Monthly Archives: June 2019

Digital Economy Series: In a fully digital world will companies still need to account for the environment?

Digital Economy, Environmental Strategy, Futures, Futurist, Governance, Leadership, Strategic Foresight, Strategy

There are a number of ways in which companies account for the environment. Including a seasonal perspective in terms of the variations in goods and services brought to market, another is from an environmental perspective in terms of energy usage as well as production and packaging materials, and a third is from a shareholder and stakeholder perspective in terms of statutory requirements.

person on a bridge near a lake

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In recent years the triple bottom line reporting framework has made its way into corporate practices. Where companies, for reasons due either to regulatory compliance or enlightened executives, report on profit, people and planet. That is, in addition to their standard financial statements organisations are reporting on metrics related to their staff and their impact upon the environment.

Building on the acceptance of reporting on more than one performance parameter, there is a nascent movement to embrace the quadruple bottom line. Where this fourth performance parameter is “purpose”. Defined as the ethics, culture and desires of the organisation.

The implication of the preceding is this. The administrative policies and processes that are established by government bodies, and are used to govern companies and organisations, change over time. Long gone is the notion that business reputation is solely built on a profit and loss statement.

So, into this governance implication let us now draw two threads from previous articles and elsewhere: the structure of business and the changing environment. Firstly, we know that the processes business engage in to make a profit will change in the decades ahead. Pervasive digitisation will drive an increasingly ubiquitous phenomena of process automation and forms of cognitive processing. Limiting the typical set of tasks available for the human workforce to those requiring people skills and/or thinking skills.

Secondly, while this trend of digitisation gathers apace the climate and natural environment in which business and the digital economy is beholden to will still be changing. There are two responses to these macro changes. The first, described as a pathway of current and common ambition, is to succeed in humanity having a light footprint on the environment. On the other hand, the pathway of lackluster ambition necessarily leads to outcomes that are less than optimal for all life forms.

Now, there is currently a broad acceptance of the concept of a global carbon budget. Therefore, one can envisage that, over the course of the time horzon for this series of articles, this principle of a global budget being established in corporate governance practices. Where economic entities are given a “profile” to work within. Thus, realising a transition from triple bottom line reporting through quadruple to quintuple. That is adding “profile” to the currently recognised profit, people, planet and purpose.

With respect to the triple and quadruple bottom line reporting the sense is that these governance outcomes are the result of internal motivations. The result of what the business decides to do. With the “profile” metric, the sense is that the reporting is on the outcomes with respect to the environmental budget that any business is given to work within.

This “profile” metric, a response to a set of imposed environmental limits, is relevant to both climate outcomes. Through either an enforced collaboration upon all businesses to ensure a continued light footprint, or a set of rules to limit the damage upon our common habitat.

The image of this future for business, the government and the economy is this. It is where the operational milieu of business is characterised as an expanse of intensely interconnected entities that are data and computationally rich. Where the description has morphed from being called a digital economy into an intelligence economy. Where the wisdom of the quintuple bottom line enforces the boundaries of all behaviour.

In a fully digital world companies will not only need to account for the environment they will be required to.

 

For more of what I have to offer, visit Dellium Advisory, follow on Twitter, connect using LinkedIn, review my IT Strategy blog, subscribe to my YouTube channel, or buy my ‘Jobs. Future. You.’ workbook.

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Digital Economy Series: In a digital economy will the abundance of data fuel a golden age of wisdom?

Digital Economy, Futures, Futurist, Innovation Systems, Strategic Foresight
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Knowledge in action. Sagacity. Percipience. Having experience, knowledge and good judgement. These words and phrases all describe and define wisdom. But will an abundance of data lead us to a golden age of wisdom? Will a richness of facts and figures, statistics and evidence lead us to a never-ending harvest of good judgement?

If we give credence to the DIKW (data, information, knowledge, wisdom) information science hierarchy, the answer leans to the affirmative. For with this framework, the following is the pattern: firstly, an abundance of data certainly leads to a wealth of information, or descriptions, about a plethora of matters. Which should, in turn, facilitate a breadth and depth of knowledge that is available for teaching and mentoring at a level unsurpassed in human history. Where the fruits of expertise, of mastery and of prowess are collectively this knowledge. And where this teaching and mentoring is an enabler to all people across the world regardless of the strata of society in which they sit. Where all of this flow upward from data, information and knowledge leads, finally, to a culmination in a golden age of wisdom. A time of good judgement and wise action.

But is the preceding flow true if we use a different time horizon? This piece you are reading is written for a time-frame of several decades into the future. What if you and I were to wind the clock back several decades to a time where “today was that tomorrow of several decades into the future”? Comparing this “back-in-time today” to the “current-time today”, is the latter enriched with an abundance of data? Do we, in the “current-time today” have a wealth of information about a plethora of matters compared with the times past. And thirdly, with respect to the current times, do we not have the ability, through information and communications technology, to teach and to share the fruits of expertise globally?

The argument can be made that we are better off today than yesterday. That we are wiser, that we have made sound judgements. While there is so much more to do, we can point to improvements in economic and physical health across the globe. We can make mention of the reduced rates of nation-state armed conflict and of improvements in education. But as we cast our eyes forward, will the teenage grandchildren of today’s teenagers be enveloped in, and benefit from, a milieu of experience, knowledge and good judgement? Consider the following two scenarios.

While matters of family are a common thread, that young woman in Asia, on the cusp of adulthood, may well have a personalised AI avatar to guide her through career and social choices. Offering her advice that could be heeded. And what-about that young man? A product of his Western heritage, looking to develop a career in the physical trades, finding his options don’t include the routine work he desires. Just like he was told throughout his schooling years.

In both cases, wisdom is offered but not infused. The prospects are that tomorrow will be just like today. Today we have that abundance of knowledge and the capacity for wise outcomes. And tomorrow? Our knowledge will have grown, we’ll have intelligence on hand and our capacity for delivering wise outcomes will be enhanced, but whether or not our results reflect these well-developed inputs is surely debatable.

These same arguments can be made regarding the generation of these teenager’s parents. Regardless of whether they live in Africa, the Sub-continent or in the Global North, one can imagine these parental pillars of society having responsibility in business or in policy making. Where the leaders in business are bound to a then long-established fiduciary duty to consult digital oracles. Where the policy makers can freely receive a finely curated harvest of good judgement.

Again it plays out in these two cases, decisions not quite fully imbued with the wisdom on offer. For across all four of these vignettes witness a surfeit of data, of information and of knowledge ripe with judicious potential. But where the consumption of this particular fruit is not universal. And the common denominator? What stands in front of this golden age of wisdom is surely our inherent human nature.

 

For more of what I have to offer, visit Dellium Advisory, follow on Twitter, connect using LinkedIn, review my IT Strategy blog, subscribe to my YouTube channel, or buy my ‘Jobs. Future. You.’ workbook.