Overview: Digital Transformation

In Ronald Coase's The Nature of the Firm ... the function of a firm was to reduce transaction costs, especially information costs, and that firms would grow until the increase in organizational costs canceled out efficiency gains... Today, however, we live in an information economy. Competitiveness is no longer determined by how efficiently we…

One cognitive scientist thinks the leading approach to machine learning can be improved by ideas gleaned from studying children.... With its radical approach to machine learning, Geometric Intelligence aims to create algorithms for use in an AI that can learn in new and better ways... deep learning... systems need to be fed many thousands of ex…

“applied AI” quietly sneaking into our homes and businesses... has reached an inflection point that will move it from niche to mainstream.... the point of applied AI is that it doesn’t have to be a fully realized intelligence — it just needs to do a specific task well.

Software tools, web apps and services for online collaboration

if business needs are met, it generally doesn’t matter whether the intranet is involved or not, so long as the solution is effectively integrated into an organisation’s digital workplace... In trying to make an intranet essential, we lock ourselves into starting with a solution and then looking for the problems... Sometimes the outcome of this ch…

Being surrounded with ready-made solutions to problems can inhibit our creative growth... Given a problem with scarce resources, the human mind will twist and mull until it has a solution. This creativity is probably our species most important feature.

What determines whether the ideas we generate are truly creative? Recent research of ours finds that one common factor often gets in the way: we tend to undervalue the benefits of persistence.

while authority can compel action it does little to inspire belief. Only leadership can do that... That’s why change management efforts commonly fail. All too often, they are designed to carry out initiatives that come from the top. - To Create Real Change, Leadership Is More Important Than Authority | Digital Tonto

this couple will seal their union not before a priest or a judge, but on the almighty blockchain, a distributed global computing and data storage technology. BitNation... has established itself as the first virtual nation... has been building a set of tools and services that together may one day allow people to replace their national identity w…

Over 40 new resources ... some great longreads to enjoy as the nights grow long, the productivity tips you’ll need to find the time to read them, and a free set of steak knives. The Christmas season, after all, is almost upon us.

true artificial intelligence, if it is realized, might pose a danger that exceeds every previous threat from technology—even nuclear weapons—and that if its development is not managed carefully humanity risks engineering its own extinction... Bostrom is arguably the leading transhumanist philosopher today... bringing order to ideas that might o…

Ray is a brilliant technologist, futurist, and director of engineering at Google focused on AI and language processing... of the 147 predictions that Kurzweil has made since the 1990's, fully 115 of them have turned out to be correct, and another 12 have turned out to be “essentially correct” (off by a year or two), giving his predictions a stunni…

Imagine taking a team of highly creative people and sticking them in sterile, lowest-cost-per-square-foot spaces, and expecting them to achieve the best work of their lives?... we've been focussing heavily on the design of our work spaces... Chaining people to their desks (or cubicles) is a sure-fire way to kill great ideas and creativity. -…

I am done with attending badly run meetings and if you have any sense so should you be... running a good meeting comes down to the following: - I am done with bad meetings — Medium

The GDS was set up to improve online public services but disagreements with the top brass over its ambitions have seen four leaders abruptly resign - Why are senior staff fleeing the Government Digital Service? | Public Leaders Network | The Guardian

The number and diversity of communications skills needed to implement a communications strategy never stops growing. How are you organising them?

After studying innovation among 759 companies... found that corporate culture was a much more important driver of radical innovation than labor, capital, government or national culture... what is an innovative corporate culture? And ... is there any way you can build one? This article addresses both questions by offering a simple model of the k…

Practices, research, and ideas from Google and other organizations to put people first. re:Work is organized around some of the biggest ways you can make an impact in your workplace. Each subject contains guides, with tools and insights, for addressing specific challenges.

disruption theory is in danger of becoming a victim of its own success. Despite broad dissemination, the theory’s core concepts have been widely misunderstood and its basic tenets frequently misapplied... refinements over the past 20 years appear overshadowed by the popularity of the initial formulation... too many people who speak of “disrupt…

Things that happen in an instant are mostly bad ... this earthquake or that horrible murder. ... But once you turn to statistics it gets much harder to have a pessimistic story... The kind of maths that people are taught at school focuses on algebra and calculus, which they hardly ever use later in life... You use statistics all the time - T…

FarmShare is a decentralized platform for community-supported agriculture (CSA) organizations, using the blockchain to tokenize shares and enable community governance... enable communities to buy, sell and trade cryptographic tokens that can be exchanged for weekly deliveries of locally produced organic food... an evolution of the CSA model ...…

a new 300-page report ... looks at the likely effects of a robot revolution... huge numbers of jobs being wiped out: up to 35% of all workers in the UK and 47% of those in the US, including white-collar jobs... The longer you look, the more you find computers displacing simple work... while some jobs are replaced, new ones spring up that focu…

In this week’s edition, a months’ reading - some 30 posts - on social media, digital transformation, content/system design and EuroPCom2015. But first some news from me

If we dig too deeply into everyone's internet data we will become afraid to ever type anything which might one day be seen as dangerous... police forces around the world are investing more money trying to predict crimes and stop them before they occur. It’s not precog intuition or strange telepathic gifts, but big data and algorithms... ... …

Blog posts take hours to write, those great images need to be found or created and those social networks need to be managed and nurtured. It is often not done or persisted with because there are no apparent quick rewards. This is where the tortoise can beat the hare by slow persistence. It is a marathon and a journey not a sprint... you are bui…

it will be quite unusual to see cars that don’t have full autonomy – let say for new car production in the 15 to 20 years timeframe… for Tesla a lot sooner... at the point which cars are being made that have full autonomy, any cars that are being made that don’t have full autonomy will have negative value - Elon Musk says owning a non-autonomo…

If a 100 new alluring little foxy ideas, insights and observations hit you every week, and can pick out the 1 that is worth responding to, you're a foxhog... the foxhog can live in a highly uncertain environment, and be responsively engaged within it, yet create a high-certainty execution context... This ability to turn uncertainty into cer…

true digital transformation requires the courage to challenge entrenched beliefs within one’s organization. .. Digital transformation is probably about as big a deal as the invention of credit. It changes the way we do everything. - Digital Transformation: Becoming a ‘Forgetting Organization’ (Wharton)

Social Media had its place in marketing during the early days, but as platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest) have evolved brands/businesses have lost their ability to stand out... social media is a channel to connect with and provide value to your existing users...should be the responsibility of a cross functional team member who wo…

each Model S owners as an “expert trainer” ... each driver will train the autonomous features of the system to feed the collective network intelligence of the fleet by simply driving the electric vehicle on Autopilot... Model S owners are already taking to the Tesla Motors Club forum to describe how the Autopilot is improving... - The Autopi…