Digital transformation is about human behaviour and culture
Writing a ‘future casting’ piece in month two of the new year is a little bit of a cheat but the flurry of technology prediction articles has left me wanting. While some left me flummoxed (apparently, this is yet again, “the year of mobile”) and rolling my eyes (a prediction saying that “AI will start to explain itself this year”, comes to mind), my general critique is that these predictions fail to acknowledge trends in human behaviour and culture, and how this impacts the innovation cycle. This report aims to fill that gap.
Values and beliefs largely determine how we behave. Technology helps to shape behaviour by how it can and cannot be used as well as how it is and isn’t used. When looked at in this way, an essential step in predicting trends is to look at what people believe, what they value and how they behave. As such, these are the top five shifts in beliefs, values and behaviour that I believe will shape the future of tech innovation across industries and sectors.
It is undeniable. The fight for the health of the planet and its people is changing hearts and minds. We can see this happening in a number of ways. Firstly, through language. There is a desire to not only measure ‘objectives’ but also ‘outcomes’. We’re hearing the word ‘impact’ more often and witnessing in seismic proportions what that looks like on both sides of the spectrum; those who are promising to do a lot, and those you have made no promises to date. We see this in Microsoft’s ambitious plan to become carbon negative in 2030. Conversely, we can see what happens when a company doesn’t rise to the expectation of change. In the case of Amazon, hundreds of employees put their jobs at risk last month (January 2020) in an open and coordinated effort whereby they criticised the company’s practices.
In order to make evidence-based, impactful decisions, 2020 looks set to be the year that organisations desire to get more out of their data. Tools that enable organisations to make sense of data so that they can better understand their impact on people, planet and profits will be key. This includes making definitions clear, surfacing meta data and visualising data in ways that are understandable and accessible despite technical ability.
Technologists are realising that the road to holistic, positive impact cannot be journeyed alone. Tothis end, we’re seeing the rise of the digital humanities. These individuals work at the intersection of technology, social life and their domain expertise. They’re crucial to efforts working on the successful democratisation, socialisation and operationalisation of technology and data. It’s precisely because their approach to innovation starts in their domain rather than with the technology that they are such an asset to technology teams. Without these individuals, foreseeing unintended consequences goes from being a difficult and challenging task to an overwhelming and crippling one that usually leads to one of two directions: inertia or reckless, ethical negligence.
Dr. Charlotte Webb has founded the Feminist Internet, the Leading Edge Forum and Girl Effect both have Digital Anthropologists on their team. GovLab have coined the term Data Steward and created an entire network around this role, and Google made a splash in Wired last October announcing they’ve hired a Chief Decision Scientist. Data Storytellers, those with good verbal and visual communication skills, who are able to help find the signal amongst the noise will likely find themselves in strong demand.
A key finding from LinkedIn’s Emerging Jobs 2020 report shows that as automation becomes more widespread, the demand for soft skills looks likely to increase. They call out communication, creativity and collaboration. This is corroborated in NESTA’s Future of Skills report which outlined a similar set.
