Digital and AI Epoch

This article is part of our Mentor-Coach Reading List series. Join the mailing list to receive this and more.

The Digital and AI Epoch is the focus of this reading list series, exploring the value and the disruption of Digital and Artificial Intelligence.

SETTING THE SCENE

Digital transformation is the rewiring of an organization, with the goal of creating value by continuously deploying tech at scale.- McKinsey

Some people call this artificial intelligence, but the reality is this technology will enhance us. So instead of artificial intelligence, I think we'll augment our intelligence. - Ginni Rometty

Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness. - Sigmund Freud

Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.- Viktor E. Frankl

The reason why it is so difficult for existing firms to capitalize on disruptive innovations is that their processes and their business model that make them good at the existing business actually make them bad at competing for the disruption. - Clayton M. Christensen

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

  • How do you (out)compete in the age of digital and Artificial Intelligence?

  • Will we use artificial intelligence to improve the way we work and live, or will we allow it to alienate us?

  • What are the synergies of strategy and digital transformation?

  • Does human progress depend on the choices we make about technology?

  • What is a digital mindset and what does it take to thrive?

  • Can we reclaim what makes humans unique in the age of digital and AI?

  • Will it be an epoch of power and progress?

  • Will Artificial Intelligence be the end of the human era?

Happy reading and stay curious!

Here is more information about the Series 19 selection of books.

Rewired: The McKinsey Guide to Outcompeting in the Age of Digital and AI (Wiley; 1st edition, July 2023) by McKinsey Digital's top leaders Eric Lamarre, Kate Smaje and Rodney W. Zemmel. They provide proven how-to details on what it takes in six comprehensive sections – creating the transformation roadmap, building a talent bench, adopting a new operating model, producing a distributed technology environment so teams can innovate, embedding data everywhere, and unlocking user adoption and enterprise scaling. They take the lessons learned working with more than 200 large-scale B2C and B2B companies and translates them into step-by-step actions that have been proven to work. Tested, iterated, reworked, and tested again over the years, it contains diagnostic assessments, operating model designs, technology and data architecture diagrams, how-to checklists, best practices, and detailed implementation methods, all exemplified with case studies and illustrated with 100 exhibits. Rewired is a practitioner’s guide for leaders who are ready to do the hard work needed to outcompete in the age of digital and AI.

Strategy in the Digital Age: Mastering Digital Transformation (Stanford Business Books, US , June 2023) by Michael Lenox. Digital transformation is about identifying new competitive positions and business models and thinking critically about how to both create and capture value. This book engages these concerns and provides a comprehensive roadmap for planning a successful digital strategy and executing a digital transformation in organisations. Covering major topics such as big tech, data analytics, artificial intelligence, blockchain, cryptocurrency, autonomy, cybersecurity, data privacy, and antitrust, strategy expert Michael Lenox outlines a set of novel, original frameworks to help those undertaking digital transformation devise their strategy. There are insights from major companies such as Spotify, Facebook, and Uber. Readers will also come away with a greater understanding of how to navigate the human dimension of digital transformation and tackle the numerous social and policy challenges raised by digital technology.

I, Human: AI, Automation, and the Quest to Reclaim What Makes Us Unique (Harvard Business Review Press, February 2023) by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. Filled with fascinating insights about human behaviour and our complicated relationship with technology, I, Human will help us stand out and thrive when many of our decisions are being made for us. To do so, we'll need to double down on our curiosity, adaptability, and emotional intelligence while relying on the lost virtues of empathy, humility, and self-control. As AI becomes smarter and more humanlike, our societies, our economies, and our humanity will undergo the most dramatic changes we've seen since the Industrial Revolution. Some of these changes will enhance our species. Others may dehumanise us and make us more machinelike in our interactions with people. It's up to us to adapt and determine how we want to live and work.

Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity (PublicAffairs, May 2023) by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson. This book builds the case that progress depends on the choices we make about technology. The authors demonstrate the path of technology was once - and may again - be brought under control. Cutting-edge technological advances can become empowering and democratising tools, but not if all major decisions remain in the hands of a few hubristic tech leaders. With their bold reinterpretation of economics and history, Acemoglu and Johnson fundamentally change how we see the world, providing the vision needed to redirect innovation so it again benefits most people.

The Digital Mindset: What It Really Takes to Thrive in the Age of Data, Algorithms, and AI (Harvard Business Review Press, September 2022) by Paul Leonardi and Tsedal Neeley. The pressure to 'be digital' has never been greater, but you can meet the challenge. The digital revolution is changing how work gets done, how industries are structured, and how people from all walks of life work, behave, and relate to each other. To thrive in a world driven by data and powered by algorithms, we must learn to see, think, and act in new ways. We need to develop a digital mindset. But what does that mean? It introduces three approaches ― Collaboration, Computation, and Change ― and the perspectives and actions within each approach that will enable you to develop the digital skills you need.

Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era (Quercus, July 2023) by James Barrat. First published ten years ago, Our Final Invention predicted much of the artificial 'intelligence explosion' that is now ripping through our culture, and was named by Elon Musk as one of five books everyone should read about the future. Now with an urgent new preface, James Barrat's landmark work explores the ethics, history and future perils of the heedless pursuit of advanced AI. Until now, human intelligence has had no rival. Can we coexist with beings whose intelligence dwarfs our own? And will they allow us to?

ONE MORE Book TO MAKE YOU THINK

Here be Monsters: Is Technology Reducing Our Humanity? (Monash University Publishing, May 2023) by Richard King. From the metaverse to genetic engineering and mood-altering pharmaceuticals, to cybersex and cyberwar and the widespread automation of work, new technologies are rewriting the terms of our existence, not in a neutral spirit of ‘progress’ but in line with the priorities of power and profit, and in ways that often work against the grain of our fundamental being. As science, technology and capitalism fuse into a single system, and activists and entrepreneurs talk of a ‘post-human’ future in which individuals will transform themselves using powerful computers and biotechnologies, we are entering unchartered territory ― a territory marked with the mapmaker’s warning, Here Be Dragons...Here Be Monsters.

Related Reading Series

Responsible Artificial Responsible Artificial Intelligence How is AI shaping our ourselves, our humaness and our societies? What are the next big positive breakthroughs? How will AI change the way we govern, learn, heal, work and live? How ethical and responsible will it be? How can we make AI a partner in shaping a better world?

Disruption and Transformation What is the relationship between growth and transformation? Why are some of the world’s most successful companies able to stay ahead of disruption, adopting and implementing innovative strategies, while others struggle?

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