Understand the digital revolution and maybe you will live forever

As an IT person, you must understand why the business world is now filled with words like revolution, transformation, Industry 4.0, and disruption. It is all happening now – and it will change your work life and your company just as the Industrial Revolution managed years ago.

The heart of the “digital revolution” is about the very output of your business – the very product of a business must have a digital dimension. Digital is becoming one with the physical world – the product itself becomes digital, hereby changing your core business model as well!

Digital will defeat non-digital as it follows a nonlinear progress rate, that is fundamental in digital technology – I’ll come back to that later.

Don’t think that your product or your business is any different. All products – and I mean ALL future products will implicitly be digital. If you work in an IT department – try to understand what significant demand there is for new ways to organize and collaborate between IT and business – as IT is transforming into the core business!

Let me give you an example of something you surely know about – something as “non-digital” as cigarettes.

The first modern electronic cigarette was invented in China in 2003. In 2014, global sales were $2.5 billion. By 2023, e-cigarette volumes worldwide are expected to exceed those of “combustible” cigarettes!

Well, first of all, obviously both production and logistics are a completely different ball game. But what is even more interesting, is the launch of a new business model where consumers buy “cigarettes as a service” – the ultimate “pay-per-puff” business model.

This is happing in the tobacco industry –try to think about what major changes digital will do to your industry – and eventually to all industries.

The promise of eternal life

All studies show that digital has a built-in nature of “nonlinear progress rate”. You probably know about Moore’s Law, which has been proven correct since its formulation in 1965. What’s even more interesting though – and one of the cornerstones of the Singularity University, is that this “feature” seems to dominate all areas of the digital world.

As digital also transforms health care and starts moving into the human body (like 3D printed organs, micro-robots and Gene therapy), we already begin to see the “nonlinear progress rate” of the human life span.

Dr. Aubrey de Grey at the Singularity University predicts that people under the age of 30 will have the choice to defeat death…

That is how inspiring the digital revolution is changing the world and the world of business – so don’t think this won’t affect your business – instead imagine how exciting and fun it will be to be part of this journey.