory is all about making better decisions to maximise value in games that simulate negotiation of power or assets between individuals or groups based on an understanding of the mathematical rules governing the dynamics of the process. Determining the risks involved- the probabilities of potential success or failure of an action or strategy, is a major part of the process.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Game theory had its genesis well over 50 years ago, providing a mathematical basis for capturing the essence of strategic negotiations between parties or game resolution, applied to model simple zero sum outcomes relating to economic or trade advantage, with an interaction between two parties.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Economists, evolutionary biologists, social scientists and even diplomats have all attempted to harness its magic to underpin their analysis of a wide range of realworld scenarios.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">The scope of the theory has widened in recent times to include diplomacy between nation states in international relations, climate change and carbon emission impacts on populations and major corporations competing to gain leverage in the technology, energy and resource sectors</span><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">And by changing the rules of the game and playing more openly and cooperatively it is hoped that better solutions can be devised- for example for mitigating water, energy and food shortages over the next century.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">A number of critical decision points have converged in our civilisation’s evolution, which will demand better methods of global cooperation and resolution.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Global issues such as violent weather patterns, spread of dangerous diseases, risk of terrorism, endemic poverty, refugee relocation, food and water scarcity, equal access to the web and knowledge - all demand international resolution on a fair and equitable basis with the future enterprise playing a central role as the engine of society- not self-absorbed in its own imploding growth and profit bubble.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Political diplomacy alone is not providing the answers. In the 21</span><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">st</span><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;"> century, traditional negotiating methods, leader summits etc, have proved inadequate- not agile enough, uncertain in their resolution, lacking sufficient enforcement- falling far short of the level of sophistication needed to manage the critical stresses and constraints facing our future world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">The future enterprise now has an opportunity to step up and apply new elements of gaming and game technology to provide the necessary survival capability - but in a more creative and equitable way.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">A number of techniques hold out promise for salvation, including the application of algorithmic and <span class="mandelbrot_refrag" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://it.toolbox.com/trd/95/7/10241/?lc=int_mb_1001" style="color: #0a5ca3; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em; text-decoration: none;">artificial intelligence</a></span>, new network and adaptive systems theory and innovative paradigms. But none holds out greater hope than Game Theory, in particular its latest incarnation- Quantum Game theory. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">As outlined, typical applications of the theory attempt to find an equilibrium solution or optimum zero-sum outcome in these contests, based on the competing strategies of all participants. The parties involved seek to optimise their strategies so as to achieve the most desirable outcomes for themselves.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">These strategies are therefore based on norms of </span><a data-ls-seen="1" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_rationality" style="color: #0a5ca3; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">rationality</a><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;"> and self-interest, but at the same time expose major weaknesses in the method. As has been demonstrated recently with the collapse of standard free market economic theory, humans are rarely rational, and the concept of reaching a stable equilibrium point does not exist in our complicated society, with billions of interacting variables and actors. In addition cooperation between parties often achieves better outcomes than aggressive self-interested competition.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">In traditional non-cooperative Game theory, the most famous mathematical scenario is the Nash equilibrium, in which players are assumed to know the strategies of the others and finally have nothing further to gain by changing their own self-serving positions. But in many cases the players might improve their payoffs if they could agree on a more cooperative strategy incorporating more flexible positions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">But classical Game Theory has another big flaw. It is based on participants receiving clear and reliable information of others’ strategic intentions. This also rarely happens in real life, in which cheating or duplicitous tactics in negotiations are often the norm, allowing loopholes for recalcitrant parties or ‘free riders’.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">These are players who for whatever reason, are not willing to pull their weight or stand by their commitment to make the sacrifices required for the greater good; but nevertheless will still attempt to share in the overall benefits. This is the elephant in the game room that quantum theory can address.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Benefits for example are often about rights to ‘public goods’ or globally shared rights and resources such as clean air, adequate food and water, human rights, basic health care and education.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">In the ‘public goods’ game a number of individuals or governments choose how much to contribute to achieve a desirable public benefit, such as committing to the maintenance of CO2 levels below a dangerous threshold or trade access by developing nations to wealthy markets.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">If all the players commit to the common good, then everyone benefits from the outcomes. But if some cheat by not contributing or reneg on previously negotiated commitments, other players may also lose the incentive to be involved and the projected benefit will be lost to all parties.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">The quantum version of game theory helps avoid this dilemma. In the quantum game, players are linked by the uniquely quantum phenomenon of Entanglement in which a change in commitment by one party is automatically sensed by all others who can react accordingly nullifying any unfair advantage.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Enterprises and governments are already using quantum entanglement in encryption devices and soon prototype quantum computers. It therefore appears feasible to apply such technology to achieve more rigorous negotiating outcomes. Participants could verify the authenticity of others’ negotiating positions, using electronic tokens and readout indicators for entangled negotiating positions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">This reduces the opportunity for free loading or fraudulent behaviour by any of the negotiating parties, thereby guaranteeing a fairer outcome. In the high stakes global negotiations rapidly escalating in this century, in which the future of the planet is literally at stake, it is vital that such fail-safe methods are applied.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">In all its incarnations therefore- Gaming and Game Theory- one simulating complex interactions in a user friendly environment and the other helping to ensure equitable outcomes in an age of cooperation, offers the future enterprise a major payoff.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">Worth trying? No doubt.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">The 21st century is no place for complacency or intransigence- both roads will lead to almost certain annihilation. </span></div>
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David Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2134765294720198718.post-27948685584432672882014-01-14T21:39:00.001-08:002014-01-14T21:39:50.511-08:00Future Enterprise- Future of Startups<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Future of Startups</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Director of the Future Planet Research Centre, David Hunter Tow, predicts that the Startup culture will provide the key to a more productive, peaceful and sustainable planet by offering a new era of creative worTk and training with the potential to reduce poverty and conflict, while focussing on solutions to the looming crisis facing the planet from unstoppable climate change.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Startup phenomenon can be likened to the first industrial revolution in the 18</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">th</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and 19</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">th</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> centuries that radically transformed all aspects of world society by improving living standards and providing new ways to release the creative potential of new generations.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A whole new culture is emerging based on providing support for a new breed of Startup entrepreneur through business structures and processes that include-incubators, accelerators, mentoring and training and equity partners. Startup enterprises now number in the tens of thousands and embrace virtually every significant social, business and industrial process. This nascent culture is rapidly evolving into a global force - gaining structure by coalescing around a number of Hubs, Networks, Ecosystems and Industry and Application Sectors.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Major Hubs are currently based in most of the world's larger cities including- London, Berlin, Istanbul, Helsinki, Tel Aviv, Stockholm, Auckland, Singapore, Beijing, Bangalore, Sydney, Paris, Sao Paulo, Moscow , Reykjavik, Tallinn, Chicago, Manilla, Milan, New York and Barcelona, as well as the major iconic San Francisco/Silicon Valley nexus. At the same time a number of emergent hubs are gathering momentum in most urban regions of Africa, Middle East, Asia and South and Central America.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No process or application, no matter how entrenched or fiercely guarded by its traditional custodians will be exempt from the impact of the Startup’s disruptive agenda, with every activity embedded in the operation of modern civilisation likely to be transformed into a more streamlined and productive form- available primarily via inexpensive digital mobile platforms.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This re-engineering is occurring not just in the traditional online service sectors of retail, marketing, advertising, entertainment, travel and media, but increasingly in the professional service areas of knowledge management- education, healthcare, law, insurance, design and finance. Industrial sectors are also flexing up with smarter solutions, supporting engineering, mining, manufacturing, agriculture, construction, energy, transport, distribution, supply and communications, developing as well as developed countries.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-76e8f146-9464-26bb-0c4a-28609807d474" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reading the Signals</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But this shift to a smarter planet isn’t solely a big enterprise or big city initiative. In the near future every small town and regional community will also spawn its own Start up ecosystem. It will become a way of life offering a new form of work and play, with creativity the main currency.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is gradually dawning on Government and the commercial and industrial establishment that this is going to be the future way to create a new generation of viable businesses and economy. In the process it will likely disrupt and displace the existing 20</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">th</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> century paradigm for building a civilisation, taking no prisoners. And if today's enterprises want to survive they will very quickly need to adapt.to this new world order.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But for the larger enterprises in particular this will be an almost impossible task. Social and technology commentators, big business and Governments until now have largely underestimated the significance of this revolution , seeing it as an add-on phenomenon, complementary but not essential to the functions of the traditional economy.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Big mistake.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Misreading the significance of past economic disruptions such as the explosion of small desktop</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">computers and the Internet has led to the demise of many seemingly invulnerable organisations. Just ask IBM about its near-death experiences in these areas. The economy and our social fabric is undergoing the next wave in a series of rapid and radical global changes that will dwarf the original industrial and digital revolutions.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Startup phenomenon is just the latest in a rolling wave of technology driven changes reshaping our relationship with the planet and triggering a whole new way of survival. And most significantly it is achieving this by releasing the full global potential of human creativity.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And the reason for this burgeoning hyper-growth cycle at the start of the 21</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">st</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> century is because it is meshing simultaneously with a number of other revolutions including those of the sciences, arts, knowledge and artificial intelligence, education and work, as well as advanced digital technology and social development.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The New Players</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The primary mover and shaker- the heart and soul of all these revolutions is the Internet/Web, with its payload of exponentially increasing information, now available to all via commoditised mobile portals. This represents the next phase in the democratisation of the world’s storehouse of precious knowledge, driven by the imperative to fulfil the potential of the vast under-educated populations of Africa, Asia and the Middle East that have previously missed out on our planet’s bounty. It creates a level data playing field by allowing any citizen with a mobile phone or tablet regardless of location or income, to access a common knowledge universe.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Piggy backing on this pinnacle of this human intellectual achievement is the education sector which is now well on the way to providing the means of delivering this vast treasure trove in easy to absorb bite size chunks via virtually free MOOCs – Massive Online Open Courses, providing equal access to quality education and training at all levels within across the planet.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And right on its heels, leveraging the benefits of this educational bounty is the revolution in work practice- now catalysed by the Startup industry.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The nature of work is now undergoing a dramatic transformation, flexing up to allow the transfer of skills from cheaper as well as high quality expat off shore sources of labour. But Startups have the potential to take this transfer to another level; to redress the global employment problem, eventually providing opportunities for skilled employment at the local community level.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A major Startup Hub- the Founder Institute , with chapters in 55 cities across 30 countries has just declared that over 1000 companies with a total portfolio value of $5billion have graduated from its program in the last four years. And the Institute and other countless incubators around the world are not just attracting the typical demographic of twenty to thirty year olds with computer science and software engineering backgrounds, but entrepreneurs of all age groups - middle aged executives, trade and factory workers and housewives- even retirees still chasing their lifetime dreams; all with the vision and wisdom of hindsight that only serious life experience can provide- ready to grasp the opportunities that a younger generation cannot yet conceive of.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Following a hobby or passion has always been an intrinsic part of human nature. It is no different in the digital age. The over fifties, sixties, seventies and even eighties now utilise the web as much or more than the under thirties and in a more active way than passively downloading music or videos. Surveys have shown they are also more astute at utilising social media for real benefit. The software skills required to transform that hobby or creative idea into a digital app is the simplest part of the equation- capable of being easily and inexpensively outsourced to an expert or automated app generator. After all, the technical skills required to design a blog or website used to be challenging for the average citizen. Not anymore. Now anyone can use a free template from Google and be up and running within ten minutes. The same is happening with app technology for example with the MIT app generator.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is the new world where age is not a barrier but an advantage and where creative content and innovation is king.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The infrastructure required to support this new work/play revolution is also dirt cheap; an old warehouse with some discarded tables and chairs and cheap commodity smart phones and laptops or servers- sufficient even for graphics and game developers. For brain storming or practical sessions with an engineering or financial expert with forty years heavy duty industrial experience - a comfortable coffee bar or a friend’s garage is sufficient.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cities or precincts that were once derelict and dying such as exist in Detroit, Denver, East Berlin or devastated New Orleans are finding a new lease of life by Startup communities; at the same time solving another endemic problem in society- unemployment and crime. Street kids, high school dropouts and jobless university graduates can be rapidly absorbed into this culture with some initial mentoring and training, offering creative opportunities and refuges no different from the arts and crafts sectors that have adopted similar supportive practices for decades. In fact there’s now a significant overlap and synergy between technology and arts communities, sharing creative spaces, ideas and marketing strategies. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Downsizing the Enterprise</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No wonder established enterprises of all hues- from the technology giants such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Sony, Cisco, Verizon, Samsung, Yahoo, Amazon and IBM as well as Government agencies and big business in manufacturing, energy and banking- from NASA to Goldman Sachs, GE, Cisco, Shell, Phillips, Siemens, Panasonic, Ford and Toyota are cashing in on this potential bonanza, supporting and mentoring Startup communities- not so much to make an immediate profit but just to gain a footing in this ultra-competitive new survival game.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most have either spun off their own internal Startup divisions like IBM or like Google are having a bet each way, aggressively offering to support other promising hubs such as the recently expanded Sydney Incubator tapping into the network of Australian University students.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For those enterprises that don’t or can’t adapt to this new universe, the gig will be up. Just as the empires of ancient times - the Romans, Greeks, Persians and Chinese dynasties or later British, Portuguese, Dutch, French and Spanish colonisers- all thought they were masters of the universe with their new technologies of guns and ships; but eventually overreached and lost the plot, misreading the pro-nationalist signals and new awareness of a changing world.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now the new technologies keep exploding relentlessly, with the Cloud, mobile technology, virtual reality, the Internet of intelligent objects, big data, artificial intelligence, robotics, massive bandwidth, software defined networks, more flexible database structures and open source software, setting the pace.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But just over the horizon lurks the next generation of technology powered by – the intelligent Web with human like intelligence, quantum computing and teleportation, direct thought transfer via sensory headbands, the Precog society where prediction is the norm, insect sized drones and giant social observatories such as the original billion dollar EU FuturICT blueprint. Also the emergence of the global human superorganism- the response to increasing globalisation in the face of intractable global problems requiring urgent solutions such as climate change and conflict.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Future Shock has arrived.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And each time the technology explodes it exposes more opportunities as well as existential risks to humanity. The current generation of dominant tech providers- Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Facebook are already looking vulnerable; with Google overreaching just like the ancient empires; and Facebook’s invasion of user privacy- likely to go the same way as Myspace; and Apple- passed its innovative peak, likely to become another producer of commodity devices such as Nokia. Even Microsoft is on the ropes unable to make the paradigm shift needed to survive thenew world order. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Big enterprises have a habit of believing their own rhetoric of infinite growth with a delusional mantra of taking over the world in their market niche. Unfortunately they never studied physics and the limits of computation, information and energy, as the power of entropy inevitably dissembles their structures.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So the traditional notion of an individual's job and work-related role is already outdated. Work value in the future will be measured in terms of contributions to personal and organisational goals, together with social utility, whether for a two person startup or two thousand employee company.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By 2025 most tasks in heavy industry such as mining, construction, manufacturing and transport will be largely automated and robot-assisted. But such projects will also be increasingly managed and resourced on a real-time basis within the Web's global knowledge network- driven by innovative algorithms generated by next-gen apps.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Work and Play</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By 2030 organisational boundaries and work practices will be fluid and porous, with individuals moving freely between projects, career paths and virtual organisational structures; adding value and in turn continuously acquiring new skills, linked to ongoing vocational programs.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And Startups will play the leading role in generating this new innovative world of work and play as a hothouse for generating new ideas and skills. Opportunities for Startups will therefore abound. Why? Because every current major provider of products and services whether- big pharma, big banks, big media, big agriculture, big construction, big government or big cities will be desperately in need of a makeover with their clunky and inefficient 20</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">th</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> century legacy systems not cutting it in the 21</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">st</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> roller coaster super competitive world.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Likewise professional services in marketing, healthcare, travel, law, media and finance will be dominated by apps and algorithms generated by small agile second and third generation Startup companies.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A revolution in social development is also changing the way populations are coping with massively expanding populations and dwindling resource options, by returning to smaller self- sufficient and cooperative urban communities linked by high bandwidth communication and transport networks which will facilitate work, food and water security and learning opportunities in a Startup age.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Although big factories using automated robotic processes for producing industrial components - steel, concrete, glass, cars, turbines, trains and solar panels will still be essential using a mix of advanced technologies such as 3D printing, the streamlined and flexible information services needed to manage, market and optimise such products are more likely to be created by the host of future creative Startups- not the few software goliaths still lingering from of the 20</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">th</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> century. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This future downsizing of the enterprise aligned with local community structures augers well for the nascent Startup industry with its naturally flatter decentralised architecture, allowing a more flexible capacity to adapt to market signals rather than through rigid centralised control communications. Startups also have the capacity to upscale more flexibly using cloud-based frameworks and by forming cooperative networks rather than expanding centralised silos.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And Startups are not only leveraging new information technologies but also the new sciences of materials, biology, chemistry, physics and energy including- graphene- the next electronics</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">replacement for silicon; artificial photosynthesis- the future hope for solar energy; optical physics- for invisibility cloaking and super lasers, quantum computing and information teleportation ; synthetic biology- for growing organs and creating organisms to clean up pollution. Even gene sequencing machines, atomic microscopes and analytic laboratory processes are being downsized to desktop level, closing the comparative cost differential between rich and poor countries and large and small enterprises.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And governments are loving it- because Startups are offering a silver bullet to generate prosperity- a low cost simple way to foster new industries and jobs without the burden of expensive infrastructure, offering the next generation entry to a better life.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The fight against big enterprise corruption, bribery, price gouging and market cartels by big enterprise also benefits in a down sized decentralised app society. There have been numerous recent exposures of the underlying level of corruption, bribery, conflict of interest and contempt for customers within the finance and banking industries, as well as major sectors of the mining and construction industries. But if government regulators have failed to prevent the misuse of shareholder and public funds then agile Startup competitors offering cheaper, safer and more convenient services, may do the job for them.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">An example is the payments sector. Many smaller agile groups from technology and infrastructure poor African countries such as Kenya have taken the lead in these services of convenience and already provide perfectly viable mobile phone money transfer and business transaction services via text and a pin number, bypassing expensive western banking services.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Both banks and private equity funds are now scrambling to join the Startup race. But the banks are slow to shed their conservative no-risk attitude to lending and the large venture capital funds are being outflanked because of their elitist attitude, refusing to get involved until they are sure the Startup is well on its way to stardom. But in a future high risk roller coaster world there is no such thing as certainty and the professional funds are now at risk of being outflanked by the more nimble networks of crowdfunders and syndicates of wealthy Angel investors, happy to take a gamble, offering both seed capital for visionary ideas and serious followup investment for likely winners; gaining the advantage of an inside rails run to grab the major payoff prize.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Saving the Planet</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But the Startup has a much more important role to play in today’s world.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The latest climate report predicts our climate will be irrevocably changed within thirty years if we don’t change direction – despite all the current advances in renewable energy technology and efficiency savings.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By focussing on innovations in sustainable energy and poverty reduction- rather than trying to emulate another superficial social media or marketing billionaire, today’s Startups can play an essential role in saving the planet and its human cargo, including themselves.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is an indicator of the potential power of the maturing Startup industry, as a global phenomenon which also might just save the planet through the unleashing of an explosion of innovation and idealism; designing more resilient and sustainable systems, reducing the pressure on the planet’s ecosystems and supporting more cohesive communities; at the same time generating new pathways to peace through cooperative globalisation- offering hope for future generations in a time of existential crisis.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today's Startup is therefore not only a powerful force for change but also for survival. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A Level Playing Field</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They are also beginning to gain the upper hand in the marketplace of ideas. A tipping point is already emerging. There is now more investment capital available than viable projects. No more the demeaning cap in hand pleas by desperate entrepreneurs for funding - prostrating themselves in ridiculous speed</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">pitching marathons- often losing control over their IP in the process of a desperate race for assistance.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now there are many more alternative funding options to tap such as crowdfunding and Angel syndicates- more financial supply than startup demand; Universities, such as Stanford, MIT and Sydney as well as tech companies and government agencies are also competing with established VC firms, with many lower-tier VC firms caught in the squeeze, at risk of going to the wall.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So now it’s the VC firms turn to do the pitching and make concessions for a limited supply of viable Startups. Just look at the massive investment flows that are inundating the Startup industry.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How things change.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For the entrepreneurs and founders it means more control, more funding choices, and shorter lead times.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The centre of gravity of the talented app developers and entrepreneurs is also shifting away from the US back to their country of origin. Until recently at all levels of science and technology the US has been living on borrowed overseas intellectual capacity. For the last fifty years it succeeded beyond its wildest expectations in seducing the most talented of the world's minds to assist achieve its scientific and technological dominance, with offers of scholarships, state of the art research facilities, career paths, permanent residency and financial packages an order higher than their own countries could offer. And during the last fifty years hardly a research paper of any significance was published without input from a researcher of European or Asian origin. And the American economy prospered beyond all expectations.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But now the game is over, with governments across the world able to offer their talented graduates and entrepreneurs the necessary home grown incentives and facilities to pursue their careers in their own countries; at the same time contributing to their own national development.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So the Startups of tomorrow will be much more evenly distributed with a more level playing field and the world can look forward to an explosion in creative and innovative potential across all nation states. In tomorrow’s world there will be no alpha nation. Each Startup ecosystem will develop its own expertise in its own way, which it will then share with the world.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Preparing for the Future</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By the mid-forties the earth’s climate will have irredeemably changed to something much more violent and unpredictable if we stay on our current trajectory, even accounting for the growing use of renewable energy sources and greater efficiencies The best we can now hope for is to slow Armageddon down, but we may not be able to reverse it.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Climate change triggered by global warming will dominate every business and social decision within the next decade. Every country, community and company has to make it front and centre in their planning processes- what to produce, how to produce it, where to produce, in order to minimise energy consumption and slow the release of carbon.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Startup culture will play a pivotal role in this process- the key to the planet’s redemption. But only if its focus shifts to developing sustainable, educational and humanitarian processes and products rather than infantile notions of becoming the next billion dollar enterprise.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let’s hope that the current and future generation of founders, investors and new enterprises don’t lose sight of the real prioriies facing planet Earth and have the wisdom to avoid being dazzled by ephemeral dollar signs.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Otherwise they too will be swept away by its apocalyptic endgame.</span></div>
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David Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2134765294720198718.post-58330984324125577692013-08-15T23:53:00.000-07:002013-08-31T03:11:34.910-07:00Future Enterprise- The Future of Big Enterprise<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Director of the Future Enterprise Research Centre- David
Hunter Tow argues that the credibility of the Enterprise brand, particularly
Big Enterprise, has been severely damaged in recent times and can only be
remediated by meshing more closely with the entrepreneurial technologies of the
Web and the norms of a more sustainable and ethical society.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But the future doesn’t wait for perfect solutions and the
Big Enterprise is now caught in a roiling sea of change, having consistently
failed to adapt to the social and technological imperatives of the 20<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup>
and 21<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">st</span></sup> centuries. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The modern enterprise has emerged as a relatively recent
force in social development; the child of earlier corporate and other business
models, supposedly<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a more dynamic and
entrepreneurial entity than previous structures, allowing individuals to
cooperate more efficiently to achieve a range of common legal, financial and
social goals.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But it is not just rooted in the capitalist system, although
its primary goal is usually the generation of a return on investment for its
risk takers, whether private or public. Its goals may also be of a social,
non-profit or purely philanthropic nature. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Along the way it has acquired the usual mix of fellow
travellers - investors, shareholders, partners, regulators ideologists and
lobbyists. But when operating as a typical risk taker, it has been allocated
special privileges such as limited liability, low or non-existent tax breaks
and other special exemptions including often State sanctioned dispensation to
exploit the assets of the Commons- the natural endowments of the planet. These
can include- previous heritage sites, mineral rights, natural forests and
farming land, fresh water sources, unpolluted air and often intellectual
property; originally reserved for the public as a natural right for their
health and general wellbeing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Particularly since the 20<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup> century the
Enterprise has proudly emerged bigger and bolder, acquiring ‘multinational’
status and systematically utilising mass production and development methods
largely based on fossil fuels, to exploit and degrade the planet’s resources- blanketing
cities, waterways, farming<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>land and forests
with acrid poisonous residues, often causing endemic disease and misery as it
went. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Toxic mining and processing wastes still pollute rivers and
estuaries, killing the marine life and destroying the health and livelihoods of
many dependent communities. And this still continues in many developing and
developed countries such as Australia, Canada, China and the US where petrochemical
companies continue to spew out lead and other heavy metals as well as fracking
and tar sand residues, polluting the pristine farming land and groundwater.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The modern enterprise may therefore be more entrepreneurial,
dynamic and socially aware than its predecessors, but such travesties are still
common and acceptable because along the way the ethics of larger enterprises got
hijacked by their executives and regulators who lost sight of the fact that
they had an obligation to act for the wellbeing of the community at large as
well as maximise shareholders profits. Public servants in Government agencies
also went along with this form of criminality and a revolving contractor door
began creating massive conflicts of interest between regulators and managers,
which continues unabated today.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">And so began the era of the Big Enterprise-where corruption
and the ‘winner takes all’ mantra became the behavioural norm within business oligopolies
including- Big Pharma, Agri, Oil and Chemical, Defence and Armaments, Media,
Retail and Commerce, Banking and Finance and Construction and Engineering
industries; because might was right and scale was power and influence and
smaller enterprises often became collateral damage, unable to compete
effectively for market share. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">And because Big Enterprises became so profitable and
powerful, Governments continued to provide carte blanche for their exploitation
of the planet’s finite assets and pollution became routine, particularly by Big
Miners such as Chevron, which still refuses to pay compensation for massive
destroyed tribal habitats in the Amazon and Big Banks that stole the savings of
small investors and pension funds during the GFC and Big Agri companies like
Monsanto which established seed monopolies over farmer’s rights on the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>back of patented plant genes and Big Pharma
that tried it on with human genes and Big Manufacturers of consumer goods that
outsourced their production to substandard factories employing child labour in
developing countries with no legal safety protection.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">And the bigger they got, the more they assumed that the
Commons was available for the taking, until today much of the original
resources of a pristine planet has been stripped bare and big enterprise
continues to consume them at 150% of sustainable capacity. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">To counter the bad vibes it encountered from this pernicious
behaviour, Big Enterprise also gathered an army of apologists and cheer leaders
in the form of PR and lobbyist minions to sanitize their actions. They also
recruited security companies to protect their stolen assets against pesky
indigenous and activist groups who were outraged by their behaviour. Also police
and spy agencies such as the NSA began collecting the names and personal
records of those who interfered with lucrative enterprise arrangements such as
price fixing and illegal waste disposal, on the pretext of preventing
terrorism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">At the same time the creative accountants and corrupt
auditors found ways to minimise the tax paid by enterprises, including tech
giants such as Google and Apple, through the use of global tax havens or by
channelling profits through minimal tax zones. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">And really this litany of corruption and abuse has not been
improving. If anything it has got worse in the 20<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup> and 21<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">st</span></sup>
centuries. So despite the tens of thousands of sustainable small and medium law
abiding enterprises with a conscience – mainly family businesses not intent on
taking over the world, enterprises have been getting a reputation for
exhibiting psychopathic, anti-social behaviour. In other words, if anything
this cancerous growth in the corporate/enterprise sector has been metastasizing
at an exponential rate. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Not a pretty picture. And eventually something had to give. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Finally in the late 20<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup> and 21<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">st</span></sup>
century the tide began to turn. A new form of social enterprise<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>emerged- the activist NGOs –such as
Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch and Transparency International. These have
gained traction- finding ways to fight back against the goliaths by exposing
their excesses and successfully taking legal action. And smaller enterprises,
like farmers markets and small scale renewable energy developers are becoming
more innovative, creative and agile, offering a more personal and fairer option
to the communities of which they are a part.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The other change and it’s a big change, is that the
community has finally turned against Big Enterprise, becoming sceptical of its
anti-social practices and the hype and lies in the form<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of deceptive marketing and glossy advertising
campaigns; increasingly caught out by the social media, activists and whistle
blowers. Their greed and naked criminality is being exposed like never before
and governments are slowly being forced to act on their constituent’s behalf.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Enterprises and their shareholders and executive employees
cannot hide anymore in gated enclaves behind bland anonymous websites, immune
from the consequences of their actions. Through pervasive sensors and eyes in
the form of the smartphone cameras of citizens, every action of the Enterprise
is being monitored and reported. With the imminent advent of the Internet of
Things or sentient objects, the pervasiveness of watchful sensors will ramp up
exponentially. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">When Big Enterprises pollute or destroy habitats in Africa,
Asia or South America, with their products sourced from death trap factories,
or supply chains packed with illegal conflict minerals, the world will be
watching. The outcomes of enterprise actions will be reported in the social
media as they regularly are now within milliseconds and that record will remain
as a stain in the digital archives for perpetuity, accessible by prosecutors.
There are now not just a handful of investigative reporters tracking the
perfidy of big business, but the eyes and ears of citizens everywhere.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">As well as the increasing crackdown on Enterprise corruption
another revolution is underway. It is called Sustainability. To remain in synch
with community aspirations in a globally warming world shareholders are being
encouraged to punish enterprises that cause harm to the planet and its life
forms, whether through use of fossil fuels, pollution or fraudulent practices,
by withdrawing their investments. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Big Enterprises must not only produce profits for their
shareholders - often Funds representing the savings of everyday citizens, but
must also prove the delivery of socially sustainable benefits for the
communities such as local indigenous groups from which they draw their
sustenance in return for token jobs and royalties as in PNG. And the pressures
for this investor-driven change are now enormous. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">No more banks marketing fraudulent derivatives or rigging
borrowing rates or Walmart outsourcing garments made by women and children
working for a pittance in the fire factories of Bangladesh. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">All<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>too often
enterprises have are adopted a head in the sand attitude when confronted with
anything that impacts their short term profits and executive bonuses – repeating
the pathetic mantra- ‘It’s just business’ as a justification, similar to that
of mafia murderers- as if business and society’s ethics can be separated. How
can any reasonable planning forecasts for energy supplies, vehicle exports,
wheat harvests or fashion garments be calculated without taking into account major
geopolitical issues such as global warming and conflict affecting those
markets. And yet this is exactly what many big enterprises and governments
employing dozens of market analysts still produce. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Buy there’s a whiff of panic in the air from Big Enterprise.
The fossil fuel extractors are beginning to realise that a large proportion of
their oil, coal and gas reserves may now have to remain in the ground, where
their assets will become liabilities. The major tourist hotel chain operators
are also starting to sweat as they realise that the luxury resorts built in
tropical hurricane zones such as North Australia and the Caribbean will have to
be written off, as well as assets in the vast no go areas of the planet- those
becoming lethally hot or potentially flood prone. Instead the scope for the
smaller eco-friendly enterprises has expanded for those that don’t leave a
footprint on the planet or believe eternal growth is mandatory.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So Global Warming and the concomitant need to mesh with the
sustainability and ethical goals of the broader community are now emerging as
two massive constraints and shapers of the Future Enterprise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But a third factor has emerged that has caught most of the
bigger businesses totally flatfooted. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">This is the competition from the tens of thousands of next-gen
innovators involved in entrepreneurial Startups funded by thousands of smaller non-bank
investors, covering every application and industry that was once the exclusive
domain of the Big Enterprise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The services sector is now in turmoil with thousands of
small agile enterprises based in cooperative<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>hubs in every major and many minor cities across the globe; cashing in
on new opportunities to re-engineer traditional ways of doing business without
the need for massive PR budgets or bribes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">And an increasing proportion of the population is becoming
technically savvy and better educated, particularly in the massive emerging
populations of India, Africa, Asia and Latin America. Global conglomerates
across the planet are being stripped of their mystique and gatekeeper roles.
They are also being stripped bare by the new wave of creative apps, with agile
Startup groups disrupting every traditional industry process, from 3D manufacturing
to mobile payments, from personalised healthcare to online education, from
local eco-tourism to flexible online travel reservation;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>using clever algorithms linked to the Internet
and powered by cheap smartphones and pads <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The smaller enterprise is becoming more innovative,
creative, agile and competitive, offering a more personal and fairer option to
the community. Innovation and creativity are the new buzzwords and the citizen
beneficiaries are loving it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">And this is just the beginning.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The future enterprise will from now on be dominated by
technology- from the Internet / Web and every other innovation that goes with
it including- Virtual Clouds, Social Networks, Mobile devices and soon the
Internet of Things - all available at a relatively low entry and maintenance
cost. Technology will not just be an external enabler but will impact the very
heart and soul of the enterprise, changing its structure and ability to compete
in radical ways; allowing the smaller players to compete on a level playing
field. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">As the technological basis and norms of society shift, so
the structure of the enterprise will also be forced to adapt.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">And so we come to the fourth factor in the evolution of the
Future Enterprise- the Virtual Enterprise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Virtual Enterprise- VE is much more opportunistic and is
already here. It does not require its employees to be gathered under one roof
or even in one country or controlled from one centralised management team. The
VE marks the beginning of a networked distributed architecture obsoleting the
traditional siloed hierarchical model of the 20th century. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In such a fast-moving logistical revolution, skills and techniques
as well as materials have to be available on demand. Outsourcing of every
process- from HR to Manufacturing to IT, including strategic decision-making,
will therefore become the new norm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The workforce, partners as well as customers will be global
as well as local, with lightning paced decisions made to optimise production or
marketing as opportunities arise and where resources, including skilled and
unskilled contractors- even robots, are ready to go. We see virtual flexibility
today in the skilled expat diasporas and migration from high unemployment zones
of Europe and Asia, supporting every industry from the mining to construction
to finance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Smaller enterprises will have a significant advantage in
such a world- without carrying the enormous overheads and legacy of a large
enterprise. The virtual enterprise will allow them to scale up or down as required.
Without the artificial dichotomy of workers and management, a much more
cooperative and flexible model of social evolution can be introduced. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">This is likely to lead in fact to the structure of the
future enterprise eventually meshing with that of the Web, at the same time
connecting with community needs and aspirations on a symbiotic local, regional,
national or global basis. Such a pervasive networked architecture utilising a
Web based on much cleverer virtual Software Defined Network – SDN and Data
Linked Architectures, will apply equally for big and small, public and private
enterprises. This will facilitate distributed and largely autonomous
decision-making, with the capacity to dynamically route information and
intelligence- human or artificial, to key decision nodes as algorithms begin to
dominate the management of more complex processes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Organisational boundaries will become increasingly fluid and
porous with individuals moving freely between projects and career paths adding
value at each step, in turn allowing them to acquire new skills linked to
ongoing advanced learning programs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Conclusions<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So today’s lumbering enterprise behemoths will likely be
largely unrecognisable by 2030 - smaller, networked, far more flexible, agile,
scalable and opportunistic as well as cooperatively tuned to the needs of the
community as well as the customers they serve, eventually on a largely
autonomous basis. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">They will also apply the latest knowledge within a far more
ethical and non-combative environment; cooperatively as well as competitively,
applying sustainable methods of energy conservation and high standards of
ethical governance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Sound too good to be true? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Not really – just a logical and inevitable outcome driven by
changes in the global environment which are already largely in train and in
which the enterprise of the future will play an increasingly significant role.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
David Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2134765294720198718.post-673332155534321562012-11-22T20:12:00.004-08:002014-01-14T21:40:43.527-08:00Future Enterprise- The Future of Services<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The Director of the Future Enterprise Research
Centre, David Hunter Tow, predicts that the current explosion of new services
will trigger the biggest treasure hunt in the history of computing technology. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The Services Sector is currently in turmoil with
thousands of startup companies cashing in on new opportunities to re-engineer
traditional ways of doing business- and this is just the beginning. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Every process is currently being transformed into a
new service- not just in traditional service sectors such as retail, media,
education, healthcare, tourism and finance, but also in industry areas such as
manufacturing- with made to order 3D printing techniques, medical processing- offering
personalised DNA sequencing and diagnostics instantly on an iPhone chip, and inexpensive
solar energy and water purification systems cheaply available for domestic use in
developing countries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">There’s not one established service process that’s not
being seriously disrupted by smaller more agile independent players, leaving
the lumbering giants that once dominated commerce in the 20th century stumbling
blindly in their wake. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">All major service sectors are currently being carved
up, their key functions hived off and new innovations successfully introduced
in competition with those of the original gatekeepers, continuing to guard
their crumbling IP parapets, while new knowledge is generated by the terabyte. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">What is catalysing this frenzy and where is it
heading?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">A number of convergent factors are involved in this
21<sup>st</sup> century phenomenon – breakthroughs in new technology- mobile
computing, augmented reality, artificial intelligence and information analysis,
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>massive social change in the form of deregulation
of knowledge generation and access spurred on by the social media and global
Web; and an unstoppable surge in the creative potential of a new generation
steeped since birth in the cyber revolution, but now cheaply available; all
combined with the very low cost of market entry for innovative entrepreneurs. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Of course online retail and marketing started the
ball rolling in the nineties and has never looked back. Traditional main street
bricks and mortar retail has been fighting a ferocious rearguard action, but by
and large it’s been a losing battle ever since. The smart retailers hedged
their bets by combining new boutiques and online websites, but overall, new
leaders in the revolution such as Amazon, eBay, Apple and Google as well as thousands
of smaller specialists, just kept upping the ante with greater global choice,
faster service delivery and deeper discounts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Then came the new wave of targeted retail service
apps nibbling away at the leaders- companies like Foursquare peddling Deals of
the Day- but now over 130,000 Android and 300,000 Apple apps covering- self-checkout,
barcode scanning, loyalty programs, coupon and discount offers, retail location
discovery, best buys, augmented reality advertising, customer reviews, consumer
preferences and recommendations and mobile platform payment functions- all making
the online and store shopping experience easier and more exciting. And for
developers- the social media to inexpensively promote them. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">In the meantime the traditional Media and
Advertising industries were hurting. Gone were the salad days of broadsheets generating
the golden streams of classified advertising revenue from job, real estate and used
car advertisements; paying for the packed newsrooms and inflated expense
accounts in five star global hot spots. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">In their place one stop outsourced stories and
editorials with duplicated online headlines.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Again a frenzy of online experimentation began. But
pay walls had only limited success, even for the heavyweights such as the New
York Times and Wall Street Journal. Classified and banner advertising continued
to haemorrhage, migrating to web sites at greatly reduced prices and the social
and alternative media led by a myriad young independent operators, grabbing the
best headlines and news stories via cheap phones. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">As a result the print operators such as News Ltd are
only pale shadows of their former selves and have quietly retreated to the more
glamorous world of cable television and film. But this is only a temporary reprieve
as the low budget independent film and documentary makers gain ground on YouTube
and in Arthouse cinema seats, shooting with low cost video cameras, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>while at the same time chasing the more
interesting reality footage; all supported by the citizen journalists and
freelance bloggers desperate for a voice in the brave new cyber world. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">As a result of this revolution the power of
traditional media services has seriously waned and is likely to have largely
disappeared within a few decades, replaced by countless personalised web
channels and DVD and gaming startups, controlled by myriad smaller, more
energised groups and individuals. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">At the same time the Advertising industry is in a
monumental bind- caught in the headlight glare of change; trying to find the
magic brand formula for clients by mixing and matching the traditional and
burgeoning new media- but apart from reverting to Google and Facebook, not
having a lot of success with either, unable to capitalise effectively on the
thousands of creative local specialists and the cornucopia of apps.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Over time traditional advertising will therefore become
less significant to major brands as it transitions to an infotainment format, with
thousands of independent product sites and apps providing instant comparative advice
to consumers without the retrospin of big business.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Education<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">But the big revolution in services- the game changer
of the 21<sup>st</sup> century, will come from easy global access via mobile
online learning to high quality inexpensive education. This, according to educators,
will turn every mobile phone into a knowledge portal and return education to
the golden age of sharing ideas among communities of scholars, releasing them
from a boring classroom environment with second rate lecturers more interested
in their next overseas conference schedule.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Interestingly the revolution is being led from the
inside by some of the biggest and most hallowed institutions- Harvard,
Stanford, MIT and Yale. Suddenly global tertiary level courseware and soon
secondary level as well, is available at very low cost from these prestige US
universities through massive online platforms such as Coursera; while third
party reference sites across the Web such as Wikipedia, Google, Microsoft and
Facebook plus a host of talented independent specialists will provide countless
training services by integrating and coordinating domain related knowledge. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">This is the next phase in the democratisation of the
world’s storehouse of information, driven by the need to realise the potential
of the vast under-educated populations of Africa, Asia and the Middle East that
have missed out on the planet’s opportunities. It will allow anyone with a
mobile phone or tablet to access the same level of knowledge regardless of location,
income or the availability of local training resources.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
Over the coming decades therefore the services of learning and education
will undergo a profound shift, from the traditional classroom/face to face
method of knowledge transfer to a much more abstract model, where teaching will
be largely separated from its current physical infrastructure, such as classrooms
and campuses. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
It will also be linked to the Cyber Revolution- transforming the world’s
knowledge base into a vibrant multimedia forum- using the latest 3D, virtual reality
and gaming technologies- all delivered by smart mobile and embedded multi-media
kinetic devices linked to the Intelligent Web. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Healthcare<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Now the medical and healthcare services sector is also
ripe for revolution. Phone apps are increasingly available to act as remote
monitors for home based medical and health support purposes- the remote diagnosis
of life threatening conditions and algorithms to calculate correct drug dosages
and interventions for acute illnesses such as diabetes, malaria<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and HIV. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">This revolution has been driven to a large extent by
the healthcare needs of half the planet’s population that still live in dire
poverty, unable to afford traditional life-saving hospital support or
medication.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">These and many other diagnostic<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and treatment services are now putting
patients at the centre of the management of their own healthcare with the help
of trained volunteers, bypassing the bottlenecks involved in the traditional
delivery of medical services by scarce qualified practitioners.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
Future services will also be based on the accessibility of whole-of-life eHealth
records across both the developed and developing world, eventually allowing the
creation of online global health records from pre-birth to death, providing
personalised remote support services delivered on an iPhone or community personal
computer. Within a decade, health records will include the sequencing of an
individual’s genome as a vital diagnostic service at a cost of a few dollars.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
A number of other technological breakthroughs will mark the expansion of new
healthcare services within the next few decades including - stem cell therapies
to repair human tissue and organs, reversing heart disease for example;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>prevention of cancers and neurodegenerative
diseases such as<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>breast cancer and
Alzheimer’s;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>sensory repair such as
early retinal and corneal implants; prosthetics including neuron-controlled
limbs; brain/ nervous system interfaces, overcoming spinal paralysis using
brain signals; and interactive humanoid robots to provide human companionship
and physical support.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
All will be available as relatively inexpensive services once the enabling
technologies have been approved. Why? Because if the major healthcare companies
don’t provide them at<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>an affordable
price, entrepreneurial groups will, as occurred with the generic drug
revolution in developing countries when Big Pharma refused to drop their
prices. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Finance/Banking<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The Finance and Banking industry has been a sitting
duck for radical change for a long time- getting bigger and more obese with
minimal outside competition – seeking to control ever more functions in a
frenzy of greed- from investment, transaction processing, payments, exotic
specialist derivatives, consumer credit, foreign exchange, mortgage provision,
money transfers, advice on mergers, trading and anything else that shows a hint
of making easy money and inflating their balance sheets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">There have been numerous exposures of the underlying
level of corruption within the finance and banking industries, to the point of defrauding
their own customers and incurring horrendous trading losses by rogue dealers
through sloppy oversight, in the process threatening bankruptcy for themselves
and their clients and culminating in the GFC. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it didn’t deter them for long and despite
some fresh regulations and a massive infusion of taxpayer dollars, their
insatiable greed continued to explode. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">But if government regulators have failed to reign
them in - a number of agile competitors offering cheaper, safer and more
convenient services, may do the job for them. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The major looming battle is between the traditional finance
industry and the global technology giants such as Apple, Google and Paypal-
using their skills at creating innovative software to provide Payment and Credit
card services, using wireless apps that allow mobile phones to store loyalty
and credit card information, make payments and transfer money. Technology-poor African
countries such as Kenya have taken the lead in these services of convenience
and already provide perfectly viable phone money transfer services via text,
bypassing expensive banking services. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Now the bloated goliaths are fighting back with their
own brand apps. Banks are also using contactless near field technology to
convert smartphones into mobile credit and payment devices. But it may already
be too late as the genie has escaped the bottle and the smart entrepreneurs
realise the banking emperor has no clothes, except Wall-Mart hand me downs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">It is likely that banks in their present form will
cease to exist within the decade, effectively disembowelled by smarter consumer
and business service providers. They may become primarily back office
transaction processors and routine mortgage providers, with a veneer of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>deal making, offering a line of credit for
smaller uncomplicated businesses. All other functions will become the province
of highly skilled specialists. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">And so the frenzy of creativity and service
disruption will continue in all areas of commerce and industry, as the current
generation of software engineers and innovators becomes acutely aware that the
rules that propped up the old corporate structures are obsolete.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The old software guard that controlled the
boundaries of commerce so tightly are also increasingly ripe for the picking
because the original rules governing old sectors such as retail, media,
manufacturing, banking, pharmaceuticals, photography, music, publishing etc, just
don’t hold up anymore. They don’t reflect the changing social currents of the
new era, stuck in the quicksand of the past. Therefore the software and systems
houses that propped them up and contributed to their stranglehold, such as SAP,
Oracle, IBM, HP, Yahoo, Cisco etc, are also irrelevant, weighed down by their
own legacy technologies, now being systematically cannibalised by more agile
and visionary players.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Take any industry. Who buys the software that was
developed for it in the 80’s or even 90’s? Very few, except the dinosaurs
locked in by exorbitant long term maintenance agreements and they are now
paying a very high price for their conformity- unable to adapt or switch
systems before being swallowed by the next wave of innovation. Their present
systems just don’t reflect the changing way of doing business or social norms
that the new generation of consumers want and have come to expect.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The technology keeps shifting and each time it moves
it exposes the soft underbelly of the existing services and providers. Those
like IBM that have survived have had to radically remodel their businesses. In
the case of IBM – from hardware to software to services and now to ‘smart
planet’ systems.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The next generation of providers- Google, Apple,
Amazon and Facebook along with thousands of smaller service developers have
already moved in on these crumbling bastions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But even this new order are in turn being held to account by a host of
smaller creative startups. And no matter how often the established leaders of
any systems generation try to reinforce their monopolies by swallowing the
smaller more agile enterprises, they are constantly outflanked by the tide of new
knowledge and innovation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">And so the dance goes on – faster and faster and the
treasure trove of potentially lucrative services keeps growing.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
</div>
</div>
David Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2134765294720198718.post-13671510199828735182012-10-06T23:36:00.000-07:002012-11-22T20:13:34.568-08:00Future Enterprise- The Future of Big Data<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The Director of The Future Enterprise Research
Centre- David Hunter Tow, predicts that Big Data <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>has the potential to unlock greater value for
the enterprise and society, but in the process will radically disrupt traditional
organisational functions at all levels,- particularly between IT departments
and decision makers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The connotation of the term ‘Big Data’ is at best
extremely fuzzy and at worst highly misleading. It implicitly promises major
benefits in direct relationship to the quantity of data corralled by an
organisation. But Big Data is also hedged with constraints, contingencies and
uncertainties, requiring the solution of a number of associated problems before
it can translate into significant enterprise benefits.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">To unlock real value in the future will require-<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The design of more responsive enterprise and knowledge
architectures based on a network model, allowing for the delivery of realtime
adaptive decision responses;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">A closer relationship between the business and its
social environment enabling the enterprise to better understand the Big Picture;<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The introduction of common data standards and
streaming of seamless integrated multiple data types;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">A quantum leap in intelligence through the
application of more powerful artificial intelligence based, analytic, strategic
and predictive modelling tools.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The need to upgrade the quality and security of current
storage and processing infrastructure beyond current cloud architectures.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Networked Architectures<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">A more flexible and responsive knowledge architecture
for the future enterprise must reflect the reality of increasingly complex
decision making, allowing far more agile reaction within the fast changing
competitive environment of the 21<sup>st</sup> century. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
This will involve the introduction of networked models at both the
enterprise and information level, with nodes represented by decisions and
information flows linking the relationships between them; eventually capable of
autonomous adaptation within a constantly evolving social, technological,
business environment. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
.This Model, based on optimised decision pathways, with the capacity to
dynamically route information and intelligence resources, supported by
autonomous agent software, to appropriated decision makers, will be the core
driver of Big Data architectures. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
must be capable of integrating and analysing streams of information from
multiple sources in real time, channelling computing and information resources directly
to relevant decision nodes, enabling critical decisions to be implemented in
optimal time frames. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<o:p> </o:p><br />
The Big Picture<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<o:p> </o:p>The capacity of the enterprise to mesh with its physical and social
environment, will become increasingly vital for its survival in the future. Without
such a grounded relationship, poor decision making based on an inwardly
focussed mindset will continue to drive many large enterprises to bankruptcy.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It will also be insufficient to plan just one, two or five years ahead.
Although near-term sales and cost forecasts are important, understanding the
bigger shifts likely to impact all businesses in a future dominated by climate
change, geopolitics and globalisation, will be more essential to survival-
allowing a better balance of creative planning, adaptive resilience and risk
avoidance. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
In fact enterprises- particularly the biggest, have a poor history in seeing
the big picture. The larger the enterprise the more likely it is to believe in its own
invincibility in the marketplace.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
In more recent times both Ford and GM virtually went bankrupt and had to be
bailed out by the public purse because they would not or could not see the
obvious shift in consumer sentiment to smaller cars with lower fuel usage. And
then there was AIG, Lehman Brothers and Citibank and Fanny Mae which also
thought they were too big to fail. And now the giants Kodak and
Sony and many others are struggling. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<o:p> </o:p>In all the above cases, enterprise management ignored the signals coming
loud and clear from their environments via consumers and customers, through a
combination of ignorance and arrogance. In the meantime other more agile
companies such as Microsoft picked up the trend towards desktop computing and exploited the
opportunities left by IBM. But then Microsoft almost lost the plot to Google by not seeing
the emerging power of the Internet as the dominant driver of information in
today’s society. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<o:p> </o:p>So despite the use of the latest business intelligence software busily
scavenging for patterns from Big Data generated from past customer and
financial data, standard industry forecasts, plus
some glitzy dashboard software, typical BI analysis without the guidance of the
big picture will be virtually useless as a pathway to an uncertain future.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<o:p> </o:p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Big Data now has the potential to open the door to
this broader and more inclusive vision, which has rarely been a priority for
most enterprises in the past. But that will now change. Survival, particularly
for larger enterprises will be based on interpreting the bigger picture’s
impact. If managed effectively Big Data will be the catalyst that provides a
hedge against this myopia, but only if management’s mindset becomes more
flexible and humble. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The Intelligent Enterprise<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Big Data will also trigger the need to become much smarter, utilizing the
latest artificial intelligence and statistical techniques such as evolutionary
algorithms, neural networks and Bayesian logic to achieve a smarter enterprise.
The latest 'Smart Planet' paradigm shift, in which the infrastructure, business
and environmental processes of the planet are being re-engineered to optimise
performance and achieve more sustainable outcomes, will also be a major driver
for the networked smarter enterprise of the future. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
The Smart Planet imperative will demand that decisions relating to society’s
survival and wellbeing be made more rigorously, efficiently, adaptively and
therefore autonomously. <br />
But a Smart Planet revolution without a Smarter Enterprise mindshift won’t
compute.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<o:p> </o:p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Part of that mindshift will be a far greater
emphasis on the future. The past is still a poor predictor of what’s to come.
To improve the quality of decision-making, serious realtime forecasting will
need to be boosted. <span style="color: #333333;">Such systems will rely on
information collected from numerous internal and external sources within an
environment, using artificial intelligence algorithms and rules to analyse vital
signals and interconnected trends and patterns that generate complex outcomes.
The results of this analysis will then be channelled autonomously to the
appropriate decision-makers for action.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">But despite a range
of mathematical improvements in our foresight and modelling methods, developed
in tandem with a broader understanding of scientific and social principles, the
corporate capacity to forecast effectively has been sadly lacking when data
doesn’t follow obvious trends or when the signals of emerging change are faint.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span>Most forecasting textbooks traditionally list a number of well-developed
techniques based around time series projections, regression analysis, Delphi
and scenario expert options, as well as artificial neural networks and
simulation modelling. But these have usually failed to predict the future in
times of abrupt change within the broader physical, social and economic
environment, such as the recent extreme disasters of the global financial
crisis or the Arab democratic revolution. <o:p></o:p></div>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">The next phase in
this evolution will be models powerful enough to not just deliver predictions
but accurately prioritise the resources needed to manage those predictions, and
develop project plans for their implementation. Then track the results to check
on their effectiveness. In other words utilise textbook automatic feedback
control principles much more rigorously. After a bridge or power grid has been
built, its maintenance needs to be permanently and autonomously managed to
prevent future catastrophic failures or escalating rebuild costs, tracked by the
latest generation<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of intelligent sensors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">This common sense
methodology of feedback and continuous monitoring of outcomes has been sadly
lacking in many enterprises but will now be essential if business and society
is to survive the onslaught of massive future shock. It will involve scanning
for emerging problems, aggregating data streams from millions of internet-connected
sensor systems and monitoring the pulse of the global environment- not just at
the business level but also at the political, technological and environmental
flashpoints.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Processes based on Big Data therefore
need to be recognised as the beginning of the our civilisation’s survival fightback;
applying adaptive and responsive techniques based on massive datasets, largely
autonomously, because they are so big and complex that manual methods will fail,
to the optimisation of the design, maintenance and operation of every process
and application on the planet. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"></span> <span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The Cloud Solution <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Collecting and storing the tsunami of data
resulting from Big Data overload is a major stumbling block to the above goal,
already creating unforeseen problems for the average enterprise by generating
exponentially exploding datasets; as the Science communities- astronomers,
biologists, cosmologists and particle physicists, have already discovered. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Traditional Relational or Hadoop
databases, SOA architectures and SQL databases are not optimised for such massive real time
processing, particularly as much of the data in the future will be unstructured
and garnered from heterogeneous sources such as web pages, videos, RSS feeds,
market intelligence, statistical data, electronic devices, instrumentation,
control systems and sensors.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">But just in time, Cloud processing
management has emerged, offering an alternative solution, which few large
organisations will be able resist. Now they will have the seductive choice of offloading
the complete data management side of their operations to third parties in
return for economies of scale and flexibility. The tradeoff is partial loss of
control, but over time, providing security, backup and service levels are
maintained at a rigorous standard, the organisation should benefit by being
able to improve its focus on the core critical aspects of its operations. Only
time and verification will tell if this tradeoff can deliver on its promise. </span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The IT department will be virtually invisible to decision-makers with the primary task to select the appropriate tools to implement enterprise strategies<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Cloud computing will eventually offer
a complete managed haven of services for Big Data- software, Security,
Processing, Storage, Hardware and Infrastructure. All are now in the offing.
But in the near future, Knowledge as a Service is likely to presage the
greatest change within the Future Enterprise ecosystem.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Real-time integration of disparate
data and application methodologies is a key challenge here, with the current
conventional multi-staged approach being- build a data warehouse to consolidate
storage, then aggregate information sources <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and then select a BI tool and then process
user queries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this is already
proving expensive, slow and error prone. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">A number of innovative platforms are
being developed in this sector based on enterprise information streaming
models. These provide a virtual unified view of the data stream without first
transferring it to a central repository and also point the way to the next step
of fully autonomous tool selection and decision support.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Future Shock<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">It is now clear that the global environment is
placing place enormous pressure on all organisations, not just from a
competitive perspective but from the need to upgrade ethical and sustainability
standards. This will continue at an accelerating pace. The changing
technological environment in particular is already disrupting entire service
industries <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>e-commerce in particular- retailing,
banking, trading and supply. Now a second wave of service industries- manufacturing,
healthcare, education, media, advertising, legal, hospitality and travel is being
turned upside down by the revolution. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">In this revolution Big Data is acting as a major
catalyst, offering the glittering prize of untold value-added, but will
generate this cornuopia only if it is also agile and precisely targeted,
meeting the specific needs of multiple domains. Specialised decision-making in finance,
biology, medical, cosmological, pharmaceutical, government, media and legal
applications will require different classes of algorithmic support. And even
domain analytic specialists may soon be obsolete as expert domain algorithms
generated from the ever expanding cumulative knowledge of the Web begin to
dominate the decision process. Critically however such algorithms will need to
be continuously verified and adapted within a shifting social and business
environment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Because of the rate of innovation and subsequent
disruption, service-based systems will therefore need to be self-adaptive;
applying intelligent algorithms to support new options as well as the growth of
collaborative ventures involving multiple stakeholders, such as commonly occur
in service industries such as Hospitality, Travel and Real Estate. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">New technological innovations such as smartphones
and tablets are also increasingly filling mobile gaps and shortfalls in
existing services. For example, by starting to displace traditional credit
card/banking in the lucrative payments market and enabling the personalisation
of healthcare and educational services in remote areas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Such upgrades in the service sector imply the use of
increasingly pervasive Big Datasets with low access time latencies. Response
timeframes are critical, with cumbersome reporting and query tools way too slow
for today’s end user needs. So the days of manual intervention in the decision
process are drawing to a close as global markets creating decisions involving
hundreds of variables required instantly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">So the stage is set. The filtering,
pattern matching and super-intelligent analytic processing required to make
sense of the overload of big Data, will mean that human intervention in the decision
process will inevitably become a significant bottleneck. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">But the future smart enterprise must
have the flexibility to focus and deploy its cooperative intelligence
autonomously, at all levels of the organisation. This will be a proactive response
to new opportunities and competitive pressures in the marketplace.<br />
<br />
The level of volume and complexity of decision-making will continually and
rapidly increase over time in response to the changing social, geopolitical and
technological environment. The resulting network interactions involving
customers, supply chains, services, markets and logistics will eventually make
it impossible for humans to compete. It will become just too complex and
time-consuming even for dedicated teams of humans to manage, just as it is
impossible to control complex trading, production, marketing operations
manually or chemical plants and space missions today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<br />
The IT centre will rapidly transform into tomorrow’s Knowledge Technology
Centre- KT Centre. This will place further pressure on the need for real-time high
quality decision-making.<br />
<br />
By 2030 humans will become partners in enterprise decision processes powered by
intelligent algorithms based on realtime knowledge outcomes plus research
encapsulated in the Intelligent Web. But over time their input, as for airline
pilots and fast train drivers today, will be largely symbolic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Big Data therefore will have provided a
major catalyst for an extreme makeover of the future enterprise, the business
environment, for society and the planet.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;"><br />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">.<br />
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David Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2134765294720198718.post-34645239181863726242012-05-06T19:52:00.000-07:002012-11-22T20:14:02.199-08:00Future Enterprise- The Future of AlgorithmsFuture Enterprise – The Future of Algorithms<br />
Algorithms are taking over the world – at least the computational part of it- and that could be a good thing.<br />
In a real sense the rise of algorithms is a sign of human intellectual maturity in terms of our capacity as a society to manage technology and science at a sophisticated level; representing the coming together of our mastery of computational science, together with the capacity to abstract the key essence of a process- to generalise and commoditise it. <br />
The ubiquity of algorithms is in fact the next logical step in our technological evolution as a species and perhaps marks our evolution towards super-species status.<br />
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Algorithms translate a process into instructions that a computing machine can understand, based on a mathematical, statistical and logical framework. They are usually developed to minimise and rigorise the computing steps involved in a process or formula and therefore maximise its solution efficiency in terms of computing resources, while at the same time improving its accuracy and verifiability.<br />
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Algorithms come in all shapes and sizes and have been around a long time- well before the official computer age. Originally invented by Indian mathematicians, they were documented by a Muslim scholar of the 9th century- al-Khwarizmi and later applied by Euclid and Newton to assist in the ormalisation of their theories of geometry and forces of nature.<br />
In the future almost every process or method will be converted to an algorithm for computational processing and solution, as long as it can be defined as a series of mathematical and logical statements, ideally capable of being run on a Turing machine. A Turing machine is a mathematical model of a general computing machine, invented by Alan Turing, which we use for our current computing requirements. Turing machines can come in a variety of flavours, including deterministic, quantum, probabilistic and non-deterministic, all of which can applied to solve different classes of problems. <br />
But regardless, any computation, even those based on alternate logical models such as Cellular Automata or recursive programming languages, can also theoretically be performed on a Turing machine. The brain however, because of its enormous non-linear problem-solving capacity, has recently been classified as a Super-Turing machine, but the jury is still out as to whether it falls in a different computational class to the standard Turing model. <br />
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Many algorithms incorporating powerful standard mathematical and statistical techniques, such as error correction, matrix processing, random number generation, Fourier analysis, ranking, sorting and Mandelbrot set generation etc, were coded originally as computational computer routines, using languages dating from the 50s and 60s including- Fortran, Algol, Lisp, Cobol, C++ and PL1. Later common algorithms were also incorporated in mathematical libraries such as Mathematica making them easier to access and apply.<br />
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They have now infiltrated every application and industry on the planet, applied for example to streamline and rigorise operations in manufacturing, production, logistics and engineering. They cover standard operational control methods such as linear programming, process control and optimisation, simulation, queuing, scheduling and packing theory, critical path analysis, project management and quality control. <br />
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Engineers and scientists increasingly link them to AI techniques such as Bayesian and Neural networks, Fuzzy logic and Evolutionary programming, to optimise processes and solve complex research problems. <br />
But over time, following the flow of computerisation, the ubiquitous algorithm has extended into every field of human endeavour including- business and finance, information technology and communication, robotics, design and graphics, medicine and biology, ecosystems and the environment and astronomy and cosmology; in the process applying data mining, knowledge discovery and prediction and forecasting techniques to larger and larger datasets. <br />
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Indeed, whenever new technologies emerge or mature, algorithms inevitably follow, designed to do the heavy computational lifting, allowing developers to focus on the more creative aspects.<br />
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Other algorithmic applications now cover whole sub-fields of knowledge such as- game theory, machine learning, adaptive organisation, strategic decision- making, econometrics, bioinformatics, network analysis and optimisation, resource allocation, planning, supply chain management and traffic flow logistics. <br />
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In addition, more and more applications are being drawn into the vortex of the algorithm which were once the province of professional experts including- heart and brain wave analysis, genome and protein structure research, quantum particle modelling, formal mathematical proofs, air traffic and transport system control, weather forecasting, automatic vehicle driving, financial engineering, stock market trading and encryption analysis.<br />
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A number of such areas also involve high risk to human life, such as heavy machine operation, automatic vehicle and traffic control and critical decisions relating to infrastructure management such as dams, power plants, grids, rolling stock, bridge and road construction and container loading. <br />
The Web of course is the new playground for algorithms and these can also have far reaching impacts. <br />
For example in 2010, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 900 points in a matter of minutes in what is now known as a Flash Crash. It appears that for a few minutes several algorithms were locked in a death dance, in much the same manner as two closely bound neutron stars before implosion, triggering a massive collapse in the value of the US stock market. It was a wake-up call to the fact that in any complex system involving multiple feedback loops, it has been mathematically proven that unforeseen combinations of computational events will take place sooner or later.<br />
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Even today’s news headlines are shaped by algorithms. Not only is it normal for Internet users to select feeds relating to the personalised content they prefer, perhaps on a feel-good basis, but also stories are selected and curated by search-engine algorithms to suit categories of advertisers. This raises the issue of algorithms being applied to create different bubble realities that may not reflect the priorities of society as a whole- such as global warming, democracy at risk or a critical food shortage.<br />
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<br />
A major dimension of the impact of algorithms is the issue of job obsolescence. It is not just the unskilled jobs of shop assistants, office admin and factory workers, marketing and research assistants that are at risk, but middle-class, white-collar occupations, from para-legals to journalists to news readers. As algorithms become smarter and more pervasive this trend will extend up the food chain to many higher level management categories, where strategic rather than operational decision-making is primary. <br />
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And so we come to the millions of smartphone apps which are now available to support us in every aspect of our daily activities, but can also lead us to the dark side of a big brother society, where through the pervasive monitoring of location, shopping transactions and social connections, every individual’s life and timeline can be tracked and analysed using algorithms, with everyone eventually becoming a person of interest in the global society. <br />
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Social networks trade personal information to generate revenues, while the individual loses their right to privacy but doesn’t receive any compensation. Certainly the area of apps governing personal and lifestyle choice is now being invaded by ubiquitous algorithms in the form of Recommendation Systems. Much of the information garnered from social networks is filtered and personalised to guide lifestyle and entertainment; selecting an exercise regime, a relationship, online book or author, and restaurant or movie choice based on past experience and behavioural profiles. And already a third of US shoppers use the internet to make a buying decision. <br />
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These subliminal recommender systems represent the beginning of an always-on individual omnipresence, tracking your car on a GPS or recognising your face in a photograph, now combined with an AI generated virtual assistant such as Siri. More recent algorithms also have the potential to combine information to infer further hidden aspects of lifestyle.<br />
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But the real problem with such Recommender systems is their poor record at forecasting, particularly in areas of complex human behaviour and desires. And in addition the inner logic governing their Delphic predictions is generally hidden and opaque; meaning that guesswork is conveniently covered up while decision-making becomes dumbed down.<br />
Enterprises such as banks, insurance companies, retail outlets and Government agencies compete to build algorithms to feed insatiable databases of personal profiles; constantly analysed for hidden consumer patterns to discover who is most likely to default on a loan, buy a book, listen to a song or watch a movie. Or who is most likely to build a bomb? <br />
The rise of the algorithms embedded in our lives could not have occurred without the surge in the inter-connected, online existence we lead today. We are increasingly part of the web and its numerous sub-networks, constantly in a state of flux. <br />
A supermarket chain can access detailed data not only from its millions of loyalty cards but also from every transaction in every branch. A small improvement in efficiency can save millions of dollars. The mushrooming processing power of computers means that the data collected can be stored and churned continuously in the hunt for persons of interest. So who is to stop them if consumer groups aren’t vigilant?<br />
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This is not too much of a nuisance when choosing a book or a movie, but it can be a serious problem if applied to credit rating assessment or authorisation of healthcare insurance. If an algorithm is charged with predicting whether an individual is likely to need medical care, how might that affect their quality of life? Is a computer program better able to calculate kidney transplant survival statistics and decide who should receive a donor organ? Algorithms are now available to diagnose cancer and determine the optimum heart management procedure using the latest worldwide research. Can human doctors compete in the longer term and will algorithms be better at applying game theory to determine the ethical outcomes of who should live or die? <br />
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The ethics of data mining is not limited to privacy or medical issues. Should the public have more control over the application of algorithms that guide killer drones towards human targets. Eventually computer-controlled drones will rule the skies, potentially deciding on targets independently of humans, as their AI selection algorithms improve. But if an innocent civilian is mistaken for the target or coordinates are accidently scrambled, can the algorithm be corrected in time to avoid collateral damage? <br />
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So algorithms must have built-in adaptation strategies to stay relevant like every other artifact or life form on the planet. If not they could become hidden time bombs. They will require ultra-rigorous testing and maintenance over time because they can become obsolete like any process governed by a changing environment – such as the y2k computer bug and the automatic trading anomaly. If used for prediction and trend forecasting they will be particularly risky to humans. If the environment changes outside the original design parameters, then the algorithm must be also immediately adapted. otherwise prediction models and simulators such as the proposed FuturICT global social observatory might deliver devastatingly misleading forecasts.<br />
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As mentioned, a number of artificial intelligent techniques depend on algorithms for their core implementation including: Genetic algorithms, Bayesian networks, Fuzzy logic, Swarm intelligence, Neural networks and Intelligent agents. <br />
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The future of business intelligence lies in systems that can guide and deliver increasingly smart decisions in a volatile and uncertain environment. Such decisions incorporating sophisticated levels of intelligent problem-solving will increasingly be applied autonomously and within real time constraints to achieve the level of adaptability required to survive, particularly now within an environment of global warming.<br />
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In this new adaptive world the algorithm is therefore a two-edged sword. On the one hand it can create the most efficient path to implementing a process. But on the other, if it is inflexible and incapable of adapting, for example choosing to continue to manufacture large fossil fuel burning vehicles, it can lead to collapse, as in the case of Ford and GM. <br />
Good decision-making is therefore dependent on a process of adapting to changes in the marketplace which involves a shift towards predictive performance management; moving beyond simple extrapolation metrics to a form of artificial intelligence based software analysis and learning, such as offered by evolutionary algorithms. <br />
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Life depends on adaptive algorithms as well – assessing distance to a food source encoded in the dance of a bee, determining the meaning of speech or acoustic sounds, discriminating between friend or foe., the ability of a bird to navigate based on the polarisation angle of the sun or a bat avoiding collisions based on split-second acoustic calculations. <br />
These algorithms have taken millions of years to evolve and they keep evolving as the animal adapts in relation to its environment. <br />
But here’s the problem for man-made algorithms. Very few have been designed with the capacity to evolve without direct human intervention, which may come too late as in the case of an obsolete vaccine or inadequately encrypted file. <br />
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The rate of change impacting enterprise environments in the future will continue to accelerate, forcing the rate of decision making to increase in response autonomously, with minimal human intervention. This has already occurred in advanced control, communication and manufacturing systems and is becoming increasingly common at the operational level in e-business procurement, enterprise resource planning, financial management and marketing applications, all of which are dependent on a large number of algorithms.<br />
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Dynamic decision support architectures will be required to support this momentum and be capable of drawing seamlessly on external as well as internal sources of knowledge to facilitate focussed decision capability.<br />
Algorithms will need to evolve to underpin such architectures and act as a bulwark in this uncertain world, eventually driving it without human intervention; but only if they are self- verifying within the parameters of their human and computational environment.David Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2134765294720198718.post-65458767063913583112012-01-12T03:33:00.002-08:002013-08-15T01:28:15.314-07:00Future Enterprise- The Future of The Internet<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
David Hunter Tow – Director of the Future Enterprise Research Centre, forecasts that within the next decade the Internet and Web may be at risk of splitting into a number of separate entities- fragmenting under technological, national, business and social pressures.<br />
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In its place may emerge a network of networks – continuously morphing- linking and fragmenting, with no central dominant domain backbone; instead a disconnected, random structure of networks with information channeled through uncoordinated switching stations and content hubs, controlled by a range of geopolitical, social and enterprise interests.<br />
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For authoritarian states such as China, North Korea, Iran and Syria as well as criminal cartels, this will facilitate the expansion of their operations, allowing them to circumvent exposure of illegal activities in much the same way as the current Darknet network.<br />
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Darknet- the alternate network of virtual channels that currently operates beneath the backbone of the Internet has long been a place for clandestine operations, by both criminal and state networks. It is also used as a tool by cyber authorities to provide evidence of DDoS, port scanning, worms and other malware; also allowing dissidents from repressive regimes to remain in touch with the outside world, providing protection to whistle blowers and hosting pirated movie and music sites- out of reach of traditional search engines.<br />
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Autocratic governments are also maintaining increasingly tight censorship over politically sensitive sites via controlled points of entry to their cyber fiefdoms, even to the extent of distorting current and historical events. Both China and Iran now have plans to establish their own Internet infrastructure to further strengthen the control and censorship of their populations and no doubt other authoritarian states will follow. But this power won’t be limited to dictator-run states. The increasing threat of Internet censorship via the proposed SOPA- Stop Online piracy Action legislation in the US, and now the exposure of the NSA's pervasive Cyberspy program, confirms the threat facing online privacy and freedom even within democratic nations and has motivated opposition by citizens and companies concerned about the risks of storing personal and confidential corporate data in US Clouds.<br />
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At the same time white hat hacker and pro-privacy groupsare launching local wireless Meshnets without any centralsed control as well as their own communication satellites linked to a grid of tracking stations in order to avoid such Government surveillance and interference, as discussed at the recent Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin.<br />
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But Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon as well as Cable and Internet TV companies have already begun to fragment the web to support their own Walled Garden strategies of quarantining and manipulating membership data, applications, entertainment, search results and identities. Facebook membership data cannot be transferred to other social sites. Adobe’s Flash software as well as a number of developer applications were banned by Apple, which means the iPhone browser cannot display a large portion of the Internet. Likewise Amazon’s Kindle will only display books on sale or for rent by the company. Google fails to protect email privacy or adequately attribute search results to original sources.<br />
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Such social sites have become closed silos, similar in many respects to those of authoritarian sites such as China.<br />
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The more this type of restricted, proprietary architecture gains traction on the Web the more it will become fragmented and the easier it will be for criminal groups to exploit, placing the open and egalitarian charter of the future Internet at risk.<br />
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But there are compelling reasons why such closed silo strategies and gross invasion of citizen privacy, introduced by Governments and mega Web companies is likely to eventually collapse.<br />
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As outlined in previous blogs, physics ordains that information flows cannot be constrained and will eventually spread by pathways of least resistance, driven byconsumer demand, competitive pressure and technological advances. In addition, biological ecosystems with limited genetic variation are the most vulnerable to extinction. Companies within the cyber ecosphere are equally vulnerable- more susceptible to competition and rapid changes in their technological and social environments if open access to innovative ideas and information flows is restricted. And balkanisation of the Intenet is very bad for business- particularly US business as companies retreat from using vulnerable Cloud and Social Media services.<br />
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The emergence of the Semantic Web is also a catalyst for greater openness, facilitating the interpretation, linking and application of knowledge stored in millions of discrete databases across the Web. This is a vital advance in fostering greater transparency, flexibility and autonomy within the Cybersphere.<br />
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But the battle for web control and Internet supremacy is only just beginning, not only between the US and China but also involving all other nations in the newly emerging multi-polar world. The US still maintains the controlling votes in ICAAN - the Domain management company, despite many attempts to democratise its management.<br />
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But now the US will be forced to flex up and stop playing the role of alpha male in an increasingly equal and diverse information world.<br />
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By its obsession with maintaining technology dominance of critical assets such as the Web, particularly in a time of global warming, with an urgent need to effectively manage <br />
global resources for all populations, the US is ironically accelerating the rise of alternate Internets and Webs.<br />
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China is charging ahead with alternate communication networks, as in most areas of new technology. After all its search engine - Baidu, already has 500 million users - almost as many as Google worldwide. Baidu works hand in glove with the Central Communist Party and is the ultimate arbiter of reality for its users, committed to working within the Government's paranoid censorship parameters constrained by a massive firewall of 50,000 Internet police. But with 200 million bloggers producing trillions of words a day as well as subscribers to RenRen and Seina Weibo- the equivalent of Facebook and Twitter, it’s becoming an increasingly tough call- even for a totalitarian government.<br />
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So now the momentum is building for a multi-Internet infrastructure as governments of all colours attempt to impose their will and dominate the evolution of the pre-eminent artefact of our civilisation, which may hold the key to the planet’s survival.<br />
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In the short term China cannot replicate the mega optic fibre cable, satellite and server networks of the present Internet, but it can deploy a mesh of alternate wireless channels linking its own network assets to other friendly systems, for example in Africa, South America, Iran and Russia; at the same time constructing a topology complete with their own domain servers. In addition, it will develop its own knowledge hubs while leveraging the existing core public assets such as the priceless science, engineering, social and economic databases of the current Web.<br />
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The new US Net Neutrality rules recently introduced to prevent balkanisation are already under heavy fire, with broadband providers prevented from engaging in anti-competitive behaviour by blocking content or slowing access to sites and applications, as Comcast attempted to do in 2007 with the BitTorrent "peer-to-peer" protocol.<br />
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But as the pressure to bypass the new rules to allow a multi-speed Internet has increased, so too have the tensions been building between the major Social Web, Broadband and Cloud providers- Google, Apple, Facebook, Cisco, Verizon, Amazon, VMware etc. Cloud vendors have been erecting a new set of proprietary firewalls, with VMware the exception, adopting an open architecture to encourage developers to leverage and extend its technology.<br />
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The more such closed architecture with differing operational and security standards gain traction however, the higher the risk that the CloudSphere will eventually become fragmented, less productive and more vulnerable to hacking.<br />
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Meanwhile, despite its financial problems, the EU plans to spend billions on boosting broadband speeds to increase productivity and competitiveness. The European Commission will spend 9 billion euros to rollout super-fast broadband infrastructure and services across the European Union to help create a single market for digital public services by 2020 for half its population including- e-health, intelligent energy and cyber security applications, assisting utility companies, construction cooperatives, public authorities and rural users.<br />
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New Internet Architecture options are also on the horizon, with a number of innovations in train, forecast to improve the Web’s flexibility while avoiding fragmentation. But these could be put in jeopardy by the US’s intransigence over ceding control.<br />
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For example the National Science Foundation has established the Future Internet Architecture program- Nebula, to better secure Internet- Id verification, data safety, mobile access and cloud computing. Google is also setting up a new Web architecture to improve search effectiveness.<br />
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At a recent Internet Conference run by the European Paradiso Group, a number of advanced options were discussed including- Internet routing algorithms with quantum options to provide more efficient and secure routing paths; flexible spectrum allocation; a smart Internet environment enabled by networked sensors; a content and context aware Web combined with self-organising and self-adaptive capabilities to provide more autonomy and optimisation.<br />
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In addition, the proposed Named Data Networking (NDN) architecture shifts the communication emphasis from today's focus on resource addresses, servers, and hosts, to one oriented to content and context. By identifying data objects instead of just locations, NDN transforms data into the primary Internet focus. While the current Internet secures the channel or path between two communication points, adding data encryption as an extra, NDN will implicitly secure content security and trust.<br />
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These and other advances will result in the emergence of Internet Mark 3.0, following its early incarnation as a simple packet data transfer system and then transforming into a pervasive information search powerhouse over the last decade<br />
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But Internet 3.0 will only emerge if fragmentation of its infrastructure and the ensuing chaos is avoided<br />
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Internet Mark 3.0 will offer- complex multidimensional and ultra-efficient processing and the dissemination of realtime, multi-services and decision-making based on content and context– not just physical objects.<br />
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Such capability will drive societal transformation at hyper speed, catalysing - urbanisation, mobility, vastly improved health and education services and all forms of virtual reality, as well as the beginning of a truly symbiotic Web-Human partnership in complex decision-making.<br />
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The Future of the Web has been discussed in a number of previous blogs by the author.<br />
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In summary-<br />
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By 2015 Web 2.0- The Social Web- will have developed into a complex multimedia interweaving of ideas, knowledge and social commentary, connecting over three billion people on the planet. <br />
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By 2025, Web 3.0- The Semantic Web- will have made many important contributions to new knowledge through network science, logical inference artificial intelligence. It will be powered by a seamless, computational mesh, enveloping and connecting human and artificial life and will encompass all facets of our social and business lives- always on and available to manage every need. <br />
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By 2035, Web 4.0- the Intelligent Web- will be ubiquitous- able to interact with the repository of all available knowledge of human civilisation- past and present, digitally coded and archived for automatic retrieval and analysis. Human intelligence will have co-joined with advanced forms of artificial intelligence, creating a higher or meta-level of knowledge processing. This will be essential for supporting the complex decision-making and problem solving capacity required for civilisation's future survival and progress.<br />
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Also by 2035 the last of the enterprise walled gardens will break down and leak like stone walls surrounding an ancient town. Techniques and technologies across the spectrum of knowledge will continue to spread, expand and link in new ways as they always have, bypassing temporary impediments, because that is the physical reality of information and knowledge.<br />
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The future Internet will inevitably follow these laws- becoming more open and flexible, using common protocols as enterprises and consumers demand greater flexibility. As an increasing number of data providers begin to implement Tim Bernier Lee’s Linked Data principles, it will transform into the creation of an open global Infosphere containing billions of links and coordinated by the World Wide Web Consortium.<br />
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This will offer a blueprint for connecting information from different sources into a single global data repository, with the Global Commons and Public Domain models playing an increasingly important democratic role.<br />
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Most importantly the Web will be equally available to and controlled by all nations, under the auspices of a specially constituted UN body, devolving forever away from US control.<br />
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But this can only happen if the underlying structural integrity of the Internet and Web is preserved. If managed as a global cooperative project it will result in enormous benefits for the whole of humanity. But if the Future Internet splits and fragments along geopolitical and competitive lines, as its current evolution suggests, then much of its potential benefit for our civilisation and planet will dissipate.<br />
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The next evolutionary phase of this pre-eminent human-engineered organism of the 21st century will be critical.</div>
David Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2134765294720198718.post-20912216137934910232011-09-13T06:36:00.000-07:002011-09-13T06:36:35.128-07:00Future Enterprise- CyberwarsThe Fortune top 2000 companies as well as Governments across the world are under serious cyber attack and it is likely to get much worse.<br />
Cybercrime is a generic term for the illegal incursion and disruption at the national, enterprise and community level, of both cyber and physical assets. Cyber assets include the key information and knowledge resources, including the data, policies, reports, IP, algorithms and applications, programs and operational procedures, that a modern society in the 21st century relies on to operate and manage its business. <br />
Physical assets include an increasing number of everyday objects and services controlled by computers and increasingly connected to the Internet including- infrastructure, manufacturing and production machinery, industrial control and communication centres, security systems, medical devices, electricity grids and meters, vehicles and transport systems as well as billions of consumer and industrial electronic devices. <br />
Cybercrime is a relatively new phenomenon but because of its recent scale and game-changing implications for both government and industry it is rapidly becoming the dominant risk theme of the 21st century.<br />
The opportunity for cyber attacks grows daily as corporations and governments continue to amass information about individuals in complex networks across the Web and at the same time new generations of cyber activists, some motivated purely by money and others by the desire to expose and destabilise corporations and governments, continue to hack into organisational secrets. <br />
No enterprise, no matter how small or benign, will be safe from attack in the future, with an estimated 250,000 site breaches reported in the last few years including- EMC's RSA Security unit, the Public Broadcaster PBS, Sony's PlayStation network, Apple administration password database, the International Monetary Fund, South Korea's largest banks, the Spanish Police, US Senate, Texas Police Department, the CIA, Turkish and Malaysian governments, Google's Gmail, the Nokia forum site and Citibank's Credit Card accounts. <br />
In the latest Norton Cybercrime Report, it was reported that breaches of various types claimed 431 million adult victims last year, with 73% of adults in the US alone incurring estimated financial losses of $US140 billion. As a criminal activity, cyber incursion is now almost as lucrative as the illegal drug trade. The total cost last year, including lost productivity and direct cash losses resulting from cyber attacks associated with viruses, malware and identity theft is estimated at $US 388 billion.<br />
The security firm McAfee report listed a range of cybercrime technologies deployed including- denial of service attacks, malware, spam, phishing, social site engineering, mobile phone viruses, botnets and phone sms Trojan messages. Also more recently, hacking drones- remote controlled aerial vehicles which can automatically detect and compromise wireless networks, by locating a weak spot in a corporate internet connection have been developed. To make matters worse, the first flaws in the advanced encryption standard used for internet banking and financial transactions as well as Government secure transmission, have been discovered. <br />
But most worrying, security experts from McAfee have now discovered the biggest series of cyber attacks to date, involving infiltration of the networks of 72 organisations around the world including- the UN, the governments of the US, Taiwan, India, South Korea, Vietnam and Canada, ASEAN, the International Olympic committee and an array of companies from defence contractors to high-tech enterprises including Google- with most of the victims unaware of the breaches. <br />
This represents a massive loss of economic advantage- possibly the biggest transfer of IP wealth in history. Currently every company in every industry of significant size, with valuable IP, contracts or trade secrets is potentially under attack and this will inevitably extend to smaller organisations such as strategic hi-tech start-ups in the future. At the national level it involves exposure of sensitive state secrets including- policy intentions and decisions covering all levels and functions of Government such as trade, defence and industry policy.<br />
The stakes are huge; a challenge to economies and global markets. From both an enterprise and State perspective therefore this is an intolerable situation; but because it has exploded at such speed, the response to date has largely been fragmented and ineffective. <br />
But this is about much more than ruthless criminal intent to pillage credit cards, steal trade data or bring down unpopular sites. On a global scale, cybercrime has the potential to morph into full blown Cyberwar! <br />
The main players in this game of cat and mouse currently include three broad groups, each with different motivations, although overlapping to a degree.<br />
First- the State sponsored hackers- China, Iran, Russia, Estonia, Israel- recently upping the cyberwar stakes with its Stuxnet attack on the nuclear facilities of Iran, Indonesia, North Korea and Syria. At the same time dictatorial regimes across the world, from Syria to Saudi Arabia have introduced extreme punitive measures to monitor and control access by dissidents, particularly during the Arab Spring. And they have often coerced US and European technology companies to assist them, including Siemens- in the cross-hairs for assisting the autocratic Government of Bahrain track down dissidents.<br />
Second- the White hats- independent freelance hacker groups such as Anonymous/LulzSec. Their aim according to their manifesto is to expose the corruption and greed inherent in the play-books of big business and rogue regimes powered by hyper-capitalism and intent on plundering the natural resources of the planet. They also support whistle-blower groups such as WikiLeaks and social activist groups in general.<br />
Third- the Black hats- with much more clearly defined goals, from overtly criminal to destructive and anarchistic. They are marshalling their attacks primarily on the Midas riches of credit card and financial databases across the globe, at the same time as China and Russia are hacking other Government’s IP, email and trade secrets. <br />
Cyber Hackers now make up a complex substratum of social crime, composed of an ad hoc combination of hackers and security experts, each with a fiercely competitive agenda. But already fragmentation is extending to inter-cyber warfare between these rapidly evolving networks of dysfunctional society, at the same time overlapping with global terrorist groups.<br />
The world's superpowers have already begun to introduce new cyber-policies to desperately protect their intellectual property, infrastructure and financial assets, as well control the flow of information within their populations- but is already bogged down.<br />
The European Convention on Cybercrime is moving at glacial speed because EU governments are reluctant to share sovereign IT information with other powers, even if friendly. The new US Cyber Manifesto has also been stymied. The policy aims to support open access to the Internet while at the same time pursuing a policy of aggressive physical deterrence against any foreign powers such as China and Iran or organisations like WikiLeaks, which attempt to penetrate US computer systems. But this policy is meeting resistance from vested US business interests on issues of regulatory control and government surveillance of business system security. <br />
China on the other hand appears to be going for the jugular. It has established The State Internet Information Office with the express purpose of regulating and controlling its vast Internet population and had even considered building an alternative Internet to sidestep the US controlled ICAAN. <br />
Cybercrime may also be made a lot easier by the ubiquitous application of Cloud technology in the future. Most major corporations and government agencies will be using at least one Cloud to store and process its operational data, leased from Google, Cisco, IBM, Amazon, Microsoft, HP etc. Already several of these clouds including Amazon have been breached and others have had outages. Gaining access to data from a dozen major information sources would be a lot easier than penetrating thousands of individual databases.<br />
Even though most Cloud installations had incorporated security software easily able to ward off rudimentary distributed denial-of-service and hacker attacks, future Cybergent technologies would be much more effective because of superior forensic intelligence. <br />
So the race is on to co-opt the most advanced cyber technology both to gain advantage, but also for prevention. Present day cybercrime technologies however will appear largely primitive within the next few years. The emphasis will shift to the application of much more sophisticated Cyberagent software technology.<br />
The first generation of software agents appeared in the nineties and was used to trawl the Web, applying basic search procedures to locate information resources such as online shopping or travel sites and locating the best prices. <br />
The second generation emerged around five years later. These programs were smarter, incorporating artificial intelligence that enabled them to make decisions more autonomously to meet their operational goals. They were deployed mainly in simulations of interactive population behaviour and interaction in a variety of environments- shopping malls, supply chains as well as disaster and conflict areas. In addition, they possessed superior negotiation and decision logic skills, using Game theory and semantic inferencing techniques. <br />
But the third generation agents will be something else again. These will be based on complementary combinations of advanced AI techniques such as- ‘evolutionary algorithms’, that allow them to constantly improve their skills; 'neural networks' for superior pattern recognition and learning; ‘bayesian logic’ for powerful inferencing capabililty; ‘ant foraging' to help find the most efficient paths through complex network environments and ‘swarm' technology, allowing individual agent intelligence to be amplified by working cooperatively in large groups.<br />
They will increasingly also be capable of tapping into the enormous computational intelligence of the Web, including the public databases of mathematical and scientific algorithms, eventually allowing their intelligence to be amplified by a factor of a hundredfold over previous agent capabilities. <br />
Such agent swarms will also be equipped behaviourally and cognitively to focus on their missions with laser or Zen-like concentration, to the exclusion of everything else, until they have chased down their quarry; whether corporate strategic plans, government covert secrets or nuclear missile blueprints.<br />
This Uber-level of intelligence will transform Agent swarms into formidable cyber strike forces, which could operate under deep cover or in sleeper mode, transforming into harmless chunks of code until a cell and attack was activated and could also replicate rapidly if additional forces were required. <br />
Although this might sound like science fiction, the AI techniques involved, such as evolutionary algorithms, neural networks and swarm architectures have been in common use in business and industry for over ten years. The capacity to harness them in cyber strike force mode is only a matter of time. <br />
But all parties now beginning to understand that the nature of conflict and the balance of world power is shifting with lightning speed, obsoleting overnight the nature of war and traditional economic dominance in a globalised cyber-world. Future conflicts will not be about destroying an enemy armed with billion dollar hi-tech armaments such as tanks, jets and warships, but will be played out largely in future cyberspace.<br />
What value a sophisticated weapons system if it can be disabled by an elite cyber hacker with a Stuxnet-type virus? <br />
What value armies of highly trained soldiers if their command and control centres can be disabled with a few keyboard strokes and a swarm of smart software agents?<br />
What value the trillions of dollars spent on containing Al-Qaeda if the economic and logistical systems supporting the attack can be thrown into disarray by a powerful artificial intelligence algorithm?<br />
But the CEOs of major corporations and military commanders of the major powers are still coming to terms with the mind-blowing ramifications of Cyberwar. Not only would their systems soon be obsolete but so would their command structures.<br />
Adding to the pressure is the impact of global warming and the overuse of the planet’s finite natural resources. Cyberwars are more likely to flourish in times of food and critical resource shortages, with countries and enterprises desperate for inside knowledge to secure access to critical supply information. That time is not far off, with estimates of critical food shortages and rising prices as early as 2013, with a follow on spike in global conflict highly likely. <br />
One thing is certain. From now on Cyberspace will be the new corporate and state battleground and Cybercrime the main risk protagonist. <br />
The threat of all out Cyber war is now an urgent issue that transcends lines between individual enterprises or governments. Unless a global cyber security framework, binding both the private and public sectors can be engineered, a world of disorder will rapidly emerge - a turbulent world, where change has ceased to be beneficial and becomes ultimately destructive.David Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2134765294720198718.post-46643467041945240852011-07-01T00:07:00.000-07:002012-11-22T20:14:58.824-08:00Future Enterprise- The Knowledge UniverseDavid Hunter Tow- Director of the Future Enterprise Research Centre contends that the dynamics and evolution of the Knowledge Universe are governed by the laws of physics just as the objects in our physical galaxy and universe.<br />
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Our Milky Way is a large barred spiral arm galaxy approximately 100,000 light years across in which we have a pantheon of amazing cosmic objects including- at least 200 billion suns and double that number of planets- some just like earth, black holes- including a massive one at its centre equal in power to 4 million suns, numerous dying or dead stars- burnt out white and brown dwarfs neutron stars and remnants of supernovas, trillions of asteroids and meteorites, and vast clouds of hydrogen gas and other molecules giving birth to new stars.<br />
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The dynamic links between these galactic entities are primarily a function of the all-pervasive force of gravity, which warps spacetime, creating black holes and initiating the birth and death of stars.<br />
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This incredible menagerie does not function as separate objects therefore, but constitutes a gigantic and complex network in a constant state of evolution, emitting radiation from the longest microwave and infrared to the shortest and most energetic x-ray and gamma wavelengths. In turn it is influenced by the other 100-200 billion galaxies that exist in our universe, which in turn may be influenced by other universes or causal patches in a multiverse.<br />
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And our small planet, harbouring perhaps the most advanced life form in the universe, is directly or indirectly influenced by all of them.<br />
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Our planet’s emerging Knowledge Universe is analogous to this gigantic network of linked galactic objects; a boundless array of information and knowledge objects connected within the networks of the Internet and Web and controlled by its own physical laws.<br />
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Information and knowledge objects evolve in a similar way to stars, planets and black holes by adapting to the laws of physics and information within their environments.<br />
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They may be loosely classified in terms of a dozen major categories including-<br />
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Knowledge Repositories- databases, data warehouses, data centres and modern-day Clouds; Knowledge Processors and Generators- including a vast array of enterprises, web and social sites, specialist software developers as well as community, social, cultural and scientific groups and institutions. These utilise a range of powerful computing devices increasingly linked to the Internet as well as human minds, interconnected via the Web in the form of a powerful computational intelligence.<br />
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In addition there exist a plethora of Knowledge Aggregators, Interpreters and Distributors- news feed publishers in both printed and electronic forms, modern day encyclopedia creators such as Wikipedia, and compilers of mathematical, biological, environmental, economic, financial and demographic statistics; utilising networks of all types- wired and wireless, channelling knowledge between and within objects across the Web.<br />
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These and many other knowledge object classes and sub-classes constitute a vast network of networks, constantly combining and morphing in unlimited combinations.<br />
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A Cloud for example not only stores information, but may process and transmit it as a service. Likewise a social or gaming network may function as a utility, applying database technology such as SQL and many other software tools; but also may manage its knowledge by storing member details and applications via an internal or external Cloud, distributing services via mobile media devices to its members, advertisers and other processing agents. In turn ubiquitous mobile devices - smart phones and tablets, increasingly perform heavy duty processing and provide significant internal storage as well as wireless transmission connected to other networks.<br />
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All these objects have a role to play in the knowledge universe menagerie. And in doing so they’re involved in an evolutionary dance of cosmic proportions. But the thing is, this dance is never going to stop and is accelerating in both volume and complexity.<br />
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It is estimated that by 2015 the amount of information will quadruple, generated by vast volumes of video transmission as well as countless new applications from the business, social and science research worlds- measured in petabytes.<br />
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Knowledge objects are also similar to and interwoven with the cosmic physical forces of the galaxy as they are born, grow, merge, morph, split, regenerate and die, based on the adaptive pressures of their environments. And more and more end up residing in the free public domain.<br />
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The evolution of each object is therefore a function of all other knowledge objects in its galaxy, following its own information laws controlled by physical principles and constraints. These include for example the Laws of thermodynamics and entropy, which define the limits of computation and the conversion of data into knowledge. And Shannon’s Laws, which set limits on information channel capacity and transmission.<br />
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The laws of physics also includes those governing information and knowledge flows such as the Action Principle – which defines the shortest and least energy intensive path between objects.<br />
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The Least Action Principle postulates that any dynamical process, whether the trajectory of a light ray or orbit of a planet, follows a path of least resistance or one which minimises the 'action' or overall energy expended.<br />
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Physicist Richard Feynman showed that quantum theory also incorporates a version of the Action Principle and underlies a vast range of processes from physics to linguistics, communication and biology. The evidence suggests a deep connection between this principle based on energy minimisation and self-organising systems including light waves, information flows and natural system topographies, such as the flow of a river.<br />
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Information and knowledge is now flowing seamlessly to every corner of the planet and its populations, mediated by the Internet and Web, reaching even the poorest communities in developing countries via cheap PCs, wireless phones and an increasing variety of other mobile devices.<br />
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Trying to block or bypass this flow is a pointless exercise and a sure way to hasten an enterprise’s demise. Essential knowledge may be temporarily blocked for example by patents, which protect IP but in 80% of cases are not applied, but used by large enterprises as a competitive blocking strategy. In the process this may deprive poorer populations of essential products such as life-saving drugs.<br />
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But regardless, eventually patents run out or are obsoleted by more advanced technologies. This is happening at an increasing rate in all fields - graphene-based electronics, superconducting materials, genetic-based therapies, green technologies, AI and quantum based computing methods.<br />
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Enterprise walled gardens therefore eventually break down or leak like a stone wall surrounding an ancient town, as the technology’s lifetime expires and new developments, opportunities and entrepreneurs emerge. Techniques and technologies across the spectrum of knowledge will continue to spread, expand and link in new ways as they always have, bypassing temporary impediments, because that is the physical reality of information and knowledge.<br />
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There are many examples of the recent spread and linking of knowledge objects in galactic orbits within the Knowledge universe including-<br />
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The Education Galaxy- <br />
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The transfer of knowledge is the basis of the education process and is now providing a global flow of free educational material and resources online, including open access courseware. Free courseware is already offered by a number of prestigious tertiary institutions including- The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale and Harvard, as well as free knowledge reference sites such as Wikipedia. And this will accelerate, becoming pervasive in the near future; making it much cheaper and easier for educational resources to reach previously illiterate societies and communities, instead of being monopolised by traditional institutions such as Universities, particularly as a generational shift takes place.<br />
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The Knowledge Universe driven by The Action Principle will by 2040 finally allow the developing world to achieve equal status with the developed world in terms of access to knowledge, training and the realisation of human potential.<br />
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The Social Galaxy- <br />
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It is predicted there will be thousands of social networks within the Knowledge Universe over the next twenty years apart from the scores that exist today such as Facebook, Linkedin, Google Plus, Badoo, Ning, Academia, Craigslist, Foursquare, Plaxo, Yelp, WiserEarth, Meetup, Mebo, Friendster etc, each catering to the needs of specialised groups.<br />
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In the near future these will be seamlessly connected by new applications such as Diaspora, avoiding the walled garden effect and allowing individuals to roam at will across the social universe unimpeded.<br />
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The Media Galaxy- <br />
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In the Media arena the die has been cast. The older print companies are desperately trying to reposition to face of the online revolution. But by 2015 most print media will be forced to radically adapt towards an online multimedia model. Newspapers are already in turmoil with advertising revenues collapsing as traditional classified streams dry up due to online competition.<br />
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Traditional news, both local and global, is rapidly being reduced to a stream of headlines with minimal analysis. Special editions and feature articles will continue in reduced quantity, but online short-burst information- text, video and audio streams will become increasingly popular, distributed via multimedia platforms such as the new generation smart phones, tablets and eBooks, already in common use.<br />
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By 2020- traditional free to air television channels will also have largely disappeared, along with many cable channels, with television advertising similarly caught in the headlight glare of change. The switch will be to web channels covering every topic- personalised to individual taste- viewable anywhere, anytime and watched primarily on mobile media screens. The personalised channel will be ubiquitous, with news, information, music and video filtered and customised to suit every personal taste.<br />
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All print media including magazines and books will also have followed newspapers to a multimedia model distributed over the Web for flexible viewing. The same already applies to music and video. The power of traditional publishers and creative gatekeepers is now being challenged as online stores such as Amazon, Apple and Google and many smaller companies allow any author, song writer or video producer to self-publish globally and cheaply.<br />
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The Cloud Galaxy- <br />
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The Cloud is a metaphor for shared infrastructure, software and data storage within the web.<br />
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Clouds already support a large range of knowledge environments including- social, cultural, business, energy, financial, office, retail, manufacturing, supply chain, booking, engineering, gaming, music, photo, video, media, communications and scientific applications.<br />
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Most of the major service and software providers including IBM, EDS, Apple, Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Microsoft and e-Bay still adopt a walled garden approach, providing access to proprietary databases through proprietary Web Application Programming Interfaces-APIs.<br />
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APIs, rely on different ID and access mechanisms as well as data in specific formats for example to support music, video, particle collider and human genome information. Therefore APIs have tended to slice the web into separate sources and silos, restricting its full potential.<br />
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However In the future Clouds will become more generic and open using common protocols as enterprises demand greater flexibility. But the next evolutionary phase will offer much more- in particular Data Linking. This will promote the sharing of datasets across diverse domains and between business, research and group partners, bringing the full semantic power of the Web into play and changing the face of business forever.<br />
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Tim Berniers Lee’s recent publication of Linked Data Principles for connecting structured data on the web, provides a future blueprint for connecting information from different sources into a single global data repository; accessible by generic data browsers and standard database and query languages. An increasing number of data providers have now begun to implement these Linked Data principles, leading to the creation of an open global data space containing billions of links and coordinated by the World Wide Web Consortium.<br />
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And so the trendlines are now becoming clear. The Web is advancing as a multi-dimensional medium for the discovery, generation and linking of knowledge in all its forms, leveraging semantic and artificial intelligence. Individual supplier services will obviously continue to multiply, but enterprises will increasingly demand access to open source data clouds as well as most utility services.<br />
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Cloud spaces will continue to blend and split, fragment and reform in unlimited combinations and permutations. They will share data as media organisations already do amongst themselves and with countless news aggregators. The divide lines between public and private ownership of application IP will also become fuzzy, with most applications and algorithms over time converting to generic forms- as many critical software tools such as Linux, Java and SQL.<br />
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The Global Commons and Public Domain models therefore will play an increasingly important role. They represent a free sharing knowledge marketplace accessible for the global benefit, where everyone wins as value-added services proliferate. Alternate knowledge and social hubs such as the thousands of Wikipedia lookalikes, controlled by consumer groups, will start to compete with and displace the power of the media and Uber-web enterprises such as Google, which will be forced to cede part of its global knowledge control in its own survival self-interest.<br />
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The Web will be controlled by all nations via the global commons in conjunction with a specially constituted body such as the present ICAAN, devolving away from US control.<br />
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Many companies have tried to go against the evolutionary flow in the past and paid the price – including GM and Ford which continued to produce large gas-guzzling vehicles. They survived the low carbon/electric vehicle revolution only because of taxpayer largesse.<br />
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IBM was another that attempted to force the market to accept its large mainframes- against the trend towards small desktop computers and later the internet. IBM almost died but recovered just in time by embracing software and services, and now leveraging its Smart Planet Strategy.<br />
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Microsoft has until recently continued to promote desktop computing against the trend to internet and mobile computing and has been caught flat footed. It may survive as it belatedly adapts its office software to the Internet, but not in its previous dominant position.<br />
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Nokia was king of mobile phones but failed to see the shift to smarter phones and applications. It has now been forced to merge to survive, with a low likelihood of ever returning to its glory days.<br />
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Oracle, Apple and Facebook are busy building walled gardens. Although looking dominant today their longer term survival will also be in jeopardy if they continue their retro strategy against the flow.<br />
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The latest 'Smart Planet' paradigm, in which the infrastructure and processes of the planet- whether manufacturing, supply chains, electricity grids, water pipelines or traffic flows, are being re-engineered to optimise performance and achieve greener, more sustainable outcomes, will be the major driver for the enterprise of the future.<br />
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The Smart Planet will also demand that decisions be made more rigorously, efficiently, adaptively and therefore largely autonomously, within a radically new networked architecture.<br />
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This will be a major disruptive paradigm for many traditional IT companies which will be forced to redesign their applications and services from the ground up. Those that are too slow will be overtaken by the new generation of nimble system developers, not weighed down by legacy systems. The larger software enterprises in particular will struggle to keep up with the constant flow of knowledge and innovation required to survive, after comfortably dominating their market segment for years, as the cycles of change get shorter and shorter.<br />
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The flow of information and knowledge according to physical principles will continue at an accelerating rate, but still many companies will try to continue to swim against the flow to their eventual cost.<br />
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Within two decades today’s Internet and Web itself will have split into many alternate distributed but connected network descendants, eventually criss-crossing the knowledge universe and supporting autonomously managed worlds with different processing efficiency and reliability requirements.<br />
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Software and system developers and suppliers will need to differentiate their products increasingly as focussed value-added services, targeted to specific enterprises and industries. Service applications will therefore be differentiated primarily by the level of value they contribute to the enterprise- not their generic capability.<br />
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Enterprises in turn will need to be very agile, not only because of the exponential rise in the diversity and volume of knowledge, but also its potential for interweaving and creating opportunities in countless applications. They will therefore need to keep acutely tuned to the signals from their environment to survive.<br />
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As the Knowledge Universe expands and complexifies as a network of networks, with the spread of information and knowledge according to the laws of physics, enterprises will have only one avenue of escape. That is to continually innovate to generate new knowledge in the form of new products and services before the next wave of science and technology innovation overtakes them; just as electric cars, digital photography and smart phones have already obliterated whole sectors of industry in the blink of an eye.<br />
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No enterprise can escape this remorseless race. Better to join it rather than putting up a wall which will inevitably crumble.<br />
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They will need to run very hard just to survive- just like the Red Queen.David Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2134765294720198718.post-59026109992602482742011-04-11T19:00:00.000-07:002012-11-22T20:15:31.750-08:00Future Enterprise- The Big Picture<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
David Hunter Tow- Director of the Future Enterprise Research Centre argues that seeing the big picture is essential for the survival of the future enterprise.<br />
Seeing the Big Picture- relating the enterprise’s role within its physical and social environment, will become increasingly vital for its survival in the future. It will not be sufficient to plan one, two or five years ahead. Although near-term planning is essential, understanding the big shifts likely to impact our planet and future civilization, will be essential inputs to creative planning, adaptive agility and risk avoidance. <br />
Take Google for example. Many of its acquisitions such as YouTube and Maps were made with the longer term potential in mind rather than short term profits. These were strategic targets that fitted with Google’s general philosophy and could mesh with its long term goals. It was understood that eventually there was a high likelihood of a major payoff and therefore immediate profitability from these acquisitions were not a priority.<br />
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Accurately predicting the longer term future has always been seen as problematic, since the Delphi Oracle was shown to have made her forecasts under the influence of laughing gas from an underground aquifer. So there’s been an assumption that’s it’s an impossible mission and why bother as long as the next three to five year profit forecasts are on track.<br />
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Most forecasting textbooks traditionally list a number of well-developed techniques based on- time series projections, regression analysis, Delphi and scenario expert options, artificial neural networks and simulation modelling. But these have usually failed miserably to predict the future in times of abrupt change within the broader physical, social or economic environment; such as recent extreme disasters, the global financial crisis or the Arab democratic revolution.<br />
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In fact enterprises- even the biggest, have a poor history in seeing the big picture. For example, IBM, didn’t see the looming shift to personal computers and let slip one of the most strategic opportunities in modern times; handing operating software- DOS, ideal for managing desktop computers, to a small startup- Microsoft. And it almost repeated this failure with the advent of the Internet, ignoring its potential until it realised everyone else had embraced the ability to go online to the world. Only its enormous base of mainframe systems saved IBM from oblivion. <br />
And in more recent times there was Ford and GM. Both went virtually bankrupt and had to be bailed out by the US Government because they would not or could not see the obvious shift in consumer sentiment to smaller cars with lower fuel usage. And then there was Lehman Brothers and Citibank and Fanny Mae which also thought they were invincible and too big to fail. <br />
And the list goes on and on. So what’s the problem?<br />
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In all the above cases, enterprise management ignored the signals coming loud and clear from their environments via consumers and customers, through a combination of ignorance and arrogance. In the meantime other more agile companies such as Microsoft and Toyota picked up the signals and exploited the opportunities. But then Microsoft almost lost the plot to Google by not seeing the emerging power of the Internet as the dominant driver of information in today’s society. <br />
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In other words, the problem is that many companies, particularly those that are dominant in their industry sectors, begin to believe their own rhetoric; that they can manipulate the market according to their whims and wishes, with consumers eventually falling into line, perhaps with an extra push from of a persuasive enough advertising campaign. <br />
This may work in the short term, but if they continue to fail to adapt and evolve, going against the flow and focussing only on their past history through a prism that becomes increasingly self-reflective, such organisations will eventually lose sight of the big picture and reality. This is despite often employing hundreds of strategic analysts, planners, marketing gurus and forecasters, as well as deploying the most advanced computing systems on the planet. <br />
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The bigger the enterprise therefore, the more likely it is to live in a bubble of its own making, believing its own internally generated myths. So despite the use of the latest business intelligence software busily scavenging for patterns generated from past customer and financial data, standard industry forecasts and the odd focus group, the analysis will be virtually useless as guide to an uncertain future and as an adaptation tool in the face of looming disasters.<br />
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And inevitably without being aware of the bigger but often more subtle shifts in their global environment, such enterprises eventually end up on the edge of a financial precipice without a safety net. <br />
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But still many of the latest forecasting trends reinforce this suicidal behaviour by extrapolating trends or variables from past datasets or building scenarios based on narrow parameters. <br />
To understand the future therefore, it will be essential for an enterprise to also understand and be aware of reality at a far deeper level, beyond traditional business boundaries. Many of the most seemingly complex patterns of reality and life are derived from simple rules, based on the science of fractals, chaos, networks, quantum theory, computation and evolution. <br />
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Our increased understanding of simple structures such as the human genome allows us to gain exquisite insight into the enormous complexity of life and the cause of many diseases; while understanding chaos and network theory allows us to better manage ecosystems and improve our prediction of disasters- both natural and man-made. <br />
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So being able to see the bigger picture and understand its ramifications is vital for the survival of the future enterprise. But how does a system traditionally steeped in conventional narrowly focussed management techniques change its mindset? The major social and physical drivers are not always as obvious as global warming, globalisation or cyber-revolutions.<br />
One critical part of the process involves integrating disparate, often unrelated sources of information and trends across multiple domains of knowledge and expertise. This goes well beyond traditional business intelligence and analytic techniques and comes under the new category of Macroscopic analysis.<br />
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The sciences are increasingly using the lens of the macroscope in innovative ways to support collaborative research and gain big picture perspectives in disciplines such as biology, cosmology, ecology and quantum physics. Macroscopes are flexibly updatable combinations or bundles of cyber infrastructure software, algorithms, web services, computing resources and toolkit plug-ins supporting computational analysis and workflows, capable of facilitating the synthesis of vast amounts of research information from thousands of databases around the world. They perform meta-analyses to discover relevant patterns and make predictions to solve critical puzzles such as the genetic causes of cancer and the nature of dark matter. And then going one step further they combine interdisciplinary trends across for example, astronomy and biology, to create new domains such as astrobiology, to determine the likelihood of other life forms existing within the universe. <br />
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Now business is also realising the value of applying the benefits of macroscopes to better see the big picture and avoid disaster. <br />
Business macroscopes will provide a much more holistic view of complex information and knowledge sets, detecting significant risks and trends from multiple, often unrelated sources as in the sciences; derived not just from historical enterprise transactions and analyses, but from disciplines that have never before entered the organisation’s lexicon, such as climate change and social networks.<br />
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In other words, macroscopes are like giant biological filter feeders, such as whales. Vast flows of water containing micro-organisms and detritus are constantly pumped through the animal’s filtering system and assessed for their value; with only the residues necessary for the animal’s energy and survival retained. It is a largely an automatic process and so it will be for the enterprise once the architecture and parameters have been established. Instead of water, vast flows of complex information and events will be analysed to determine those fluxes most relevant to the organisation’s well-being and survival. <br />
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Implementing the macroscope in business will involve integrating it into the fabric of the future enterprise and its IT support systems. This will be a daunting task, but the templates have already been established in the form of the rigorously tested service-oriented architectures such as the Open Services Gateway initiative and Cyber Infrastructure Shell - OSGi/CIShell, which support the interoperability of applications and services by allowing dynamic plug and play integration of independent web service, algorithm and tool components. <br />
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Science used to lag the business community in its use of standard tools and innovative computational practice. Now it’s the reverse. Enterprises need to adopt the insight and rigour that science has had to apply to meet the high standards of proof required by society, based on the scientific method. <br />
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So now science and business are partners- in lockstep, applying the same computational methods and intelligence to secure their futures and never losing sight of the big picture.</div>
David Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2134765294720198718.post-82471986343754877762011-01-16T23:24:00.000-08:002012-11-22T20:16:16.728-08:00Future Enterprise- The Future of Work Director of the Future Enterprise Research Centre-David Hunter Tow, forecasts that within the next two decades, the future architecture guiding the enterprise will dramatically alter traditional work patterns.<br />
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By 2020 the traditional notion of an individual's job and work-related role will be recognised as outdated, increasingly mismatched with the fluid requirements of the 21st century. Future productivity outputs will be measured in terms of flexible value-added criteria and contribution to the goals of the organisation linked to social utility, rather than in terms of hours worked on a specific project. <br />
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The traditional office will also become redundant as the wireless web expands, allowing information workers- fifty percent of the workforce, to operate from home or local social hubs such as coffee bars, as already occurring- (Ref Future Cities). All such centres will be linked seamlessly via the Internet's multimedia Wireless Grid/Mesh Utility supporting Web and Cloud Infrastructure. This will also enable enormous time and energy savings for workers and the planet in general, having a beneficial impact on the quality of life for millions. <br />
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Most tasks, even in the traditional labour-intensive sectors of health, construction, manufacturing and transport will be largely automated or robot-assisted. Projects will be managed and resourced on a real-time basis within the Web's global knowledge network- (Ref Future Web). <br />
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Boundaries will then blur between traditional full-time, part-time, contract and volunteering modes of employment as well as between worker and management roles. Most workers will share time between their own creative projects and enterprise applications as already happening, with creativity and innovation recognised as critical work competitive inputs.<br />
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Tomorrow's enterprise will be most effectively represented as a decision network model with decisions as nodes and information flows linking the relationships between them. This model offers an extremely powerful mechanism for understanding and optimising the enterprise of the 21st century- extending far beyond current non-adaptive process models. <br />
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The enterprise ecosystem’s organisational boundaries and work practices will therefore become increasingly fluid and porous, in synch with the new adaptive network flow architectures. Individuals will move freely between projects, career paths and virtual organisations within the ecosystem; adding value to each enterprise and in turn continuously acquiring new skills, linked to ongoing advanced learning programs. Work patterns will therefore gradually adapt to a model of seamless knowledge flows, generated both by human and web-based algorithms.<br />
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The semantic distinctions between workers and management will also disappear with robots performing a large proportion of operational roles without human supervision. The role of unions in the workplace will then have morphed to providing largely advisory, research and cooperative support services.<br />
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Concurrently with the above scenarios will be a recognition that the philosophy and architecture of the enterprise of the future will require a major focus on surviving in an increasingly complex environment; requiring the capacity to optimise operations and strategies in shorter and shorter timeframes within a fast changing global cultural, economic, physical and technological environment.<br />
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To achieve this goal, artificial and human intelligence will need to merge at both the strategic and operational levels, driven by a need to implement decision-making autonomously with minimal human intervention, as is already occurring in advanced communication and control systems. The genesis of this trend is also becoming apparent in current service-oriented applications including- procurement and supply, resource and financial management and health and lifestyle services, where capitalising on short-term windows of opportunity is paramount. <br />
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By 2040, work will relate primarily to the generation of new knowledge and services, by combining human, robot and web intelligence to maximum potential. Most processes will be fully automated both at the operational and strategic level within the context of the Intelligent enterprise. New products and services will be generated from concept to design to production within months, days or hours. Individual creativity and skills will remain in high demand but will increasingly be amplified and modulated within the context of the Web's cooperative decision-making and intelligence capacity.<br />
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The survival and success of the enterprise will therefore be contingent on its embedding within the broader cultural environment and norms of the larger community. Business will become an integral component of community culture, with its governance reflecting ethical and sustainable global standards. There will also emerge much greater cooperation rather than competition between enterprises, as globalisation and global warming become the dominant socio-economic drivers.<br />
The days of separating commercial decisions from their social impact will be over. <br />
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By 2050, the larger enterprise will evolve as a semi self-organising entity within a larger ecosystem, operating in largely autonomous mode. New knowledge will constantly add value to its evolution, generated through organisational decision processes and knowledge network flows. <br />
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The Future Enterprise ecosystem will therefore morph, merge and dissemble in a seamless and endless cycle, generating new processes, knowledge and services to support the global community.<br />
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Welcome to a brave new world.David Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2134765294720198718.post-60790938852451343482011-01-16T21:22:00.001-08:002012-11-22T20:16:47.231-08:00Future Enterprise- The Smart Business caseThe Director of the Future Enterprise Research Centre- David Hunter Tow, argues the case for a complete reappraisal of the role of the Business Case and the validity of its current methodology. <br />
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There is an endemic structural weakness in today’s business case methodology, which is particularly problematic for Information Technology projects. It arises primarily because of the inability of most enterprises to adequately quantify the benefits relating to investment in new services and technologies.<br />
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Since the seventies, business and IT management have been stuck in a mindset which hasn’t changed from the time it became obvious that computer hardware and software was continuing to soak up large amounts of an organization’s capital expenditure budget. <br />
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And because of the increasing investment required to computerize the operations of a an organization, it occurred to management that it would be a good idea to offer a business case to justify its introduction. From that point to the present day, the mythology relating to measuring the indirect benefits of this expenditure has grown.<br />
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At the beginning most justification was comparatively easy. The case for computerizing the early banking, insurance, manufacturing and retail industries could be easily made, by comparing FTE cost savings from redundant staff with the cost of the computer hardware and software and the much smaller number of operations personnel required. <br />
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But then came the next generation of computers- client/server distributed systems, networked technologies, real-time operating environments and software that hid the real cost of regular maintenance, customization and upgrades. So it got harder to justify such systems on a cost savings basis alone, once the original legacy back-office savings had been made.<br />
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But everyone knew there were major additional benefits associated with up-to-date information and reporting, faster turnaround of accounts, better customer service and improved management decision-making. And from a government perspective, there would be public benefits as well as the quality of service delivery improved.<br />
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But how to translate these other ‘soft’, ‘indirect’, ‘intangible’ benefits, which were obvious to everyone, but apparently fiendishly difficult to pin down, into hard cold cash; that could realistically be factored into the ROI.<br />
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And then there emerged a rationalization to solve the problem- a dichotomy. The direct ‘tangible benefits’- those offering obvious direct cost savings, like reducing staff or inventory, were the ones that traditional bookkeepers could quantify and management felt comfortable with.<br />
The indirect ‘intangible benefits’- the fuzzy ones, which of course by now were much bigger than the ‘direct benefits’ and could actually justify a major investment, would remain as best estimates. No-one in their right mind would actually attempt to calculate the value derived from improvements in strategic decision-making or customer satisfaction- and then put their signature to it- would they?.. <br />
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So gradually the mythology of the intangible, incalculable benefit became embedded in the enterprise psyche.<br />
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Managers loved it because they could promote their favorite projects without having to seriously justify them. CIOs loved it because any problems relating to the failure of an application to deliver its promised benefits couldn’t be sheeted home to them. Suppliers loved it because that could maximize their sales of the next big thing; sometimes even writing the business case. And if anyone was silly enough to question their integrity, they could check with the other industry lemmings who had invested in the same magic bullet based on a watertight business case and who would never admit to a competitor they had made a monumental investment error.<br />
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And lastly, the high priced guru consultancy firms loved it because it was easy to charge an astronomical fee for a complex business case without actually proving the real payoff; and they couldn’t be blamed if the investment turned out to be a dud, because everyone including the CEO had signed off on it. And everyone knew it was impossible to quantify intangibles anyway.<br />
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And so the myth of intangible benefits grew. And as more and more technological advances emerged- the internet, software as a service, content integration, virtualization etc, the percentage of hard tangible benefits that could be offset against costs shrank to 20%, then 10%, then 5%, then zero and then wandered off into negative territory.<br />
And not only that, the business case now had to include sustainability and green benefits, many of which also were ‘intangible’.<br />
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So lots of sophisticated ‘guestimates’ and fudging with a nod and a wink became the norm and everyone jumped on the bandwagon, from senior management with MBA credentials to junior accountants; all began to succumb to the glib rhetoric, the blind leading the blind.<br />
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And this is in an era when the other sciences were going gang-busters- sending orbiters to Mars, decoding the genome, using stem cells to replace organs and AI to smarten the planet’s infrastructure. But of course it was still far too hard and inconvenient to nail the simple science behind quantifying indirect IT benefits.<br />
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So to bolster the myth further, the IT business case template was born- a very authoritative document. Just fill in the blanks and let the creative accountants do the rest. <br />
‘What’s you’re best estimate of the benefits realizable from a Business Intelligence, Supply Chain, Marketing or HR system as well as all the other stuff needed to support it; like a new service-oriented architecture, broadband communications network, data warehouses, security software, cloud technology etc. <br />
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Well- just pick a number.<br />
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But by mid 2000s the fragile house of cards was starting to wobble. The effect of all this ultra-sloppy, lazy accounting was starting to ripple through the enterprise, ending up in the bottom line. Project prioritization, long term planning, essential infrastructure upgrades, all were being distorted- skewed towards projects with short term easy-to-compute benefits, but little else. But now the big-ticket projects, essential to cope with a new world of realtime transaction processing, online sales and automated supply and distribution wouldn’t wait.<br />
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Rigorous, realistic intangible benefits analysis is essential to confirm the payoff from these systems- process reengineering to re-energize the organization, improved customer service and pricing to maximize economic value, optimised decision support to leverage knowledge assets and smart infrastructure upgrades to minimize unforeseen disasters.<br />
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But on the other side of the universe the environmental and health industries had grasped the nettle thirty years previously and basically solved the problem.<br />
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What is the value of a new heart drug? It’s the percentage of lives saved or extended when compared with the old ‘legacy’ or non-existent heart drug. A 10% improvement in lives saved or extended can easily be translated into a tangible increase in productive working hours as well as reduced health care costs. So the reduction in the risk of heart patients dying early becomes the quantifiable benefit and any side effects becomes a cost. <br />
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Same with the environment. What are the benefits from the genetic engineering of crops or saving a wetland. If the new genes reduce the potential for disease, then the reduction of risk of crop losses becomes a calculable benefit. If they cause the spread of resistant weeds or insects or can’t handle droughts- then that’s a cost.<br />
If remediating fish spawning wetlands reduces the risk of fish extinction then that’s quantifiable benefit. If it reduces the ability of developers to build more flood prone houses then that’s a public benefit too.<br />
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Now back to IT. You say that’s fine for industries like Healthcare and the Environment, where the risks and benefits are obvious. But you can’t translate that approach to trickier stuff like the impact of IT on customer service or management decision-making. <br />
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Yes you can!!<br />
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The smarter corporate strategists and operations research groups including this Centre have been developing and applying techniques for over twenty years that successfully challenge the ‘intangible benefits’ myth. <br />
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They have combined risk theory with decision theory, tweaked it with some additional AI and come up with better enterprise planning, value modeling, system prioritization, evaluation and audit, and service optimization on a continuous basis. The results- a much healthier, profitable and more resilient enterprise.<br />
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And this is only the beginning for the future of the dynamic smart business case.<br />
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In the 21st century it will be integrated with a host of other new and more science-based planning techniques- risk analysis, forecasting, Bayesian probability networks and AI-based process optimisation algorithms; as the enterprise of the future positions itself to be a largely autonomous entity able to better react, seek new opportunities and re-create itself in a fast-changing and uncertain world. <br />
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The smart business case of the future therefore should not be seen as a standalone tool, but as a dynamic and integral part of enterprise planning and modelling. Unless it is applied rigorously, it can distort the whole fabric of the organisation.<br />
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Projects and services and products don’t end abruptly. They get absorbed into the fabric of the enterprise as they interweave with other processes, often emerging as part of a new technology or service. The smart business case should therefore be an evolving process also, constantly adjusting to the evolving nature of the enterprise.<br />
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It’s therefore high time that the whole crumbling edifice of the mythology of intangible benefits was put to rest and the business case became a lot smarter.<br />
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After all- you can’t have a smart enterprise or a smart planet without support from a smart business case. <br />
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And it is the 21st century.<br />
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.David Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2134765294720198718.post-15491424695088487542010-11-09T20:58:00.001-08:002012-11-22T20:17:30.048-08:00Future Enterprise- The Intelligent EnterpriseThe enterprise of the future will increasingly depend on a wide range of rigorous artificial intelligence systems, algorithms and techniques to facilitate its operation at all levels of management.<br />
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As described in The Adaptable Enterprise blog, major decisions incorporating sophisticated levels of intelligent problem-solving will increasingly be applied autonomously and within real time constraints to achieve the level of adaptability required to survive in an ever changing and uncertain global environment. This trendline describes these techniques and their application.<br />
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A number of artificial techniques and algorithms are rapidly reaching maturity and will be an essential component of Intelligent Enterprise Architecture of the future including:<br />
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Genetic algorithms- solution discovery and optimisation modelled on the genetic operators of cross over, replication and mutation to explore generations of parameterised options.<br />
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Bayesian networks- graphical models representing multivariate probability networks; providing inference and learning based on cumulative evidence. <br />
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Fuzzy Logic- non-binary methods of decision-making -allowing information inputs to be weighted and an activation threshold established.<br />
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Swarm Intelligence- combining multiple components to achieve group intelligent behaviour.<br />
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Neural networks- pattern discrimination techniques modelled on neuron connection.<br />
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Expert Systems- rule based inference techniques targeted at specific problem areas.<br />
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Intelligent Agents- this form of AI is particularly relevant to the future enterprise architecture, because it is designed to be adaptive to the web's dynamic environment; that is, an agent is designed to learn by experience. They can also act collaboratively in societies, groups or swarms. Through swarming behaviour agents can achieve higher levels of intelligence capable of making increasingly complex decisions autonomously<br />
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The above techniques will continue to be enhanced and packaged in different combinations to provide immensely powerful problem solving capability over time. The technology is slowly being applied discretely within business intelligence, data mining and planning functions of enterprise systems.<br />
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However AI is yet to realize its full potential within the enterprise model by being applied to decision-making in a targeted autonomous fashion. When this happens over the next decade, the quality of decision-making and concommitant reduction in operational and amanagement risk is likely to be significantly improved.David Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2134765294720198718.post-55349519005417176042010-11-01T22:25:00.000-07:002012-11-22T20:18:03.525-08:00Future Enterprise- Cyber-Infrastructure for World 2.0Our future World 2.0 will face enormous challenges from now into the foreseeable future, including global warming, globalisation and social and business hyper-change. <br />
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Global Warming will create shortages of food and water and loss of critical ecosystems and species. It will require massive prioritisation and re-allocation of resources on a global scale. <br />
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Globalisation will require humans to live and work together cooperatively as one species on one planet- essential for our survival and finally eliminating the enormous destruction and loss of life that wars and conflict inevitably bring. <br />
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Social and usiness change will present myriad challenges relating to building and maintaining a cohesive social fabric to provide democracy and justice, adequate levels of health and education, solutions to urban expansion, crime prevention, transport congestion and food and water security, in a fast changing global environment. This will require adaptation on a vast scale. <br />
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It is apparent that in order to meet these challenges, humans must harness the enormous advances in computing and communications technologies to achieve a complete makeover of the world’s Cyber-Infrastructure. <br />
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The infrastructure of the new cyber reality now affects every aspect of our civilisation. In tomorrow’s globalised world a dense mesh of super-networks will be required to service society’s needs- the ability to conduct government, business, education, health, research and development at the highest quality standard. <br />
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This infrastructure will be co-joined with the intelligent Internet/web, but will require additional innovation to facilitate its operation; a transparent and adaptable heterogeneous network of networks, interoperable at all levels of society. <br />
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In the last two decades tremendous progress has been made in the application of high-performance and distributed computer systems including complex software to manage and apply super-clusters, large scale grids, computational clouds and sensor-driven self-organising mobile systems. This will continue unabated, making the goal of providing ubiquitous and efficient computing on a worldwide scale possible. <br />
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But there’s a long road ahead. It is still difficult to combine multiple disparate systems to perform a single distributed application. Each cluster, grid and cloud provides its own set of access protocols, programming interfaces, security mechanisms and middleware to facilitate access to its resources. Attempting to combine multiple homogeneous software and hardware configurations in a seamless heterogeneous distributed system is still largely beyond our capability. <br />
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At the same time tomorrow’s World 2.0 enabling infrastructure, must also be designed to cope with sustainability and security issues. <br />
It is estimated that The ICT industry contributes 2-3% of total Greenhouse Gas emissions, growing 6% per year compounded. If this trend continues, total emissions could triple by 2020. The next generation cyber-architecture therefore needs to be more power-adaptive. Coupled with machine learning this could achieve savings of up to 70 % of total ICT Greenhouse emissions by 2020. <br />
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But the world is also grappling with the possibility of cyber-warfare as well as increasingly sophisticated criminal hacking, with an estimated 100 foreign intelligence organisations trying to break into US networks. A global protocol safeguarding cyber privacy rights between nations, combined with greater predictive warning of rogue attacks, is critically needed. The next generation of cyber-infrastructure will therefore have to incorporate autonomous intelligence and resilience in the face of both these challenges. <br />
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To meet these targets a lot will ride on future advances in the field of Self-Aware Networks- SANs. Previous blogs have emphasised the emergence of the networked enterprise as the next stage in advanced decision-making. SANs are a key evolutionary step on the path to this goal. Self-aware networks can be wired, wireless or peer-to-peer, allowing individual nodes to discover the presence of other nodes and links as required- largely autonomously. Packets of information can be forwarded to any node without traditional network routing tables, based on reinforcement learning and smart routing algorithms, resulting in reduced response times, traffic densities, noise and energy consumption. <br />
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Another major shift towards a networked world has been the rise of Social Networks. These have attracted billions of users for networking applications such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc. These are providing the early social glue for World 2.0, offering pervasive connectivity by processing and sharing multi-media content. Together with smart portable devices, they cater to the user’s every desire, through hundreds of thousands of web applications covering all aspects of social experience– entertainment, lifestyle, finance, health, news, reference and utility management etc. <br />
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With increased user mobility, location sharing and a desire to always be connected, there is a growing trend towards personalized networks where body, home, urban and vehicle sensory inputs will be linked in densely connected meshes to intermediate specialised networks supporting healthcare, shopping, banking etc. <br />
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The explosion of social networked communities is triggering new interest in collaborative systems in general. Recent research in network science has made a significant contribution to a more profound understanding of collaborative behaviour in business ecosystems. As discussed in previous posts, networked ‘swarm’ behaviour can demonstrate an increase in collective intelligence. Such collective synergy in complex self-organising systems allows ‘smarter’ problem solving as well as greater decision agility. By linking together in strategic and operational networks, enterprises can therefore achieve superior performance than was previously possible. <br />
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The key characteristics of the smart business network of the future will be its ability to react rapidly to emerging opportunities or threats, by selecting and linking appropriate business processes. Such networks will be capable of quickly and opportunistically connecting and disconnecting relationship nodes, establishing business rules for participating members on the basis of risk and reward. <br />
This ‘on the fly’ capacity to reconfigure operational rules, will be a crucial dynamic governing the success of tomorrow’s enterprise. CIOs must also learn to span the architectural boundaries between their own networked organisation and the increasingly complex social and economic networked ecosystems in which their organisations are embedded. <br />
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In fact the business community is now struggling to keep up with the continuous rate of innovation demanded by its users. Social network solutions have the potential to help meet this demand by shaping the design of future architectures to provide better ways to secure distributed systems. <br />
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So what is the future of this new collaborative, densely configured networked world? What we are witnessing is the inter-weaving of a vast number of evolving and increasingly autonomous networks, binding our civilisation in a web of computational nodes and relational connections, spanning personal to global interactions. <br />
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By 2050 the new World 2.0 cyber-infrastructure will link most individuals, enterprises and communities on the planet. Each will have a role to play in our networked future, as the cells of our brain do- but it will be a future in which the sum of the connected whole will also be an active player.David Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2134765294720198718.post-91035948696405960212010-06-25T15:34:00.000-07:002012-11-22T20:18:43.818-08:00Future Enterprise- The Greening SystemThe net energy impact of an enterprise’s products and services on the community far outweighs the benefits of any savings in its computer processing operations.<br />
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Saving energy in the 21st century’s computing ecosystem is a vital component in achieving the goal of a sustainable society and is currently being addressed within the context of numerous emerging technologies including- flexible cloud processing, low-energy mobile and sensor communications, outsourcing of services, infrastructure virtualisation, application integration, embedded electronics and low energy processor design.<br />
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But of far more significance is the potential role of information and computing technology in reducing carbon emissions in most of today’s service processes- whether relating to power generation, manufacturing, transport, service delivery etc. <br />
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This revolution, using the computer as the most effective green machine ever designed, is rapidly taking shape with the emergence of the ‘smarter planet’ mantra. This has already been adopted by every major systems and software provider including- IBM, Cisco, Google, SAP, Apple, Intel, Microsoft and Oracle and promises the optimisation of the planet’s infrastructure. <br />
This will presage more efficient healthcare, education, communication, utility and government services, as well as higher quality industry outcomes in construction, mining, travel, engineering, agriculture etc, by applying the latest advances in artificial intelligence, design, materials, electronics, computing and control sciences.<br />
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As well as the enormous energy reduction payoffs of smarter infrastructure, the ‘smarter planet’ will manifest in a limitless number of areas including- <br />
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Simulation-based Engineering- solving previously intractable design problems and achieving significant cost and energy reductions by applying computer simulated models and prototypes for testing purposes: <br />
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Transportation Systems- managing major traffic flows and supply chains, which will demand increasingly complex integration and scheduling via multi-modal transport networks: <br />
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Developing Nations Environments - allowing the populations of these countries to join the developed networked knowledge world and gain leverage through the application of cheap sensors and low cost intelligent mobile devices to help solve complex environmental and resource allocation problems. <br />
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Such global energy reduction potential, gained by using the computer to generate overall outcome savings are indisputable and in fact totally dwarf the benefits gained from optimising computer processing as an end in itself.<br />
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But greater sustainability benefits are also conditional on the performance and effectiveness of computer processing, with real-time, event-driven applications becoming increasingly common. Computer processing energy gains must therefore evolve within the constraints of process performance needs. Higher performance processing may be more energy intensive, but still deliver far greater benefits in terms of outcome energy savings; so that deriving an optimum trade-off between energy input efficiency and performance output efficiency will be critical. <br />
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But an even more significant energy paradigm is emerging, which encompasses the capacity of the enterprise to deliver the sustainable benefits of its services to the wider community. <br />
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In the final analysis it is the enterprise that is the primary implementer of services to its customers- whether individuals or businesses. These are the beneficiaries or otherwise of its products and services.<br />
A General Motors that keeps churning out gas-guzzling vehicles, totally unsuited to a greener environment and its customer’s needs, may do major harm to the planet no matter how efficient or sophisticated its computerised operational systems. <br />
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What this boils down to is the role of the future enterprise as the most relevant greening system in relation to the communities it services. It is the enterprise- small, large, public or private, which is the key enabling system to achieving a greener world. <br />
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Tomorrow’s enterprise will be the primary harnesser of human mind power, amplified by expanding computational intelligence in our world. Its potential therefore to create a greener future through its impact on the wellbeing of the wider community is what ultimately should be assessed as its true value to society.David Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2134765294720198718.post-15675156348404494992010-04-30T16:04:00.001-07:002012-11-22T20:19:22.024-08:00Future Enterprise- Future Brain ArchitectureIs today’s enterprise, including its IT acolytes, missing something very obvious and vitally important in its current management mindset or is it just an inability by a traditionally conservative constituency, to accept the radical paradigm shift involved? <br />
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Enterprise IT is beginning to dip its toe in the water and borrow some of its inspiration from biological models. For example, a number of the most valuable AI techniques routinely applied in business- genetic algorithms, neutral networks, DNA and swarm computation, are biologically based, as is the concept of the organisation as a complex ecosystem, rather than a rigid hierarchical structure, largely disconnected from its environment. <br />
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Networks are also getting a look-in. Complex decision-making, using elements of autonomous, self-organising and intelligent networks, incorporating complex feedback loops to monitor operational performance and enhance relationships with customers and suppliers, are now being trialled. <br />
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But the current enterprise management model is still missing the big picture- the shift towards an efficient, self-regulating, self-organising, self-evolving framework, so critical for survival in a future fast-moving, uncertain physical and social environment. <br />
The most efficient blueprint for such an architecture and one honed over billions of years and governing all animal life, is the living brain; in particular the advanced human brain. <br />
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For the last thirty years, since the advent of computerised imaging techniques, scientists have been trying to prise open the secrets of the brain’s incredible power and flexibility. Not just how it computes so efficiently, but its ability to adapt, evolve and manage its 100 billion neurons and dozens of specialised structures, as well as all the relationships of the body’s incredibly rich cellular processes, organs and bio-systems. It has also mastered the capacity to flexibly adapt to a vast number of environmental challenges- both physical and social, while at the same time continuing to evolve and grow its intelligence at the individual, group and species level. <br />
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If only it was possible to harness this most complex object in the universe, to manage our own still-primitive, nascent organisational structures. <br />
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So what’s the secret to the brain’s incredible success in guiding the human race through its evolutionary odyssey? Well finally the creativity and perseverance of countless dedicated scientists is starting to pay dividends, with two recent major conceptual breakthroughs-<br />
A Unified Theory of the Brain and the key to the Sub-conscious Brain. <br />
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Current theories of the mind and brain have primarily focussed on defining the mental behaviour of others using the brain’s mirror neurons. These are a set of specialized cells that fire when an animal observes an action performed by another. Therefore, the neurons ‘mirror’ or reflect the behaviour of the other, as though the observer was itself acting. Such neurons have been directly observed in primates and more recently humans and are believed to exist in other species, such as birds. <br />
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However despite an increasing understanding of the role of such mechanisms in shaping the evolution of the brain, current theories have failed to provide an overarching or unified framework, linking all mental and physical processes- until recently. A group of researchers from the University College London headed by neuroscientist Karl Friston, have now derived a mathematical framework that provides a credible basis for such a holistic theory. <br />
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This is based on Bayesian probability theory, which allows predictions to be made about the validity of a proposition or phenomenon based on the evidence available. Friston’s hypothesis builds on an existing theory known as the “Bayesian Brain”, which postulates the brain as a probability machine that constantly updates its predictions about its environment based on its perception, memory and computational capacity. In other words it is constantly learning about its place in the world by filtering input knowledge through a statistical assessment process.<br />
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The crucial element in play, is that these encoded probabilities are based on cumulative experience or evidence, which is updated whenever additional relevant data becomes available; such as visual information about an object’s location or behaviour. Friston’s theory is therefore based on the brain as an inferential agent, continuously refining and optimising its model of the past, present and future. <br />
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This can be seen as a generic process applied to all functions and protocols embedded in the brain; continually adapting the internal state of its myriad neural connections, as it learns from its experience. In the process it attempts to minimise the gap between its predictions and the actual state of the external environment on which its survival depends. <br />
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Minimising this gap or prediction error is crucial and can be measured in terms of the concept of ‘free energy’ used in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. This is defined as the amount of useful work that can be extracted from a system such as an engine and is roughly equivalent to the difference between the total energy provided by the system and its waste energy or entropy. In this case the prediction error is equated to the free energy of the system, which must be minimised as far as practical if the organism is to continue to develop. <br />
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All functions of the brain have therefore evolved to reduce predictive errors to enhance the learning process. When the predictions are right, the brain is rewarded by being able to respond more efficiently and effectively, using less energy. If it is wrong, additional energy is required to find out why and formulate a better set of predictions.<br />
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The second breakthrough has come from a better understanding, again through neuro-imaging, of the brain’s subconscious processes. It’s been revealed that the brain is incredibly active, even when a person is not purposely thinking or acting, for example when daydreaming or asleep. It is in fact keeping subliminal watch, communicating, synchronising and prepping its networks for a conscious future action or response; continuously organising and refining its neural systems such as the cortex and memory; in the process using up to twenty times as much energy as the conscious mode of operation requires. This mechanism is called the brain’s default mode network or DMN and has only been recently recognised as a cogent system in its own right.<br />
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Now fast forward to the future enterprise, running under an architecture that incorporates these two knowledge breakthroughs. What are the additional benefits over the old model? Not too difficult to deduce.<br />
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Any organisation that is capable of constantly and seamlessly monitoring itself in relation to its internal functions and external environment; assessing its performance against its predictions and requirements in real-time through efficient feedback mechanisms; being aware of changes in its environment and opportunities to improve its performance and productivity; self-optimising its functions and goals; self-correcting its actions, searching autonomously for the best solutions for performing complex decision-making and constantly building on its experience and intelligence – must mark a vast improvement over the current model. <br />
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Not only that- this model has been tested and operationally proven in the cauldron of evolution over the past 5 billion years. Not a bad benchmark! <br />
Too difficult to introduce into mainstream enterprise operations? I don’t think so, not in an era when we can build the world wide web, space-stations, large particle colliders, models of galaxies and the multiverse, apply genetic engineering techniques to solve diseases, grow new organs from stem cells and put a man on Mars!David Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2134765294720198718.post-92014442360934115972010-04-12T18:54:00.004-07:002012-11-22T20:19:55.080-08:00Future Enterprise- Rebirthing HalThe arrival of super smart evolutionary computers, capable of autonomous reasoning, learning and emulating the human-like behaviour of the mythical HAL in Arthur C. Clarke’s Space Odyssey 2001 is imminent.<br />
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The Darwinian evolutionary paradigm has finally come of age in the era of super -computing. The AI evolutionary algorithm which now guides many problem solving and optimisation processes, is also being applied to the design of increasingly sophisticated computing systems. In a real sense, the evolutionary paradigm is guiding the design of evolutionary computing, which in turn will lead to the development of more powerful evolutionary algorithms. This process will inevitably lead to the generation of hyper-smart computing systems and therefore advanced knowledge; with each evolutionary computing advance catalysing the next in a fractal process. <br />
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Evolutionary design principles have been applied in all branches of science and technology for over a decade, including the development of advanced electronic hardware and software, now incorporated in personal computing devices and robotic controllers. <br />
One of the first applications to use a standard genetic algorithm was the design of an electronic circuit which could discriminate between two tone signals or voices in a crowded room. This was achieved by using a Field Programmable Gateway Array or FPGA chip, on which a matrix of transistors or logic cells was reprogrammed on the fly in real time. Each new design configuration was varied or mutated and could then be immediately tested for its ability to achieve the desired output- discriminating between the two signal frequencies. <br />
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Such evolutionary-based technologies provide the potential to not only optimise the design of computers, but facilitate the evolution of self-organisational learning and replicating systems that design themselves. Eventually it will be possible to evolve truly intelligent machines that can learn on their own, without relying on pre-coded human expertise or knowledge.<br />
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In the late forties, John von Neumann conceptualised a self-replicating computer using a cellular automaton architecture of identical computing devices arranged in a chequerboard pattern, changing their states based on their nearest neighbour. One of the earliest examples was the Firefly machine with 54 cells controlled by circuits which evolved to flash on and off in unison.<br />
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The evolvable hardware that researchers created in the late 90’s and early this century was proof of principle of the potential ahead. For example, a group of Swiss researchers extended Von Neumann's dream by creating a self-repairing, self-duplicating version of a specialised computer. In this model, each processor cell or biomodule was programmed with an artificial chromosome, encapsulating all the information needed to function together as one computer and capable of exchanging information with other cells. As with each biological cell, only certain simulated genes were switched on to differentiate its function within the body. <br />
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A stunning example of the application of Darwinian principles to the mimicking of life was development of the CAM-Cellular Automata Machine Brain in 2000. It contained 40 million neurons, running on 72 linked FGPAs of 450 million autonomous cells. Also the first hyper-computer- HAL-4rw1 from Star Bridge Systems reached commercial production in 2000. Based on FPGA technology it operated at four times the speed of the world's fastest supercomputer. <br />
And at the same time NASA began to create a new generation of small intelligent robots called ‘biomorphic’ explorers, designed to react to the environment in similar ways to living creatures on earth.<br />
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Another biological approach applied to achieve intelligent computing was the neural network model. Such networks simulate the firing patterns of neural cells in the brain, which accumulate incoming signals until a discharge threshold is reached, allowing information to be transmitted to the next layer of connected cells. However, such digital models cannot accurately capture the subtle firing patterns of real-life cells, which contain elements of both periodic and chaotic timing. However the latest simulations use analogue neuron circuits to capture the information encoded in these time-sensitive patterns and mimic real-life behaviour more accurately. <br />
Neural networks and other forms of biological artificial intelligence are now being combined with evolutionary models, taking a major step towards the goal of artificial cognitive processing; allowing intelligent computing systems to learn on their own and become experts in any chosen field. <br />
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Eventually it will be possible to use evolutionary algorithms to design artificial brains, augmenting or supplanting biological human cognition. This is a win-win for humans. While the biological brain, with its tens of billions of neurons each connected to thousands of others, has assisted science to develop useful computational models, a deeper understanding of computation and artificial intelligence is also providing neuroscientists and philosophers with greater insights into the nature of the brain and its cognitive processes. <br />
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The future implications of the evolutionary design paradigm are therefore enormous. Universal computer prototypes capable of continuous learning are now reaching commercial production. Descendants of these systems will continue to evolve, simulating biological evolution through genetic mutation and optimisation, powered by quantum computing. They will soon create capabilities similar to those of HAL in Arthur Clarke's "Space Odyssey 2001"- and only a few decades later than predicted.<br />
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However the reincarnation of the legendary HAL may in fact be realised by a much more powerful phenomena incorporating all current computing and AI advances - the Intelligent World Wide Web. As previously discussed, this multidimensional network of networks, empowered by human and artificial intelligence and utilising unlimited computing and communication power, is well on the way to becoming a self-aware entity and the ultimate decision partner in our world.<br />
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Perhaps HAL is already alive and well.David Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2134765294720198718.post-36975018035344450252010-02-25T13:19:00.001-08:002012-11-22T20:20:29.408-08:00Future Enterprise- Model-Based DevelopmentSoftware and system development needs to seriously grow up- and fast. It urgently needs to become far more rigorous and dependable if it’s to have any chance of meeting critical 21st century process engineering requirements. Model-Based Development- MBD might be the answer. <br />
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Two factors have conspired to transform it from adolescence to maturity. <br />
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Firstly, the rapidly increasing complexity of modern computer systems, applied more frequently in life critical contexts. <br />
Secondly, the relentless pace of change driving process and system obsolescence. <br />
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The increasing complexity of modern computer software threatens to place an upper limit on our capacity to improve and optimise the primary processes governing our civilisation. Modern society is built around the delivery of precise real-time processes and services, which must increasingly meet critical benchmarks of efficiency, integrity, transparency and adaptability. <br />
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Even generic applications such as operating software, office management and resource planning systems etc, require hundreds of software engineers to develop and maintain them. But that degree of complexity ramps up exponentially for larger automated systems covering the range of enterprise, government and scientific applications- supply chains, production and process control, social and media software, communications, space, energy, engineering transport and disaster management services. <br />
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Complex software systems also need to constantly evolve to meet the latest shift in business and environmental pressures and practice. As a result, errors and poor quality performance built into early versions can quickly compound, with the system ending up in gridlock and malfunctioning. <br />
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Even worse, the problem is escalating as computer scientists and engineers push the boundaries of the possible; seeking to integrate diverse applications across multiple platforms, while at the same time implementing advanced solutions incorporating augmented reality, intelligent agents and location-based awareness. The problems of complexity and change can only get worse as solutions are required relating to the next generation of super systems managing global warming impacts, smart AI and sensor-embedded infrastructure and ecosystem evolution.<br />
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But there’s light at the end of the tunnel and it revolves around implementing Model-Based Development- MBD methods, incorporating mathematically verifiable design and testing. <br />
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MBD, as its name suggests, creates models of the required functions linked to a specific domain, which refers to a particular knowledge field, such as a manufacturing, telephone networks or weather monitoring. Software design therefore starts with high-level domain characteristics and properties, rather than a set of generic computing functions. In the MBD paradigm, the domain expert can review the model and point out missing functionality or essential links between elements within the system, without needing to understand sophisticated programming techniques. <br />
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The methodology depends primarily on the use of domain specific modelling languages that can be used to simulate and authenticate a system graphically before building it- as is common for current CAD systems. The use of such languages allows developers to create a formal model of the system, run it on a workstation and analyse its performance with automated tools. Finally code and test cases can be generated and automatically verified. Use of such tools in the software development lifecycle has the potential for substantial payoff, by avoiding many costly process malfunctions and reworking iterations. <br />
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Generic modelling languages such as UML are in wide use, but often result in large, complex models while Domain Modelling languages can incorporate relevant business rules and design concepts related specifically to the domain in a much more compact form. <br />
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Control system engineering and science provide the role model for this approach, based on formal logic and algorithms developed over many years. Although formal software and mathematical methods have been used for safety and security critical systems in applications such as nuclear power, chemical plants, space and defence they have not achieved widespread use in commercial or industrial software engineering. However this is likely to change as several key trends now begin to make this a more practical proposition. <br />
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First there is growing acceptance of model-based development for the design of embedded systems using toolsets such as MATLAB Simulink. This allows for rapid prototyping and design verification of test control and signal processing, particularly in avionics and electronic automotive systems. <br />
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Second is the growing power of formal verification tools, particularly model checkers. This software examines all possible combinations of input/output states and is therefore much more likely to find design errors than traditional testing. <br />
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The entire system is mapped and developers then can create the code and integrate it. Software development and maintenance is accelerated because the programmers have a clear idea of all the required functionality and how it relates to other elements in the system before coding. <br />
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Finally there is also much less risk of catastrophic programming errors, because engineers can detail the links between software elements beforehand, similar to CAD technology. If a component is missing or has been overlooked, it can be easily added to the model in a later step. <br />
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With the growing acceptance of MBD techniques, software development might finally have come of age.David Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2134765294720198718.post-203415910115665382010-01-07T15:58:00.000-08:002012-11-22T20:21:00.971-08:00Future Enterprise- Convergence of X-RealityFirst there was Virtual Reality-the creation of simulated games, objects and avatars; narratives embedded in online virtual worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft, with 15 million subscribers. <br />
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Then came Augmented Reality- created by integrating or mixing real objects and natural spaces with layers of related computer-generated data,images and designs; enabling real and virtual scenarios to be seamlessly combined. Basic forms of AR technology are already being used to gain a more immediate and accurate sense in practical applications such as engine repairs, wiring assembly, architectural design and remote surgery. <br />
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But now emerging from the evolution of cyberspace is Cross or X- Reality, with the boundaries between the real and the virtual extended yet again and becoming increasingly blurred in the process. <br />
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X- Reality environments essentially fuse two technologies- sensor networks and virtual worlds, bringing real world and realtime information into fully immersive virtual worlds and vice versa. <br />
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In hindsight it can be seen that Virtual and Augmented Realities are early phases in an ongoing evolutionary transition towards the acceptance of virtual forms as part of everyday human cognition. In the process we have crossed the threshold into a new space, extending human perception and interaction; linking ubiquitous sensory and actuator networks based on low cost microelectronic wireless technologies to create mixed realities. <br />
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The game is now on. By 2030, X-Reality will usher in an era of vastly extended reality indistinguishable from our present world, which has evolved over the period of life’s existence. In other words the world is evolving its own electronic nervous system via a dense mesh of sensory networks, eventually connecting and encompassing every object- living and non-living, on the planet. Such sensor networks help integrate physical reality into virtual computing platforms generating the ability to react to realworld events in automated fashion. This is creating a revolutionary relationship between human society and the Web, with the urgent need to understand the way our behaviour and future processes will become irreversibly shaped by cyberspace. <br />
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Cross reality environments can therefore serve as an essential bridge across sensor networks and Web based virtual worlds. The Web is already beginning to host an immersive 3D sensory environment that combines elements of social and virtual worlds with increasingly dense geographical mapping applications, allowing the monitoring and planning of natural and urban ecosystems- particularly its capacity to cope with climate change. <br />
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X-reality will be implemented according to the integration of key design technologies including- <br />
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Synchronously Shared Information- users will require open access to realtime data feeds and collection of information for analysis via centralised virtual command centres. Eventually control will devolve to decentralised self-organising and autonomous management systems working in partnership with users. <br />
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Complex Realtime Visualisation - users must be able to easily and flexibly visualise complex data, often delivered in 3D form. This will involve a high level of interactivity and collaboration, applying sensor-driven animation and the application of intelligent agents or avatars. <br />
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Ubiquitous Sensor Portals- such I/O devices designed for rich two-way cross-reality experiences, which can stream virtual and remote phenomenon into the user’s physical space; for example via video feeds and images uploaded from cameras. But this process can also extend into the past, allowing realtime access to historical data streams, vital for trendline analysis in business and the sciences. <br />
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Smart Phones- these will increasingly provide an intuitive interface that facilitates group collaboration in an ad hoc manner, via gesture as well as touch. Physical movement for outdoor users requires extreme mobility. Allowing augmented reality on smart phones that can query sensor networks and connect with shared online worlds paves the way for immersive mobile X-Reality. <br />
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Complex Event Processing- CEP- sensor networks will be particularly valuable in the future for generating data that tracks complex phenomenon in the real world, detectable by high-level pattern matching and logic inference techniques. Applications include- monitoring building and infrastructure maintenance, manufacturing and supply chain operations via RFIDs as well as environmental emergencies such as fire and pollution risks. In addition, CEP systems will help make sense of conflict zones, ecosystem health, field operative performance and traffic flows and events. <br />
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By 2030 most of our lives will be totally immersed in this shared reality. It will also redefine how we manage the vast and growing repository of digital information on the web- linking art, entertainment, work, science and daily life routines such as shopping, gaming and travel. <br />
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The Future Enterprise will be equally enmeshed- dependent on the management of its marketing, production and logistical operations and services via the medium of X-Reality.David Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2134765294720198718.post-82350556192137561252010-01-03T14:57:00.000-08:002012-11-22T20:21:32.901-08:00Future Enterprise- Adaptive Business IntelligenceThe concept of adaptability is rapidly gaining in popularity in business. Adaptability has already been introduced into everything from automatic car transmissions to sentient search engines to running shoes capable of adapting to the preferences of each unique user over time, to business management.<br />
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Adaptive business intelligence is a new discipline which combines three components- prediction, adaptation and optimisation. It can be defined as the discipline of using prediction and optimisation techniques to create self-learning decision systems.<br />
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Managers work in a dynamic and ever-changing economic and social environment and therefore require constant decision support in two linked timeframes- what is the best decision to make now and how will this change in the future. <br />
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The general goal of most current business intelligence systems is to access data from a variety of sources, to transform it into information and knowledge via sophisticated analytic and statistical tools and provide a graphical interface to present the results in a user friendly way. However this doesn’t guarantee the right or best decision outcomes.<br />
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Today most business managers realise that a gap still exists between having the right information and making the right decision. Good decision-making also involves constantly improving future recommendations- adapting to changes in the marketplace and improving the quality of decision outcomes over time. This involves a shift towards predictive performance management- moving beyond simple metrics to a form of artificial intelligence based software analysis and learning such as evolutionary algorithms. <br />
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Future Trends<br />
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The future of business intelligence therefore lies in the development of systems that can autonomously and continuously improve decision-making within a changing business environment, rather than tools that just produce more detailed reports based on current static standards of quality and performance.<br />
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It must incorporate techniques that build autonomous learning, with feedback loops that generate prediction and optimisation scenarios to recommend high-quality decision outcomes; but also with an in-built capacity to continuously improve future recommendations.<br />
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The importance of such an evolutionary paradigm wil be esential in an increasingly competitive and complex business environment. It is regressive to continue to rely on software support systems that repeatedly produce sub-optimal demand forecasts, workflows or planning schedules.<br />
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The future of business intelligence lies in systems that can guide and deliver increasingly smart decisions in a volatile and uncertain environment.David Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2134765294720198718.post-4335617707853251182009-11-17T00:45:00.000-08:002011-06-23T20:14:26.122-07:00Future Enterprise- Evolution of Cloud 2.0A major shift in IT business models will emerge from the next incarnation of Cloud Computing- Cloud 2.0.<br />
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The Cloud is a metaphor for shared infrastructure, software and data within the web. The original cloud concept emerged in the sixties, not long after the commercial genesis of computing, with the advent of the Service Bureau. This allowed smaller companies to share in the benefits of the golden computer age by running their applications on large service provider mainframes. Access was provided by punched card readers and later by remote computer terminals with printer output.<br />
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Minis and desktop personal computers then dominated during the seventies and eighties and the original service bureau industry faded away. In the nineties the Internet and Web evolved, allowing online remote services to return; this time based on the client-server model linked to in-house PCs. <br />
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Cloud computing is the next evolutionary step in shared computer processing, using virtualised information services delivered on demand over the Internet, circumscribed with SLAs and user–based pricing. The major advantages as in the sixties, are lower costs and fewer technical maintenance and upgrade problems. As with the original service bureaus, the computing infrastructure and much of the application software is based on reliable services delivered via remote data centers; this time accessible via a web browser. <br />
In addition the Cloud is evolving to deliver personalised intelligent and mobile applications; for example streaming SaaS- Software as a Service using virtual assistants to organise data-mined information. AI empowered mobile applications might include sharing time-critical market information, planning meetings, responding to voice commands or analysing traffic patterns to determine the speediest or most fuel-efficient route for an individual.<br />
Most of the major service and software providers such as IBM, EDS, Apple, Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Microsoft and e-Bay have now established significant and expanding cloud services, providing access to their proprietary databases through Web APIs. Cloud service categories now cover a large range of standard applications including-<br />
Social – social networks, video and photo sites, virtual worlds, and multi player gaming<br />
Business–office and workflow, customer relationship and sales, workforce, supply chain, financial and booking applications<br />
Utilities- skype, paypal, peer-to-peer networking<br />
Plus numerous statistical, user-generated, media, science, geographic and cultural services <br />
But the next evolutionary phase of the Cloud will offer much more- in particular data linking. This will promote the sharing of datasets across diverse domains and between business, research and group partners, bringing the full semantic power of the Web into play and changing the face of business forever.<br />
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Different APIs rely on different ID and access mechanisms as well as data in specific formats. Therefore APIs have tended to slice the web into separate sources and silos, restricting its full potential.<br />
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Tim Berniers Lee’s recent publication of Linked Data Principles for connecting structured data on the web, provides a future blueprint for connecting information from different sources into a single global data repository; accessible by generic data browsers and standard database and query languages. <br />
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This not only allows web documents to be identified, but also real world entities using the RDF- Resource Description Framework schema and Web Ontology language- defining mappings between related domains. The web of linked data will therefore immeasurably expand the classic document web, creating a global data network capable of spanning and weaving multiple data sources.<br />
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An increasing number of data providers have now begun to implement these Linked Data principles, leading to the creation of an open global data space containing billions of links and coordinated by the World Wide Web Consortium.<br />
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Future Trends<br />
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The trendlines are now becoming clear. The web is advancing to a multi-dimensional medium for discovering, publishing and linking seamlessly documents and data, leveraging semantic intelligence and mobile capabilities.<br />
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Individual supplier services will obviously continue to build, but enterprises will increasingly access common data clouds as well as most utility services, which will in the longer term become open source or common global property.<br />
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Cloud spaces will continue to blend and split, fragmenting and reforming in unlimited combinations and permutations. They will share data as media organisations already do amongst themselves and with countless news aggregators such as Google. The divide lines between public and private ownership of application IP will also become fuzzy, with most applications and algorithms over time converting to generic forms- as many critical medical drugs now have. <br />
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Software and system suppliers will need to differentiate their products increasingly as focussed value-added services, targeted to specific enterprises and industries as IBM and others are currently doing in forging partnerships for their new customised Smart Planet infrastructure business models. <br />
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Service applications will therefore be differentiated primarily by the level of value they contribute to the enterprise. Enterprises in turn will become more strategically porous, linking their core processes and management decisions more organically with their partner service providers and the chameleon Cloud 2.0.David Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2134765294720198718.post-44204798642432195162009-10-15T00:10:00.000-07:002012-11-22T20:22:29.541-08:00Future Enterprise- Network ScienceNetwork science will be a critical enabler of advanced enterprise management in the 21st century. <br />
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Major advances are already being made in applying the principles of network science to social, technological and business systems and it will be vital for the future enterprise to weave sophisticated network optimisation principles into all aspects of its operations. <br />
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Network science essentially involves analysing and managing the properties and dynamics of interconnected complex systems such as social groups, the Web, power grids, supply chains, markets, ecosystems and the brain.<br />
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Such networked systems are based largely on scale-free topologies. This is the natural architecture most relevant to the world around us and is modelled on structures with a relatively small number of hubs or nodes, each with a large number of connections and a much larger number of nodes with a relatively small number of links- broadly obeying a mathematical power law.<br />
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Knowledge of network topology and dynamics allows for optimisation and prediction of the behaviour of complex system processes and is becoming increasingly vital in managing major business activities, via information systems that control vast numbers of interlinked transactions, resources, agents and events.<br />
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Failure in a tightly coupled network such as a power grid or market system of a single node may force the failure of other nodes, resulting in cascades of failures, eventually triggering a catastrophic breakdown of the whole system, as in the recent collapse of the global economy.<br />
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Examples of potential applications of network science principles include- <br />
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Economies and Markets- reducing the risk of global failure by ensuring economic networks are more robust; by closely monitoring market signals and adjusting the topology of nodes and links to reduce the risk of runaway feedback loops and conflicts between local interests and global efficiency. <br />
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Ecologies and Biodiversity- improving the sustainability of ecological systems in a period of global warming with the capacity to provide timely warning of species and resource collapse. The network model provides a powerful representation of ecological interactions among species and highlights global ecological interdependencies, which can then be re-modelled to manage risk.<br />
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Business and Finance- improving the capacity to make quality decisions regarding markets and product development, to avoid the future collapse of companies such as General Motors and Lehman Brothers. In these instances, poor decision-making was amplified by the systemic risk of runaway cascading financial asset dependencies, due to overloaded coupling strengths between nodes and indeterminate feedback loops in the myriad interconnected customer and supply networks.<br />
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The relevance of network science for the future enterprise is therefore threefold- <br />
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Firstly, many of the systems involved in business may be modelled in the future by scale-free networks, such as supply chain, investment, infrastructure, production and customer systems; with nodes representing suppliers, assets, products, consumers and customer groups.<br />
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Secondly, an organisation’s systems may be modelled by networks, with nodes representing process and activity decisions and the links represented by the dynamic flows of information feeding them. <br />
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Thirdly, the architecture of the enterprise itself may be viewed as a network of control flows between decision-makers and operational agents. As processes become more complex and time critical they will be increasingly automated, but the architecture- the information and decision-making structures and channels, will still need to be continuously optimised. <br />
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Future Trends<br />
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As forecast in previous posts, the enterprise of the future will be driven by networked architectures- patterns of linked decision processes- constantly morphing, reforming and adapting to a continuous flux of a changing global environment. <br />
Today’s traditional hierarchical or even flat management models will be incapable of supporting tomorrow’s vastly more complex and competitive techno-social environment.<br />
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Such techno-social systems composed of technological layers operating within the larger social and physical environment that drives process application and development will need a more integrated, adaptive and intelligent framework for achieving sound management capability, underpinned by network science.<br />
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Most real world transportation, manufacturing, computing and power infrastructure networks will be linked and monitored by sensors and tags embedded in largely autonomous networked societies; constantly adapting to global evolutionary dynamics. <br />
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Network science algorithms will be developed to monitor and engineer optimal decision topologies, critical thresholds and non-linear outcomes. These will combine with AI technologies to manage complex enterprise operational and management processes.<br />
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These algorithms will apply adaptive defence mechanisms, often providing counterintuitive approaches to the engineering and control of complex techno-social systems. Such techniques will be based on the manipulation of key nodes, links and pathways to induce intentional network behavioural changes- mitigating for example potentially catastrophic outcomes.<br />
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This will represent the new Network Science Management Paradigm of the 21st century.David Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2134765294720198718.post-57146813113737186242009-10-12T01:03:00.001-07:002012-11-22T20:23:10.887-08:00Future Enterprise- The Networked Enterprise<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The enterprise of the future will be driven by a networked architecture- patterns of linked decision processes; constantly morphing, reforming and adapting to a continuously changing social and business environment. <br />
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The traditional hierarchical management model of the 20th century will be incapable of supporting the vastly more complex and competitive 21st paradigm of technological and social evolution. <br />
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Tomorrow's enterprise can be most effectively represented as a decision network model with decisions as nodes and information flows linking the relationships between them. This model represents an extremely powerful mechanism for understanding and optimising the adaptive enterprise of the 21st century- linked to but extending far beyond current simplistic process models. <br />
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Although process and object representations are a necessary and logical intermediary step in the evolution of enterprise system modeling and management, they fail to represent the underlying decision complexity of the real world and therefore fail to realise the true potential of a dynamic enterprise. <br />
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The core of the Networked Architecture will be the Decision Model, incorporating engineering methods based on decision pathways, with the capacity to dynamically route information and intelligence resources to critical decision-making agents in the enterprise. <br />
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This will not only involve the deployment of computing and information resources to adaptive decision nodes, but facilitate direct targeting of intelligence and problem solving capacity, enabling critical decision outcomes to be implemented in optimal time frames. <br />
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The latest 'Smart Planet' paradigm, in which the infrastructure and processes of the planet- whether manufacturing supply chains, electricity grids, water networks or traffic flows, are being re-engineered to optimise performance and achieve greener outcomes, will be the major driver for the networked enterprise of the future. The Smart Planet will demand that decisions be made more rigorously, efficiently, adaptively and therefore largely autonomously. <br />
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While SOAs focus on basic services, their capacity to implement complex decision processes is far from optimal. Current business intelligence and data warehouse software represents a halfway house towards this goal. But predictive techniques utilising AI will be the next stage, layered on current data mining and pattern recognition software and supported by a new generation of network-oriented database management systems. <br />
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Although the more far-sighted businesses are becoming aware of the need for such flexible small world network linkages, the support provided by today’s rigid organisational management architectures and philosophies has lagged well behind. <br />
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Tomorrow’s enterprise management must be far more pro-active and sentient in relation to environmental and structural change, avoiding being caught passively flat-footed in a bewildering flux of global evolution and competitive pressures.</div>
David Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2134765294720198718.post-44119566097083640142009-10-12T00:58:00.000-07:002012-11-22T20:23:42.550-08:00Future Enterprise- The Intelligent EnterpriseThe enterprise of the future will increasingly depend on a wide range of rigorous artificial intelligence systems, algorithms and techniques to facilitate its operation at all levels of e-commerce management. <br />
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As described in The Adaptable Enterprise blog, major decisions incorporating sophisticated levels of intelligent problem-solving will be increasingly applied autonomously within real time constraints to achieve the level of adaptability required to survive in an ever changing and uncertain global environment. <br />
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In addition web services will draw on the advances already made by the semantic web combined with the intelligent web 4.0. <br />
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A number of artificial techniques and algorithms are rapidly reaching maturity and will be an essential component of Intelligent Enterprise Architecture of the future. <br />
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Current techniques include- <br />
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Genetic algorithms- achieve solution discovery and optimisation modelled on the evolutionary natural selection process- based on the genetic operators of cross over, replication and mutation and measured against a 'fitness function'. <br />
This technique is widely applied to solve complex design and optimisation problems. <br />
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Bayesian networks- graphical models representing multivariate probability networks- providing inference and learning based on cumulative evidence- widely used in medical diagnosis <br />
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Fuzzy Logic- based on natural non-binary methods of decision-making- assigns a <br />
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Swarm Intelligence- combines multiple cooperating components to achieve group intelligent behaviour. <br />
Neural networks- pattern discrimination techniques modelled on neuron connection.Allows information inputs to be weighted and an activation threshold established. <br />
Expert Systems- rule based inference techniques targeted at specific problem areas. <br />
Intelligent Agents- designed to be adaptive to the web's dynamic environment- an agent is designed to perform a goal and learn by experience- can also act collaboratively in groups achieving higher levels of intelligence and capable of making increasingly complex decisions autonomously. <br />
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Future Trends <br />
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The above techniques will continue to be enhanced and packaged in different combinations to provide immensely powerful problem solving capability over time. The technology is slowly being applied discretely within business intelligence, data mining and planning functions of enterprise systems. <br />
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However AI is yet to realise its full potential within the enterprise by being applied to decision-making in a targeted autonomous fashion. <br />
When this happens over the next decade, the quality of decision-making and concommitant reduction in operational and management risk is likely to be significantly improved.David Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2134765294720198718.post-75768318544363607392009-09-13T03:32:00.000-07:002011-01-31T04:02:26.501-08:00Social ComputingSocial computing is the crucial next step following the rise of personal computing in the evolutionary computing stakes.<br />
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The term Social Computing has many connotations. It has come into prominence over the past few years due to the growth of dozens of hugely successful social networks such as Facebook and more recently Twitter; providing a global way of keeping in touch and exchanging information between friends and acquaintances.<br />
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In the process of linking with others, a network of social relationships is established. Social computing is in essence a way of codifying and exploring these relationships between people and agents in social spaces- crowds, communities, cities, markets etc. <br />
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Social computing applications focus on web-supported online communities such as social networks, wikis, blogs and virtual worlds, providing feedback on interactive social comment, entertainment, scientific and medical advances and business services. It also supports techniques for collective forecasting and decision-making, utilising the combined power of groups and communities to solve difficult problems such as those associated with major disasters and conflict. In addition it is increasingly applied to help analyse how changing technologies and policies affect political, social and cultural behaviour<br />
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A set of techniques and algorithms are now being developed based on network, cognitive and evolutionary theory, which will have major ramifications for the enterprise of the future. For example, business strategies and competitive markets have been increasingly characterised by turbulence, uncertainty and complexity. Consequently there is a need to model such markets and strategies as dynamic, evolutionary processes; that is, as complex adaptive systems.<br />
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In addition, data mining and simulation are applied to study social networks. Data mining can uncover patterns such as an organisation’s network structure, properties and relationships between suppliers and customers. Agent based social simulation or understanding social phenomena on the basis of models of autonomous agents has also grown tremendously in recent decades. Researchers use this approach to study a wide range of social and economic issues, including social beliefs and norms, resource allocation, traffic patterns, social cooperation, stock market dynamics and organisational decision-making. <br />
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There is as yet no effective widely accepted methods for modelling complex systems, especially those involving human behaviour and social organisations, but collaborative agent-based artificial life is currently the most promising approach. <br />
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Using agent-based modelling, an enterprise can construct a virtual competitive market that allows business strategists a way of investigating a range of realistic scenarios. For example agent models can account for interactions between irrational and rational investors in stock market bubbles. <br />
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The social network paradigm in turn has created the concept of the Social Fabric, which mediates the interactions of the network’s agents and information flows in much the same way as spacetime mediates particle interactions and exchanges. It therefore allows us to explore the dynamic social and cultural aspects of the world in which we live or in which an organisation exists.<br />
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Cultural Algorithms or CAs are one of several approaches to modelling the social fabric and the application of social intelligence to solve problems related to optimisation, based on particle or agent swarming. They are therefore a class of computational model derived from observing the cultural evolution process in nature. Embedding an activity or problem in a social fabric can improve its performance or solution outcome, enabling the system to find a better solution than the original over a number of population iterations.<br />
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Many organisations have adopted Web 2.0 tools to stimulate innovation and productivity. They are also beginning to embrace social networks as a way of more effectively marketing services and tracking customer behaviour. <br />
But applying social computing to improve the quality of decision-making, process optimisation and prediction scenarios is not yet on the horizon for most. <br />
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In the future social computing will be an integral component of the strategic and operational management of the future enterprise, at the same time transforming the web into a truly collaborative and social platform.David Hunter Towhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00236474321540828094noreply@blogger.com0