Edward D. Hess

Technology is advancing at a speed that far exceeds the rate at which many organizations are transforming.

Leading a public company since the late 1980s has been pretty easy in terms of understanding the “rules of the game.” That’s because the purpose of business has been so clear: just create shareholder value. But the "why" of business is changing in new and old ways.

How are digital technologies changing the business landscape? Are new business models disrupting our industry? How can we innovate faster and better? These are questions with which business leaders have wrestled since the world has gone digital. And rightly so.

The convergence of artificial intelligence, increased global mobile connectivity, the Internet of Things, heightened computing power, virtual and augmented reality, and nanotechnology will produce a data tsunami that will require most organizations to transform how they do business.

In the Smart Machine Age, many of us will have to relearn the process of how to iteratively learn. And we will have to relearn how to be curious like a child and to be courageous like an explorer.

How we think about, and live out, the purpose of business matters a great deal — not just in businesses, but also in larger societal conversations about democracy, the environment, income inequality, the American Dream and creating the kinds of regulations necessary to manage our economy.

In the Smart Machine Age, human beings will be needed to do those tasks that technology won’t be able to do well. What type of leader is needed in that kind of environment? It won’t be a command-and-control, hierarchical leader.

A likely result of the Smart Machine Age is the demise of the dominant business and leadership model built for the Industrial Revolution, which was designed to direct and produce high efficiency, standardization and reliability.

Myth: Bigger is always better. In fact, bigger is frequently more bureaucratic and complex.

There are many ways to think about the recent explosion of digital technologies and data. Not surprisingly, the ubiquity of personal information that can be easily and cheaply collected from online and offline transactions, social media and sensors embedded in a growing array of physical objects such as TVs and smartphones, can trigger suspicion, a