The Post-Digital Era is Upon Us ARE WE READY FOR WHAT'S NEXT?

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The Post-Digital Era is Upon Us
ARE WE READY FOR WHAT’S NEXT?
Nikhil Koolwal Dr Shilpi Khandelwal
Research Scholar, Jagannath University Management Studies, Jagannath University
nikhil.10988@gmail.com shilpi.khandelwal@jagannathuniversity.org
Abstract—
As every business does indeed become a digital business…what is next?
Persistent change, challenged assumptions, and disruption are now the norm, rather than the exception, in business and society.
And these indicators will only accelerate and multiply as we progress into the future. The lightning-speed of change, driven by
technology, is taking us from the digital age toward a new reality, one we call the post-digital world. This paper lays out the
inarguably bold and complex path that businesses will encounter in the coming years, as digital continues to take hold and the
next wave of powerful technologies ushers in a new era.
First let’s look at what is happening today to see where we are headed: everything is becoming digital. Organizations are
making enormous strides and realizing the benefits of new digital business models and processes. We see examples of this
everywhere— in how people shop, work, learn, communicate, decide, respond and even elect leaders. Now enterprises are at a
crucial turning point. Digital is indeed important, but now it is simply the price of admission for doing business, especially as
technologies have swiftly evolved people’s expectations and behaviours. The next epic disruption is coming, and this paper
provides a glimpse of this future, along with insights on how to steer organizations toward continued success. Here is the good
news: the post-digital era offers tremendous opportunities and value for business if enterprises proceed responsibly and
strengthen trust. The power of cloud and artificial intelligence will continue to advance. When combined with technologies such
as distributed ledger, extended reality, and quantum computing, they will reshape not only the business sphere, but also the
relationships with individuals—customers, employees and ecosystem partners—that are critical to future growth.
Keywords— Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Quantum Computing, Digital Workforce, Virtual Reality, IoT, SMAC
INTRODUCTION
Think about where we are today. $1.25 trillion will be spent on digital transformation globally in 2019, and that number will
skyrocket to $1.97 trillion in global spending on digital transformation of businesses in 2022, according to the International
Data Corporation (IDC). And over 60% of global GDP will be digitized with growth in every industry driven by digitally-
enhanced offerings, operations, and relationships.
What does this mean? Enterprises are at a crucial new turning point. In an environment where everyone says they are going
digital, we will need a new set of rules to be successful. Digital is indeed still important, but now it is simply the price of
admission for doing business – it is no longer a differentiation advantage. What’s the secret to creating competitive advantage in
this post-digital world we foresee? This paper explored the post-digital era and the strategic implications and imperatives for
business. In the post-Digital world, differentiation comes from applying digital in powerful new ways. The technologies needed
to innovate and differentiate go beyond the foundational adoption of digital tools and concepts. It’s an era where building trust
with customers, employees, business partners and communities through a responsible approach to technology is the top priority
for all C-suite executives who want to grow and succeed.
What will this post-digital era look like? A world where individualization and instant on-demand capabilities will make it
possible for businesses to capture and deliver on momentary markets. The next wave of technology will make it possible for
products, services and even people’s surroundings to be deeply customized—calling as “individualization” --and delivered
instantly on-demand. Companies will be able to understand consumers, employees and business partners and their goals better

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than ever before, and they’ll have the ability to move even closer and act “in the moment” to people’s needs. By combining
individualization with instant on-demand capabilities, businesses will be able to cater to individuals in every aspect of their lives,
careers or business relationships—in effect, shaping their very realities. In order to do this, organizations will need to both
understand people at a holistic level—and deliver as needs change at a moment’s notice.
Many of these technological advancements are positive. We’ve seen dazzling displays in healthcare diagnosis using artificial
intelligence, virtual reality and digital twin technology. More than half (3.9 billion) of the global population is now online and
using the Internet, which represents a more inclusive global information society. And people are applying technology for good
in powerful ways—from adopting blockchain for humanitarian efforts, to improving agricultural practices and reducing waste
in the global food supply chain. But some of technology’s impact has a downside that’s driving “techlash.” Just witness the
geopolitical positioning happening for AI superpower status, as well as the surge of public sentiment demanding enterprises t o
be accountable for what they build and launch to market. Technology is even reaching into complex areas, like gene editing and
surveillance capitalism, that raise new ethical questions for society.
Companies are taking their first steps in a new world—one that tailors itself to fit every moment. It’s a world where products,
services, and even people’s surroundings are customized, and where businesses cater to the individual in every aspect of their
lives, shaping the very realities they live in. Japan’s biggest e-commerce company, Zozotown, is delivering “custom fast
fashion.” Its skintight spandex Zozosuits pair with the company’s app to take customers’ exact measurements; custom-tailored
pieces from Zozotown’s in-house clothing line in some cases could arrive in as few as 10 days. Gillette is catering to individual
preferences in health and beauty, partnering with 3D printing startup Formlabs to offer customized razor designs. Consumers
create their personalized product through the company’s website; the digitally-personalized design is then physically printed
and assembled, to be shipped directly to their door.
Looking at these companies individually, there is a story of hyper-personalization and on-demand digital services. But the
collective enterprise efforts reveal a fundamental shift in how people will experience the world for generations to come. Soon,
each individual will have their own reality, and every moment will represent an opportunity for companies to play a role in
shaping it. What is enabling—and driving—this reality-shaping shift? The emergence of a post-digital world. We as a society
are nearing a turning point in digital enterprise, where more businesses will have completed their digital transformations than
not. Digital-era technology, which began as a differentiating advantage years ago, is now expected from every business. But its
impact is still changing the relationship between businesses and society, and the expectations of individual people. Digital-born
companies and those completing their transformations have showered consumers with digital products and services. Facebook,
Twitter, Snapchat, and a constant rotation of new social media brands have become go-to destinations for finding and sharing
information. Smart home devices enable contextual interactions between the digital and physical world (Hey Google, remind
me to talk to the accounting staff when I get to the office), direct requests for physical products and services (Alexa, order more
dish soap), and even digitally driven social interactions from wherever people choose (Siri, call Mom with FaceTime).
This paper is highlighting the latest emerging trends that will shape businesses over the next three years. In each trend, we will
see how digital saturation is raising expectations, abilities, and risk across industries, and how businesses are seeking new ways
to differentiate themselves as the world moves into the post-digital era.
A PARALLEL TRANSFORMATION
Companies have not been alone on their journey to digital transformation. People have been on a parallel path, incorporating
new technologies at an increasingly rapid rate. When mobile phones were first introduced, they took 12 years to reach 50
million users; the internet took just seven to get to the same point. Looking at purely digital technologies, the rates become
frantic: Facebook reached 50 million users in four years; WeChat, one year. Pokémon GO, the augmented-reality gaming app
from Niantic? Nineteen days. People are adopting new technology both quickly and completely, and whether they’re customers,
employees, or even threat actors, they are beginning to outpace enterprises in their digital transformations.
They are more knowledgeable about technology itself and how companies use it and are becoming selective and demanding of
what they adopt, challenging companies to work with them or adapt to them in different ways. Post-digital consumers are
enjoying the results of technology saturation. In a world of unprecedented technology choice, people have strong sentiments
about which technologies they will or won’t adopt to get the experiences they want. Companies must pay close attention not
only to the choices themselves, but also to the powerful new insights those choices can provide about their customers—and
about new market opportunities.

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Post-digital workers are incorporating technology to complete tasks in new ways, in new types of jobs, but they are still being
hired, trained, and managed in pre-digital ways. With the war for talent continuing to rage, companies must adapt their
technology strategies to close the divide between themselves and their digitally mature workforce. Post-digital threat actors
have nearly unlimited points of entry to enterprise. With a global army of connected devices ready to be pressed into service,
and an attack surface that includes not only the target company but every partner and vendor in the company’s ecosystem, they
have the clear advantage.
Businesses must respond to this post digital threat with a collaborative approach, recognizing that they are not just potential
victims, but someone else’s vector. Post-digital markets are made up of consumers, business partners, and governments alike
enjoying the spoils of the digital revolution. Fully on demand or fully customized products are now the standard in practically
every industry, and sooner than later, customers will expect every organization to achieve both. This is not to say digital is old
or over. Far from it. Companies have used the power of digital transformation to shape themselves, to shape customers and
employees, and then to shape people’s expectations. What’s left is using their ongoing digital efforts to shape the market.
Companies face a world of renewed expectations and core digital technologies are more critical than ever. But the time for
pilots and experimentation is long past, and leaders must begin to strategize for what’s next.
GETTING TO THE NEW “MOMENT”
Realistically, the world is not yet at the point of everything being instantaneous. But post-digital companies are already playing
a different game. Companies still completing their digital transformations are looking for a specific edge, whether it’s
innovative service, higher efficiency, or more personalization. Post-digital companies are looking for much more. They are out
to bypass the competition by changing the way the market itself works. From one market to many custom markets— on-
demand, in the moment.
Industry lines are no longer a boundary to growth, and the disruption that came in waves as technology matured in the digital
era is now ever-present. Any company can compete with any other or carve out a new market. Take Amazon partnering with
Berkshire Hathaway, an insurance and holding company, and JPMorgan Chase, a global financial services firm, to tackle
challenges in healthcare spending. The three have pooled their resources in a joint effort that has companies in entirely different
industries preparing for foundational disruption.
Look at JD.com, an e-retail platform and one of the fastest-growing companies in China. JD is radically differentiating itself
with its “Toplife” platform—a service that helps third parties sell through JD by setting up customized stores for unique
shopping experiences.7 Not only do these third parties benefit from the e-retail personalization, they also have access to JD’s
supply chain with cutting-edge robotics and drone delivery that can reach rural areas. And through a partnership with Walmart,
a physical store in Shenzhen will offer more than 8,000 products available in person or delivered from the store in under 30
minutes.8 By offering unprecedented customization and speed, JD is enabling other companies to capture moments, and in
doing so creating a new market for itself. It won’t be long before the standout examples of today are the norm. Companies are
already investigating the next generation of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), distributed ledgers like blockchain,
extended reality, and quantum computing. The message is clear: “keeping up with the digitals” won’t cut it for what’s coming
next.
Business leaders looking to do more than just complete their transformations must set new goals in their sights, including: •
• Move your focus to the end. As companies begin to understand instant demand and supply options expand, they will
have more opportunities than they can pursue. Success will mean carefully choosing the specific opportunities
companies want to target—and just as important, the ones not to target—then working backward to determine how
they will get there.
• Define what it means for your business to be postdigital as the world moves into a new phase of cooperation. As
companies settle on their new goals and the pathways they will take to reach them, they must also determine which
ecosystem partners they need and where their own place in the ecosystem should be.
• Master SMAC as a core competency and a foundation to rotate to what’s next. When it comes to enterprise-level
technology strategies, companies can never stop moving. Social, mobile, analytics, and cloud (SMAC) combined to
drive the biggest enterprise and market transformations since the dawn of the industrial era. At this point, the failure to
complete a mastery of SMAC will leave businesses unable to serve even the most basic demands of a postdigital world.

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But success will unlock boundless future opportunity. Distributed ledger technology, Artificial intelligence, extended
Reality, and Quantum computing (DARQ) are already having an impact in disparate areas of enterprise. DARQ
technologies will drive the post-digital wave but catching that wave will only be possible with the firm foundation of
SMAC. Looking even further down the road? DARQ technologies will enable innovation in such core aspects of the
business that they will be foundational for whatever comes after that.
As companies move to meet these goals, they must also accept a new level of responsibility. As businesses use technologies to
reach further into people’s lives, shaping the very fabric of reality, they must address the privacy, safety, ethics, and governance
questions that come along with that level of access. Look at drone usage, which companies are incorporating for everything
from agricultural services to public safety, utility monitoring, and product delivery. They’re even changing what’s possible in
healthcare, with Switzerland’s postal service provider using drones to move time-sensitive lab samples between hospitals and
bypass the delays of ground transport.9 But this does raise issues of patient safety, privacy, and data protection that the involved
organizations must address, as well as navigating potentially restricted airspace. AirMap, which operates an airspace
management system for the low altitudes at which drones fly, partnered with Microsoft Azure to create a platform that gives
state and local authorities authorization, enforcement, and restriction abilities for drone operation in their areas.10 The platform
also lets companies incorporate security and compliance checkpoints into drone related workflows.
By positioning themselves as the curators of reality, companies already have a new level of obligation to society. But being able
to deliver for specific and constantly changing moments creates challenging additional questions for businesses that are used to
one market of many and long-static circumstances. With limitless opportunities, how do you measure the potential impact of
products and services on society? How do you avoid crossing ethical boundaries where there are different lines for every reality
and moment? And how does a company responsibly pick the opportunities to target in the first place? When you reach the point
of being able to deliver nearly anything instantly, it is critical to remember that “can” doesn’t always mean “should.” It’s every
company’s responsibility to understand the impact of its moments at scale.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The research methodology included gathering input from the annual management reports, advisory boards, group comprising
more than two dozen experienced individuals from the public and private sectors, academia, venture capital firms and
entrepreneurial companies. In addition, the inputs are from the interviews with technology luminaries and industry experts, as
well as with nearly 100 business leaders. In parallel, have conducted a global online survey of business and IT executives to
capture insights into the adoption of emerging technologies. The survey helped identify the key issues and priorities for
technology adoption and investment.
The research process also includes a global survey of business and IT executives from around the world, to understand their
perspectives on the impact of technology in business. Survey responses help to identify the technology strategies and priority
investments of companies from across industries and geographies. As a shortlist of themes emerges from the research process,
we have finalised top 5 emerging trends These processes weigh the themes for their relevance to real-world business challenges.
FINDINGS
First let’s look at what is happening today to see where we are headed: everything is becoming digital. Organizations are
making enormous strides and realizing the benefits of new digital business models and processes. We see examples of this
everywhere— in how people shop, work, learn, communicate, decide, respond and even elect leaders. Now enterprises are at a
crucial turning point. Digital is indeed important, but now it is simply the price of admission for doing business, especially as
technologies have swiftly evolved people’s expectations and behaviours. The next epic disruption is coming, and this paper
provides a glimpse of this future, along with insights on how to steer organizations toward continued success. Here is the good
news: the post-digital era offers tremendous opportunities and value for business if enterprises proceed responsibly and
strengthen trust. The power of cloud and artificial intelligence will continue to advance. When combined with technologies such
as distributed ledger, extended reality, and quantum computing, they will reshape not only the business sphere, but also the
relationships with individuals—customers, employees and ecosystem partners—that are critical to future growth.

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2019 TECH TRENDS
This paper is focussing on the emerging trends that will shape businesses over the next three years. In each trend, we will see
how digital saturation is raising expectations, abilities, and risk across industries, and how businesses are seeking new ways to
differentiate themselves as the world moves into the post-digital era.
Trend 1: DARQ Power- Understanding the DNA of DARQ
New technologies are catalysts for change, offering businesses extraordinary new capabilities. Distributed ledger technology,
Artificial intelligence, Extended reality, and Quantum computing will be the next set of new technologies to spark a step change,
letting businesses reimagine entire industries.
Trend 2: Get to Know Me - Unlock unique customers and unique opportunities
Technology-driven interactions are creating an expanding technology identity for every consumer. This living foundation of
knowledge will be key to not only understanding the next generation of consumers, but also to delivering rich, individualized,
experience-based relationships in the post-digital age.
Trend 3: Human+ Worker - Change the workplace or hinder the workforce
Workforces are becoming human+: each individual is empowered by their skillsets and knowledge plus a new, constantly
growing set of capabilities made possible through technology. Now, companies must adapt the technology strategies that
successfully created this next generation workforce to support a new way of working in the post digital age.
Trend4: Secure US to Secure ME - Enterprises are not victims, they’re vectors
While ecosystem-driven business depends on interconnectedness, those connections increase companies’ exposures to risks.
Leading businesses are recognizing that just as they already collaborate with entire ecosystems to deliver best-in-class products,
services, and experiences, it’s time security joins that effort as well.
Trend 5: MyMarkets - Meet consumers’ needs at the speed of now
Technology is creating a world of intensely customized and on-demand experiences, and companies must reinvent their
organizations to find and capture those opportunities as they come. That means viewing each opportunity as if it’s an individual
market—a momentary market.

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TREND1: DARQ POWER – Understanding the DNA of DARQ
Imagine movies in the future. Audiences will live inside of stories, fully immersed in fictional worlds through virtual
reality (VR). Human-like artificial intelligence characters will respond, anticipate, and react to each audience member’s
choices, and payments and access will be facilitated seamlessly by distributed ledger technology.
Watching a fixed story on a screen will be a relic of the past. In its place: create-your-own TV packages or multi-player,
interactive movies at home. No more traveling to a theatre to watch a movie; instead, people will “travel” into the movie itself
as participants. This may seem farfetched or at least far off, but companies are already building these kinds of interactions in the
entertainment industry and beyond. Supermassive Games released a VR experience for “The Inpatient,” letting players
participate in the game in true first person. Google is rolling out Duplex, a natural language voice assistant so human-like it’s
hard to recognize as AI, to help people accomplish daily tasks. Choon, a blockchain-based music streaming platform, is
attempting to democratize and streamline artist royalties. And while the full maturity and widespread adoption of quantum
computing may still be years away, companies are beginning to explore this technology now. Leaders in quantum hardware are
connecting their quantum computers to the cloud, allowing companies and individuals to experiment with the possibilities of
this revolutionary new approach to solving exponentially complex problems. The world is moving into a post-digital era.
Companies are setting their sights beyond their organization’s digital transformation, moving toward shaping how governments,
business partners, employees and individuals interact with the world through technology.
In other words, “DARQ” matters. New technologies are catalysts for change, offering extraordinary new business capabilities
when applied appropriately. Individually, each of these four technologies represent opportunities for businesses to differentiate
their products and services. Collectively, they will open unimagined new pathways into the future. AI already plays a critical
role in optimizing processes and influencing strategic decision-making. Extended reality, an immersive technology, creates
entirely new ways for people to experience and engage with the world around them. Distributed ledgers will expand networks
by eliminating the need for trusted third parties. And quantum technology will usher in novel ways to approach and solve the
hardest computational problems.
Exploring the DARQ
Across the DARQ technologies, investments and adoption are rising steadily. VR and AR saw a 12 percent increase in
investment between 2016 and 2017, reaching $3 billion that year; in the first three months of 2018, companies invested $750
million in AR/VR startups.4 Distributed ledger investments are exploding, with blockchain and cryptocurrency-focused startups
alone collecting almost $3.9 billion in investments in the first three quarters of 2018—nearly three times the total for all of 2017.
Eighty-nine percent of businesses are already experimenting with one or more DARQ technologies, expecting them to be key
differentiators. Each technology is at a different point on the adoption curve, but the first wave of companies using DARQ
technologies to drive differentiation is already here.
The Symphony Post-Acute Network incorporated AI and machine learning to improve care for its 80,000 patients, using a
cloud-based AI engine to drive predictions and recommendations based on its existing patient data.6 The resulting insights led
to a drop in readmission rates from 21 percent to less than 19—a huge reduction in a key success metric in healthcare, at a cost
savings of more than $13,000 per patient. Similar AIdriven results can be found across industries, with 80 percent of companies
reporting that AI is in production in their organization in some form.

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These offerings give companies a way to develop and test quantum solutions for specific enterprise use cases today.
Volkswagen has used quantum computing to test traffic flow optimization, as well as to simulate the chemical structure of
batteries, hoping to accelerate battery development.12,13 The company teamed with Nvidia to add AI capabilities to future
models.14 Volkswagen is also testing distributed ledgers with an eye to protecting cars from hackers, facilitating automatic
payments at gas stations, creating tamperproof odometers, and more.15 And the carmaker provides step-by-step augmented
reality instructions to help service employees repair vehicles.16 Companies like Volkswagen with early-stage tests and pilots
are gaining expertise, forming key partnerships, and building up DARQ capabilities. As the technologies mature, this
experience will provide the tools to weave together solutions creatively and strategically—to solve new kinds of problems or
attack existing problems in new ways.
TREND2: GET TO KNOW ME – Unlock unique consumers and unique opportunities
Globally, 1.7 billion adults are “unbanked,” with no bank account or access to formal finance. They frequently end up in
a financial catch: without any financial history, they can’t qualify for a loan. Without any loans, they have no financial
history.
But lending platform SlicePay has found a way to serve unbanked students in India. SlicePay runs “credit” checks by
examining applicants’ use of technology. How often they post photos of themselves on vacation or check into restaurants on
social media may seem like unorthodox measures of financial viability, but they offer useful insight into spending patterns.2
Combined with other tech-derived metrics, SlicePay uses these insights to build applicant profiles that replace traditional
financial histories.

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Another company, Capital Float, operates similarly. If someone applies for a loan for a technology-related endeavor, like
buying a car to become a driver for a rideshare app or signing up as an ecommerce seller, one of the data points Capital Float
will check is the software update status of their mobile phone. It helps the company evaluate the applicant’s technology savvy,
to determine how likely they are to be successful in technology-related work. SlicePay, Capital Float, and others have spotted
the emergence and growing importance of technology identities. The sets of technologies people choose to use are now so
integrated into their lives that they have become a part of consumers’ identities, and leaders are using those identities to create a
new generation of offerings. In SlicePay’s case, its new technology “credit check” lets the company serve a previously untapped
market of customers.
These technology identities are part of an emerging enterprise feedback loop, one that first began to show its potential with the
personalization efforts of the digital era. Through digital technologies, companies gained new, direct touchpoints with
customers. They used the resulting “snapshots” of insight into customer needs and goals to deliver personalized products and
services, which, in turn, gave companies even more insight into their customers. Now, that technology-driven feedback loop is
about to kick into overdrive. As the world moves into the post-digital era, companies are beginning to build new products and
services that shift the one-off, transactional exchanges between businesses and consumers to an ongoing, customized
relationship. They are moving beyond personalized products to individualized experiences, creating a one-to-one relationship
with each customer where technology plays the starring and ever-present role.
The transactional interactions of the digital era offered snapshots of customers at a single point in time. Now, experiences are
beginning to deliver a living, more holistic, and ongoing view of customers’ digital activities, technology capabilities, and
preferences—in addition to their personal needs and goals. It’s the enterprise feedback loop of the postdigital era: the more
experiences companies deliver, the richer the technology identities that are created. The richer the technology identity, the more
powerful the experience a company can create.
For B2C companies, the logic is the same. If consumer-facing businesses are betting big on experiences fundamentally driven
by technology, they will need to better understand how that experience fits into the technology that already exists in a
customer’s daily life. The technology that consumers have integrated into their lives may not be as clearly defined as an
enterprise technology stack, but it is just as critical. People entrust digital services to pay bills, shop, catch up with friends, get
the news, control the lights in their homes, work, and entertain themselves; even social movements like #MeToo are inherently
born through technology. More than half of the global population are internet users, and in the US, consumers across
generations already spend more than three hours per day on their mobile devices. Even when it is operating silently in the
background, technology has come to dominate the way people engage with the world.
Success for companies, then, is about seamlessly integrating into each individual’s technology choices—drawing insights not
only from which technologies a person has adopted, but also how they’re used. Look at the difference in the ways people use
voice technology: among US adults, 70 percent use voice services to play music, 31 percent use them for smart home
commands, and just 17 percent use them for food delivery or takeout.10 Technology identities not only reflect overall consumer
identities, they also define new aspects of people’s lives in an era where everything is digital. Companies that disregard
technology identities will inevitably create offerings out of sync with what their customers are able or willing to use. But those
that successfully grasp technology identities will achieve a living, individualized view of each consumer—one that’s needed to
deliver rich, continuous, experience-based relationships in the post-digital age.
UNDERSTAND CHOICE TO BUILD TRUST

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With every future offering poised to be individualized for the market of one, companies must master the granular understanding
that technology identities make possible. It’s the difference between creating a tailored, seamless experience that neatly
integrates into a specific customer’s life, or losing a consumer’s trust and a potentially lifelong relationship by creating an
experience that is out of sync with their needs and expectations.
Mastering the use of technology identities begins with understanding their key value: they rely on the power of consumer choice.
No one chooses their age, ethnicity, or other characteristics commonly used to categorize people into demographic buckets. But
having a Facebook account or a smart home device is a choice. Which brand of smartphone a person carries, or if they carry one
at all, is a choice. Whether or not to turn on location tracking, use a wearable fitness device, or let an insurance company
monitor driving activity in exchange for a discount—all of these are choices, driven by convenience, accessibility or the trust a
person has in a particular company. Choices around technology create many consumer variables that businesses must both
understand and address.
The most obvious example relates to the question of individualization and privacy. As companies move toward serving the
market of one, they must toe the line between “useful” and “creepy”—and bear in mind that the line will vary for each person.
Going beyond the red line for an individual customer could mean all is lost. Case in point: one in five consumers report that
they would switch to another brand if a personalization experience was too creepy, and one in five also said they would talk
about the creepy personalization with others.16 Yet at the same time, nearly half of consumers say they have purchased a
product they weren’t planning on buying after receiving a personalized recommendation from a company.
The key takeaway: tailoring offerings to the individual also means figuring out just how much tailoring to do in the first place.
Individual lines will range from “all personalization is creepy to me” through to “personalization is incredibly useful and I don’t
find it creepy at all,” plus everything in between—and the line will vary for each different offering. Businesses must also
remember that they are not the only company that individuals have technology-driven relationships with—and those other
relationships may affect the lines they draw for your company. Thanks to ecosystem connections, companies can access
information about a person’s technological footprint even if that person has never interacted with them. Kinsa’s connected
thermometers let customers track their fevers via a smartphone app; Clorox paid to license the information, using it to direct ads
to US ZIP codes where people had more fevers (and potentially more need for disinfecting wipes).18 No personally identifying
information was ever shared.
Still, customers who end up seeing ads for disinfecting wipes not long after their child had a fever might wonder if their new
connected thermometer is being too “chatty” about their household’s health. Fortunately for businesses, the very technologies
that make individualized experiences possible can also help companies determine consumers’ preferences for how tailored those
experiences should be. Businesses are already collecting the information they need to build this level of understanding, whether
it is for marketing purposes, figuring out how best to communicate with a particular customer, or for providing support. Now,
they must combine the data and use it in new ways to calculate the “creepiness quotient” in advance. Coupled with transparency
about the insights being drawn from their interactions, companies can use this understanding to build and maintain trust with
customers as offerings get more and more individualized.
TREND3: HUMAN+ WORKER
Businesses have not been going through their digital transformations alone. Today’s workers are equipped and
empowered by technology, incorporating it to perform existing roles in new ways and to adapt for new roles that did not
exist in the pre-digital era. With every company making major investments in technology, a renewed focus on the
workforce will decide the winners from the losers in the post-digital age: across industries, it’s the workforce that will
bring the promise of those investments to life.
Oil and gas drillers at Conoco use a data visualization tool based on a gaming engine to troubleshoot malfunctions nearly a mile
underground in real time. In Siemens’s “Click2Make” automated factory project, an artificial intelligence (AI) reasoning tool
uses the known capabilities of both human and robot workers to assign tasks, enabling people to work seamlessly with
machines. In China, e-commerce giant JD offers three-month-long drone classes to train employees for jobs as delivery drone
pilots, a job that simply did not exist before the digital revolution. Across industries and organizations, workers are
incorporating technology to build on their own inherent skills and experience. The workforce is becoming “human+”: each
individual is empowered by their skillsets and knowledge plus a new, constantly growing set of capabilities made possible
through technology.

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But as the line between employees and the technology they use blurs, a new divide is emerging. The workforce is evolving at a
rapid pace, incorporating new technology-driven abilities and skills to deliver value for the company—while the enterprise itself
is still optimized for the workforce of the past, leaving a disconnect that reaches throughout the organization. Companies have
inadvertently created a new digital divide between themselves and the workforce that has helped them to grow.
By incorporating its workers’ needs into its technology strategy, Swisscom has taken a step toward unleashing the full potential
of a nextgeneration workforce—one currently constrained by the very foundations on which it was built. This challenge is not
limited to a small subset of workers, nor is it restricted to knowledge workers alone. In every industry, technology is changing
the way work is done. Workers in Amazon warehouses shifted into roles as robotics operators and technology overseers.5 At
Baker Hughes, field technicians wear augmented reality headsets to access both digital overlays of information and live
expertise from off-site engineers in order to fix malfunctioning turbines.
As companies continue to innovate and push into new areas of the market, they will necessarily create new jobs and new roles
immersed in technology. Not only is every job today becoming a human+ role, but every new role that is created in the future
will be human+ from the start. In concert with this human+ shift, people are moving more rapidly between companies. The
median years of tenure with a US wage or salary worker’s current employer dropped from 4.6 in 2012 to 4.2 in 2016.7 Among
those between the ages of 25 and 34, the median tenure with one company is now less than three years.
Technology innovation combined with increasing employee velocity has created an ever-expanding number of potential paths
for workers to explore. But that also means an increasing number of career paths for businesses to identify, manage, and
support—and so far, companies have not kept up. Talent-finding strategies are out of sync with the capabilities of human+
workers, and investments in learning and reskilling are far short of where they need to be for the high rate of employee
transitions to different roles or companies. Knowledge management and access strategies haven’t kept pace either: more
information is available than ever for both workers and organizations, but it has become harder to find as people move fluidly
between roles. The bottom line for companies? Adapt the technology strategies that successfully created this next-generation
worker to empower them even further. Through AI, extended reality (XR) and sentiment analysis, companies can propel their
workforce forward, blazing a trail for the company’s continued growth. The human+ worker will build the pathway to the next
big wave of innovation. How will your technology strategy empower them to get you there?
OPTIMIZING THE WORKFORCE MIX:
The speed and constantly changing nature of human+ career journeys are making it harder for companies to add specific skills
to their workforce through traditional hiring approaches. Top candidates are off the job market within 10 days, and a slow hiring
process can lead to a new employee whose primary skills are no longer a good match by the time a role is filled.8 And, of
course, with the rapid pace of technological change, it is a challenge to know which skills to target in the first place.

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Companies’ needed technology skills are in constant flux, yet most still approach talent-finding as they did in the era of stable
career paths. But savvy businesses are finding new ways to balance their workforce mix, both externally and internally.
Outwardly, companies are rethinking the way they hire, using technology to assess candidates based on capabilities and
potential—an approach that is better suited to the adaptability of the human+ worker. Leaders are already using this as an
advantage, moving away from solely reactive skills-based hiring and looking toward an optimized mix of people.
TRAINING & ENGAGEMENT;
In an era of high employee velocity and constantly shifting skills needs, training and continuous learning are more important
than ever. Seventy-eight percent of business and IT executives agree that increasing employee velocity has increased the need
for reskilling in their organization. To lead in the human+ era, companies must invest in their workforces through learning and
reskilling strategies that prepare employees for changing roles.
The good news? Human+ workers are willing and able to learn and adopt new tools quickly. The bad: typical organizational
training approaches limit resources to employees who have been approved for certain learning opportunities to fill a specific
enterprise need. Even with workers overwhelmingly reporting that they require new job skills to remain relevant, just 30 percent
of non-freelancers report participating in skillsrelated training in the past six months.13 Compare that with more than 40 percent
of millennials who rank learning and development second only to salary as the most important benefit in deciding where to
work, and companies are headed for trouble.14 Rather than limiting their powerful human+ workers to only the skills they need
today, leaders are investing in learning platforms and strategies that better prepare workers—and the company—for tomorrow.
PayPal partnered with Udemy to offer on-demand, selfdirected video learning to its employees.15 Not only does the partnership
offer immediate learning opportunities, it also provides PayPal with better insight into the skills its workers want to target and
how best to meet those needs. As employees browse through and engage with Udemy’s curated videos, PayPal gets indepth,
backend analytics about which topics get the most interest and which materials are most successful.
Going into 2018, Telenor Group wanted to foster a culture of continuous learning and skills transformation. Employees were
challenged to devote 40 working hours to self-learning during the year, splitting their time between the company’s digital
learning portal— which features courses from providers like LinkedIn and Coursera—and other opportunities including
classroom courses and on-the-job training. At the end of the year, the company found that employees had not only met the
challenge but far exceeded it, nearly doubling the time spent on online courses alone.

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TREND4: SECURE US TO SECURE ME
In October 2018, JPMorgan Chase, Mastercard, Fidelity, and other global payment firms participated in the first joint
cybersecurity exercise meant to test operational preparedness during simultaneous attacks of payment systems. Through the
process, the companies found they have very different approaches on how to respond to threats, when to engage law
enforcement, and even hold varying definitions of what constitutes a breach. Critically, though, the exercise allowed the firms
to uncover ways they could better coordinate responses and dramatically improved their ability to respond to threats.
This cooperative effort is just one example of how companies are evolving to become more resilient against the new reality of
cyberthreats. Today’s ecosystem-dependent business world amplifies exponentially the impact of cyberattacks: incidents that
cripple one enterprise can grow rapidly and expand to threaten a company’s ecosystem, industry, and beyond.
Interconnectedness increases companies’ exposure to risks, and leading businesses are recognizing that while they already
collaborate to deliver best in- class products, services, and experiences, it is high time security joins that effort as well.
The level of risk has been rising for some time. Enterprises have been building vast interconnected ecosystems, but only 29
percent of business and IT executives report that they know that their ecosystem partners are working diligently, like they are,
to be compliant and resilient with regard to security. Here, “weakest link” takes on a new importance: liability. Now these
linkages are being exploited by attackers—both criminal and state actors alike—to catastrophic effect. In connected ecosystems,
such attacks can reach unprecedented scale. The WannaCry cryptoworm did not stop at ransoming the data of individual
businesses, but exploited an operating system vulnerability to spread across the globe, infecting 300,000 computers spanning
150 countries in a matter of days.2,3,4 The Mirai malware was used to hijack more than 100,000 Internet of Things (IoT)
devices and launch an attack on a domain registration services provider in 2016; since then, even though its original developers
were caught, new variants have emerged.5 One such variant, Satori, spread to 100,000 home routers in 12 hours.
Threat actors also exploit ecosystems that were designed to amplify the reach of information, such as social networks. And it
has been done to great success: researchers from MIT found that attackers have been able to spread fake news faster than real
news, with the top one percent of fake news stories reaching 1,500 people six times faster than real stories.7 But scale is not the
only way digital ecosystems are amplifying cyberattacks. With the business world dependent on ecosystem connections, even
the smallest disruption to one service can cascade to have a massive business impact on other partners. And while risk
management activities are largely focused on a company’s internal operations, attackers are looking at the whole house of cards.
For example, for more than five years, a group of hackers stole insider information about publicly traded companies—not by
attacking the companies themselves, but by targeting the newswire agencies that get early access to press releases from the
world’s largest businesses. Unscrupulous stock traders created “shopping lists” of companies whose press releases the hackers
would target and gave the hackers a cut of the ill-gotten profits from trading off the stolen information.8 And as more of the
physical world is controlled by digital devices, the risk and potentially dangerous impact grows. Researchers at Ben Gurion
University demonstrated that attackers could drain a city’s water tower without a direct attack on its critical infrastructure—by
instead exploiting vulnerable IoT irrigation systems, forcing them to overdraw from city reserves.9
These examples reflect the harsh new reality of business: as companies find rich opportunity in working with whole ecosystems,
they are simultaneously extending, and absorbing, the risk and vulnerabilities of those partners as well. Threat actors see
ecosystems as an ever-widening attack surface, while most businesses still look at cybersecurity as strictly an individual effort.
To respond to this dichotomy, organizations need to amend their approach, incorporating security into the collaborative
strategies they have used to create powerful and innovative products and services. They must include growing ecosystem
dependencies as part of their own security posture and make security a cardinal component of how they build partnerships. Both
are a must for security in a postdigital world. Doing so means shifting away from the “my company first” mindset and
recognizing that today’s emerging threats demand a cooperative effort. Enterprises will need to expand the horizons of their risk
assessment and threat modeling to account for a much wider threat landscape. They must spread and share responsibility for
security, starting in their own organization—and begin building security partnerships that reflect the ecosystems in which they
participate. Security in an ecosystem-driven world is no longer about protecting the organization—it is about protecting
everyone.
REFRAMING RISK AROUND THE ECOSYSTEM:
If enterprises hope to collaborate on security across their ecosystem, the first step is reframing their understanding of threats and
he subsequent risk those threats pose. In a recent survey, 71 percent of IT and business executives felt that cyberattacks were a
“black box” and did not know how they would affect the organization.10 If leaders cannot assess the impact of an attack on

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their own organization, how will they understand the risk posed to their ecosystem partners—or the risks they are accepting
through those partnerships?
Threat modeling will help companies expose and understand immediate enterprise and ecosystem risk. But businesses do not
stand still—and neither does risk. Ecosystem partners are changing constantly, bringing with them new business ambitions,
priorities, and operational maturity—yet assessing security risks is a step that is frequently bypassed when these business
relationships change or grow. Only 38 percent of businesses report including the chief information security officer (CISO) when
considering new business opportunities. Even among those that do, most evaluations are only done annually; and few have any
mechanism for integrating new partners’ controls and alerting into the company’s enterprise management. To address these
problems, companies are building new organizational mechanisms to ensure security is a dedicated part of any corporate
strategy. GE has CISOs assigned to specific regions and business units, to help inform decision-making at a more granular level.
And AT&T established its Security Advisory Council, a board of cross-functional business and security leaders who meet
regularly to discuss the most pressing issues facing the organization. In ecosystem-driven business, enterprises must understand
the challenges faced by every participating company. Reframing risk to account for ecosystem relationships and proactively
making security a part of business discussions will help companies begin to view their own business the way attackers do,
leading to better preparation overall. But reconsidering what constitutes risks for the ecosystem is just the beginning. Security
and IT operations teams can spend days fighting the wrong fires if they do not understand the business impact.
BUILDING A MORE RESILIENT FUTURE
In concert with their technology efforts, companies must also evolve their approach to governance as ecosystem-driven business
expands. Ecosystems are inherently in flux; companies never know who they will be partnering with tomorrow—or whose
vulnerabilities will be putting them at risk.
To manage their risk in this ever-changing environment, companies will have to create governance models and policies
specifically with these challenges in mind. One-off measures that are negotiated each time a new partner is introduced are
inadequate; comprehensive models and policies must ensure that the partners and third parties joining the company’s cosystems
adhere to the same standard of security—or higher—that they set for themselves. To begin creating ecosystem-level standards
and governance, enterprises should look not just to their partners, but also their broader industry to collaborate. Other
companies, even competitors, are likely to be facing the same challenges, and have opportunities to build solutions that make it
safer for every company to conduct business. Take the Vendor Security Alliance, a non-profit organization that will assess,
qualify, and audit technology vendors based on a standardized set of security principles.28 The founding partners of this
organization were major technology companies like Uber, Square, Palantir, and others that all recognized they are drawing from
the same well of vendors. Rather than each company needing to audit individually or blindly trust their vendors, the non-profit
created a rigid, consistent set of standards along with an auditing body to ensure a better foundation of security for the entire
ecosystem
.
It’s a creative solution to a pressing challenge all businesses face as they work with an increasing number of partners. Across
industries, just 39 percent of companies believe that the data exchanged with strategic partners or third parties are protected
adequately by their cybersecurity strategy.29 Companies must assess third parties not only on the merits of their business
contributions, but also on their compliance with security policies and laws in an increasingly complex regulatory environment.
Siemens is helping move its entire ecosystem and industry players toward this reality with a Charter of Trust initiative that the
company established in 2018.30 Partners signing the charter agree to make commitments to a number of cybersecurity tenets.
These include baking security into the design of products and technologies, collaboratively innovating on cybersecurity

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measures, providing transparency on incidents to all participants, and more. Ecosystem partners and competitors alike have
already signed the agreement, including enterprises such as AES, Airbus, Deutsche Telekom, and Daimler.31 Beyond industry,
enterprises must work more closely with governments as well. Governments have valuable cross-sector insight and enterprises
are becoming the new front lines where both criminal and state-level attacks occur. Consider attacks like those faced by Sony
Pictures, or more recently the NotPetya attacks that impacted Maersk and FedEx—all of which involved malware attributed to
state-level actors.32,33 Threats that seem criminal may be state-level in nature, underscoring the importance of businesses
and governments addressing cybersecurity collaboratively.
Fortunately, there are already efforts underway to build these relationships. The US Department of Homeland Security set up
the National Risk Management Center, a hub dedicated to creating cross-sector coordination in risk management strategies and
improving crisis response for threats to critical infrastructure. The effort is aimed at ensuring that in the moment of a
cyberattack, all parties involved know their role and the necessary actions to effectively respond to the threat.34 Similarly, the
European Union established the Cyber Rapid Response Force, a set of teams that pull in experts from across industries and
borders to counter attacks that threaten both public and private sectors.35 Even without direct partners in mind, there are still
ways to collaborate. Netflix is among those leading the open-source security charge, sharing internally developed security tools
with the world since 2014.36 The company’s free software releases include tools for penetration testing, application-specific
distributed denial of service (DDoS) simulation, end-user vulnerability remediation, and more.37 Rather than keep these tools to
itself, Netflix understood that a safer internet is a better place to do business.
As companies pursue and complete their digital journeys, they will find themselves operating in new and different ecosystems
to chase innovative opportunities—and that means a constantly expanding attack surface for threats and vulnerabilities. If
companies are going to join in the pursuit of shared business outcomes, they need to coordinate their efforts for resilience as
well.
TREND5: MY MARKETS
With companies, workforces, consumers, and industries now inextricably connected, being digital is no longer enough for a
business to differentiate itself. But it does give organizations a foothold for their next big opportunity: capturing moments.
Paper Boat, a beverage brand operating in India, uses hyper customization as a key driver of market growth. Its main product is
buttermilk soft drinks, but unlike other beverage companies that work hard to drive consistency, the drink tastes different
depending on where it is sold.1 Paper Boat infuses regional flavors like curry leaves, green chili, or ginger that better reflect
local tastes—even going so far as to use localized mango varietals to ensure customers in every region are delighted. No
opportunity is too small or too fleeting; the company also completes small runs of seasonal beverages to celebrate regional
holidays. One such drink —Panakam—is sold for only three days a year.
Technology is at the backbone of how Paper Boat executes these granular strategies. The company solicits localized feedback
from customers by surveying them on WhatsApp, using the aggregated data to continuously gain new insight with a proprietary
analytics platform. Its factory, fully equipped with Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, is extremely flexible: changing recipes
takes at most two to three minutes, is transacted through computers, and even factors in external variables like weather and air
pressure to ensure the finished beverage tastes exactly as intended. A company like Paper Boat offers a glimpse of how leaders
will capture the opportunity of individual moments. As people’s lives become more and more personalized through technology,
creating a world with a multiverse of realities and moments, companies must reinvent their organizations to capture those
opportunities as they come. That means viewing each moment as if it is an individual market—a momentary market. With
direct digital access to customers and increasingly powerful analytics capabilities, companies can understand their current and
potential markets better than ever before. And with sophisticated backend technology that can reorient the business quickly,
they can deliver for those markets faster than ever before. Put those capabilities together and every moment is a chance to
deliver anew product or service designed not just for a specific customer, but for their needs at a specific point in time.
Mastering momentary markets will be both an art and a science. Delivering for every moment is impractical and unnecessary;
the art lies in picking the right opportunities to be both effective and welcomed by consumers. The science is in building a
company that can create context-aware, customized products and services on demand. Leading businesses are already preparing
for a future of living in the moment, on both sides of the equation.

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Take General Motors. The company installed a 3D printer in one of its manufacturing plants, allowing assembly line workers
to print replacements for broken tools on-site the moment they need them.2 This lowered the cost for replacing tools
significantly—one commonly-used tool cost $3,000 to buy but just $3 to 3D print—and kept lines moving. For consumers,
Zume Pizza rises to moments of opportunity through an app that forwards custom orders directly to an assembly line of pizza-
making robots.3 The machines roll dough, add sauce, and cook the pie, letting the company deliver just what the customer
wants up to 20 minutes faster than competitors.
These pushes toward momentary markets are the natural evolution of a digitally maturing world. When businesses and
consumers increasingly turned to online interactions, on-demand services and customizable products became cheaper and easier
to execute. Netflix and Spotify brought entertainment out of stores and directly into people’s homes; Google and Facebook
introduced targeted and personalized advertising; Salesforce, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and others offered customizable
software and on-demand storage and compute power.
Exposed to this level of convenience, immediacy, and intimacy, it is no surprise that people now expect this level of service
from every company. Searches for “same-day shipping” have grown 120 percent since 2015, and there are high expectations
around personalization as well, with 71 percent of consumers expressing frustration when shopping experiences are
impersonal.4,5 B2B expectations have also grown: in a recent study by Salesforce, business partners overwhelmingly said that
understanding their needs and the way they use products and services is key to winning their business. Miss the moment, and
there is no second chance. When unsatisfied, 76 percent of customers believe it is easier than ever to simply take their business
elsewhere. But opportunity awaits the businesses that are prepared to capture the moments when they come.
Companies that weave a technology strategy to meet and even exceed these growing customer expectations will find themselves
far ahead of the competition—and ready for a post-digital future. Their ability to remain continuously relevant—a living
business in the face of constantly changing customer, partner, or employee needs—will set them apart in a way that was not
possible before.7 Many have already invested in the tools it will take: AI will help predict trends and preferences; digital twins
and agile manufacturing will provide granular context and the capacity to rapidly prototype, experiment, and deliver. Your
competition may be well on its way to unlocking momentary markets. Are you?
FINDING THE MOMENTS:
Before companies can deliver for a given moment, they have to know that the opportunity exists. That means identifying
customer needs before their competitors do—and potentially before customers themselves do. Companies already do demand
planning and forecasting on a large scale. But with momentary markets, forecasts and predictive models won’t be limited to
long-range planning or major trends; they will be used for everything to anticipate key opportunities. In the short term, there are
still gains to be made by improving existing forecasting techniques. Take grocery stores, where forecasting errors range from
40-60 percent and lead to spoiled goods and unsold stock.8 In an effort to curb those errors, Walmart is deploying robots in
some stores to traverse aisles and record stock information.9 But given the amount of data enterprises have access to today,
their anticipation of future needs is not as good as it can be—and certainly not good enough for the markets of tomorrow. To
anticipate moments of opportunity, companies must dramatically improve the granularity of their forecasting, and the first step
is turning to AI.

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With granular demand forecasting in place to anticipate and capture opportune moments, companies can optimize their existing
business and product models. Looking further, the next phase of projection is getting ahead of larger trends, to see where the
business needs to be in the future. Google already has a “trend spotting” division dedicated to exactly this. The internet giant
leverages its search data to identify trends before they emerge and shares findings with different industries.13 In another case, to
identify the most fashion-forward of the crowd, New Balance filmed people as they walked in the city during New York City’s
fashion week; the company used Google’s TensorFlow machine learning framework to analyze outfits and find the individuals
with the most exceptional style.14 Thus far, these types of pilots are still limited in scale, but are poised to influence rapidly
businesses’ operating models and strategic planning.
ADAPT TO THE MOMENT:
Identifying moments of opportunity is just the first step. The other piece of the puzzle is being able to compete for those
moments when they come. To do that, businesses must deliver precisely what people want with increasingly specific
personalization for the circumstances of the moment. Leaders are already going far beyond basic customization, individually
tailoring products and services to the needs at hand. Look at the retail industry where people expect their digital presence to
follow them into the physical store. Sam’s Club, the warehouse club owned by Walmart, first introduced a “Scan & Go” app
two years ago, letting customers scan items as they place them in a cart and bypass the traditional checkout line. Now Sam’s
Club has adapted the app to drive an interactive shopping experience, incorporating a customer’s past purchase data and
machine learning to create smart shopping lists.15 Moving forward, the company is looking to combine this tailored experience
with beacon technology to suggest optimal routes through the store. Other individualization happens even closer to home.
It is easy to see the value of digital twins in manufacturing. But they will be key for any enterprise looking to serve momentary
markets, by enabling greater flexibility and adaptability. The Port of Rotterdam, one of the largest shipping destinations in
Europe, is building a comprehensive digital twin for the entire harbor. Port operators will have real-timE knowledge of the
location of every ship and cargo container at a given moment. By sharing this information with partners, the organization will
be able to save shipping operators an estimated $80,000 every time they dock. In the long run, Rotterdam could be among the
first ports to serve completely autonomous ships—a reality it expects by 2025.22,23 In the healthcare field, Heidelberg
University Hospital in Germany is working with Siemens to introduce digital twins to patient care. In one instance, a
cardiologist used a digital model of a patient’s heart to test the efficacy of different placements of a pacemaker’s
electrodes.24,25 This is just the beginning of “in-the-moment” personalization in healthcare, where experts hope to use
technology to create whole “living” models of individual patients. These digital twins could help medical personnel evaluate the
potential outcomes of different treatments for individual patients. As companies expand their use of digital twins across the
value chain, they will improve their ability to respond to momentary opportunities at scale. Eventually, the level of insights that
these approaches enable will also drive the company’s ability to see those moments coming—bringing the momentary market
approach full circle.
RESULT
S.No
Result
1
Innovation for organizations in the post-digital era involves figuring out how to shape the world around people
and pick the right time to offer their products and services. They’re taking their first steps in a world that tailors
itself to fit every moment — where products, services and even people’s surroundings are customized and where
businesses cater to the individual in every aspect of their lives and jobs, shaping their realities.
2
The research notes that companies still completing their digital transformations are looking for a specific edge,
whether it’s innovative service, higher efficiency or more personalization. But post-digital companies are out to
surpass the competition by combining these forces to change the way the market itself works — from one market
to many custom markets — on-demand and in the moment. The post-digital era will disrupt and reshape business
and industries, bringing powerful new capabilities and possibilities. But that does not mean digital is not over—
quite the opposite because most of the journey is still ahead, but post-digital requires new rules.
3
As every business does indeed become a digital business, however, leadership will depend on how fast your
company can continue the journey to master artificial intelligence, extended reality, distributed ledger
technology, quantum computing and more. The post-digital era offers enterprises a tremendous opportunity to

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innovate and grow their business, along with an unprecedented and urgent mandate to focus on building trust and
responsible innovation. Addressing the privacy, safety, ethics and governance that come along with this level of
technology-enabled access is paramount.
REFERENCES:
1. Mobile Industry Works Together to Deliver Complete 5G System Standard on Time. (2018, June 14). Samsung news
release.
2. Locklear, M. (2018, June 15). A Complete 5G Standard Is Finally Here. Engadget.
3. McGarry, C. (2018, August 14). The Truth About 5G: What’s Coming (and What’s Not) in 2018. Tom’s Guide.
4. What Is the Impact of Mobile Telephony on Economic Growth? (2012, November). GSMA.
5. Mobile Data Traffic Outlook – Mobility Report June 2018. (2018, June 8). Ericsson. Factbox: Companies Whose
Operations Were Hurt by June Cyber “worm.” (2017, August 2). Reuters.
6. National Risk Management Center. (2009, November 6). Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency website.
Vinn, M. (2018, March 26). These AR Goggles Are Making Faster Fixes in Oil Fields. Bloomberg Businessweek.
7. Median Years of Tenure with Current Employer for Employed Wage and Salary Workers by Age and Sex, Selected
Years, 2006-16. (2016, September 22). Bureau of Labor Statistics.
8. Volkswagen Tests Quantum Computing in Battery Research. (2018, June 7). Volkswagen AG website.
9. Edelstein, S. (2018, January 8). Volkswagen and Nvidia Partner on AI. Digital Trends.
10. Blockchain Systems at Volkswagen AG. Volkswagen AG website.
11. Virtual Technologies. Volkswagen AG website.
12. Samit, J. (2018, February 6). A Possible Cure for Virtual Reality Motion Sickness. Fortune.Wiggers, K. (2018, May
28). LG Develops AI to Deal with Nausea in VR. VentureBeat.
13. Wiggers, K. (2018, May 28). LG Develops AI to Deal with Nausea in VR. VentureBeat.