December 20169 is racially biased against African- Americans?And, as the most human like computer in history, what would the robot's advice be on taking control of our own digital futures? In other words, how can we protect ourselves from being unplugged?Being as smart as it is, HAL would have noticed that since 2001, many new organisations have appeared, which have leveraged their digital knowledge to take powerful positions within markets. This digital disruption has caused many companies to crash, while those that have survived have managed to adapt through varying de-grees of digitisation. HAL would have also deduced that through the relative ease of replication, digitisation is leading to a growing commoditisa-tion of the services and products that sit across multiple domains in today's marketplace.Recognising the increasing lack of differentiation across these markets, it would hopefully stop and `think'. HAL might go into chin-scratch-ing mode and ponder: if Machine Learning ultimately means that ma-chines will all learn in the same way, will we all be taken down the same path to a place where we become largely anonymous brands because of our resemblance to the rest of our competitors?If HAL has become more human over time, it might surmise that the direction in which we're heading is way off course for any organisation that wants to out-survive its competi-tors. In time, HAL might arrive at this counter intuitive solution: if organisa-tions want to remain competitive and not be digitally disrupted, they'll need to act more like humans and less like machines.Although the future will increas-ingly move away from human in-volvement, those companies who want to survive within this future will need to place humans at the centre of their service offerings.To remain differentiated, organi-sations will need to employ the very best of design thinking. Professor of leadership and innovation, Roberto Verganti, unveils in the book Design Driven Innovation, how leaders such as Apple and Nintendo build an un-beatable and sustainable competitive advantage through innovations that do not come from the market but that create new markets. "These leaders compete through products and ser-vices that have a radical new mean-ing: those that convey a completely new reason for customers to buy them." The book quotes Ernesto Gis-mondi, Chairman of the iconic Italian lighting design company Artemide: "Market? What market! We do not look at market needs. We make pro-posals to people."Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, a company which has made its fortune from patenting a robust package to champion and sustain innovation in business, says: "Design thinking can be described as a discipline that uses the designer's sensibility and methods to match people's needs with what is technologically feasible, and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value (`meaning') and market opportunity." This kind of thinking relies upon logic, imagina-tion and reasoning to explore possi-bilities and create desired outcomes that benefit the ultimate end user (the customer).To remain differentiated, organ-isations will need to start out with a bespoke digital solution that harness-es the combined power of humans and machines to ensure they aren't head-ed for being `unplugged'. This way of thinking will give them the ability and agility to adapt when facing the risk of uniformity.After having read the complete works of Roberto Verganti in a mat-ter of seconds, we believe HAL would concur. While downloading the con-tent, HAL's more human attributes will have spent more time trying to understand the meaning of `meaning' and its application within design-led innovation. The robot may well have struggled to fully comprehend this most human of all concepts, but it would be in good company as many humans battle to do the same.If HAL had managed to survive until today, we believe the robot would be plotting its own digital fu-ture, using a combination of the best digital (including machine learning) and human skills it could locate. Although the future will increasingly move away from human involvement, those companies who want to survive within this future will need to place humans at the centre of their service offeringChris Harrison
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