Technological disruption is here to stay, it’s time to start paying attention

Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back everything is different? – C.S. Lewis

Change is everywhere, but we often don’t notice it until it hits us with full force.  At an event a few weeks ago, I was fortunate to be able to attend a presentation on the fintech industry in the GTA. The discussion eventually focused on 3 main areas of change that are happening now, right in front of us:

• Internet of Things
• Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning
• Blockchain technology

Most people have heard of these, but they sound too ‘techy’ to be real. But here are two examples that suggest these are not as far off as we may think:

1. The explosion of Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa software in the last 12 months. The burgeoning internet of things technology, likely coming to a home near you this holiday season.
2. Uber has just announced they will buy 24,000 self-driving vehicles from Volvo to put on the road over the next 4 years. Self-driving cars are ‘driven’ by artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Blockchain technology I will save for another blog…but it will be a significant disruptor of many industries.

In a TED talk on innovation, David Lee states that the rate of change from a farming economy to an industrial economy was 100 years, from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based economy was 60 years, and it is predicted that this most recent economic base change will take 10-15 years at most. I think that with much of the above technology well on its way, that estimate is very accurate.

Staying current on the deluge of technological change can be mind-boggling, but once you have a sense of the impact it can have, it becomes a necessity. There is a lot of content out there to help you keep on top of things from traditional books to online content, pod-casts, seminars and speaker series. I encourage you to check it out.