Techno-Human Intelligent Systems:

 

The title of this post might sound like some sort of new sci-fi movie but sadly is just a new business term, an interesting one though.

 

To get started, take a look at the past, when successful businesses were focused on creating internal knowledge through applied sciences in order to develop new technologies and to be more efficient than their competitors. Now look at the current context of rapid changes and fast paced environments, traditional rational-based principles and technology assets are essential but insufficient. New gadgets and the internet have made technology and knowledge incredibly accessible, making it very hard for companies to keep innovation within the organisation walls as a competitive advantage. On today’s open environment, applied knowledge is openly shared and new technologies are quickly available for anyone to market them. Thus, competitiveness relies more than ever on the creativity needed to turn all the knowledge and technology available out there in outstanding products and services, effective business models and innovative business solutions.

As rational knowledge and technology assets alone are not enough, it is necessary to integrate them with the emotional features of human life and understand that emotions play a fundamental role in the organisational life and in the pursuit of business excellence (Schiuma Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity (2017)). Technologies guarantee efficiency and control, while emotions bring creativeness, art and personality. The integration of the latest technology, the available rational knowledge and human emotions is what is called Techno-Human Intelligent Systems. Emotions refer to the feelings and artistic thoughts of employees or even stakeholders in general, well managed emotions can bring innovation into the company. We are not just referring to the kind of innovation based on new technological enhancements. Emotions can produce disruptive innovation, effective business models, new approaches to markets and a resilient brand image, all determinants for business success.

Take as an easy example Apple, they haven’t been the first ones to market most of their devices, but they have developed a relationship between their products and their users emotions. Apple has a focus on how technology can intersect with humanities, and they encourage their employees, as well as their customers to be emotional and to turn their emotions into art by using their products as a tool. What they have achieved is embracing all this creativity into to their brand and into the organisation, what allows them to make their products stand out for their aesthetics and creative features.

Other tech companies like Google or Microsoft encourage creativity among their employees as well, but they are far more open companies that share their projects before they’re finished and complete them with external help. They follow what is called Open Innovation, consequently, as their products are already public while being under development, their launching doesn’t get the initial impact that Apple’s products get. However, as Microsoft and Googles’ new devices are polished and gain market share, they increase their aesthetics and creative features as well.

 

Feel free to leave any comment.

“The information revolution”

It’s been a while since I wrote my last post but I haven’t given up on the blog yet. My goal was to write at least every month (at first, every week lol) and I’m finding it very difficult, but as I’m trying to specialise in On-line Marketing or at least something related to computing, I feel it’s worthy to push ahead with the blog.

Today I’m just going to bring up an interesting topic that I heard a lot in the media recently. In case you don’t know about this, millions of jobs are at risk due to the developing of new technologies and robots that can replace workers at doing repetitive tasks. I’m sure I’m not the only one who heard about this lately, and this isn’t any prophecy coming from sceptics living in a cave, in fact, this topic has been up for discussion at the last World Economic Forum in Davos.

We’re immerse in a second industrial revolution, that one called “the information revolution”. It’s not hard to imagine the impact that some of the cutting edge gadgets and breaking-throughs in robotics which are under development right now could have on people’s jobs. For instance, if self-driven cars became a reality, millions of people whose job is basically driving any type of vehicle could lose their job. To self-driven cars we need to add up drones, robots, the e-commerce as a substitute of regular shops, big data, new algorithms in software and many more innovations. It’s not that any job can be done by a machine or a computer but very crucial professions for the job market could disappear and we’re not doing a lot to find new careers to all these people who could face long term unemployment.

It’s clear to me that if technology continues developing at this speed, we’ll need to be able to adapt to it at the same speed. I mean, the system needs more flexibility to find new career paths suitable for those being substituted by a very clever software, otherwise we’ll see inequality rise, consumerism decrease and our social stability being seriously threat. Right now education is not flexible enough to adapt to the job market needs and we’re used to making a choice for life when it comes to our profession. I don’t think labour will be totally substituted by robots, take the industrial revolution as an example, market trends and new industries are impossible to predict and could create new professions. However, in the short term it will definitely have a very negative social impact if nothing is done to avoid it.

I’m for using technology and robots to create more opportunities, more jobs, new professions, and a better distribution of the wealth and not to destroy jobs and enrich just a few. It’s also crucial for large international companies. Who is going to buy what automatised factories can produce if most of the people can’t make ends meet? Well, the current system would be just like herding cats.

This is a very informal piece of writing probably full of mistakes of all kind but I just wanted to bring up the topic. I hope I can search for more information and write a more accurate version including facts and new insights, plus better written. Anyway I welcome any opinion on the matter!

Cheers for reading 😉