Take every advancement that has happened in the last 100 years –electricity, the airplane, the gasoline engine, the light bulb, the telephone, the polio vaccine, satellite communications, the DNA sequence, the heart transplant, the transistor, the Moon Shot, the interstate system, the theory of relativity, the model of an atom – and compress them all into a few years.
That is what we are facing as a variety of technologies have begun to converge at exponential speed, ushering us into a strange new world.
Thanks to continued development and maturity of artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, advanced robotics, virtual reality, 3D printing, natural language recognition and biometric advances, we are undergoing changes never before seen at speeds never imagined.
We are reaching an inflection point of life that has been labeled the 4th Industrial Revolution. Its changes are just as revolutionary as the first three: water and steam power to mechanize production (First); electric power for mass production (Second); electronics to automate production (Third). This Fourth is a digital revolution that is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines among the physical, digital and biological worlds.
This may all sound overly dramatic and unhinged to anything you face in your day-to-day business, especially in you are a non-digital company. But the point is that no business can consider itself non-digital. The spillover effects of the changes are hitting everything from retail stores to real estate offices.
As a small-to-medium business owner myself, I know that if I don’t embrace these changes, like many of you, my competitors certainly will. That will leave me on a slow path to extinction through a type of economic Darwinism where the strong – and adaptable – survive.
About the Digital Transformation Series:
Over the next few months Applied Tech President and CEO Kurt Sippel will be exploring “Digital Transformation” in a series of articles with the hope to inform, educate, and discuss its many different facets. Digital transformation is the profound and accelerating transformation of business activities, processes, competencies and models to fully leverage the changes and opportunities of digital technologies and their impact across society in a strategic and prioritized way, with present and future shifts in mind. Kurt will explain how this effects your business, how to best prepare and how to leverage the technology to get the upper hand on your competition.
If you would like to be notified of the upcoming articles sign up below!
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About Kurt Sippel:
CEO Kurt Sippel began his technology career at age 18 when he began providing consultation services to various small businesses in Fond du Lac County. This was followed by eight years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he managed and taught research technology while pursuing a Master’s degree in urban and regional planning.
In 1999 Kurt left the university to start his own firm, Applied Tech Solutions Inc. to focus on the technology needs of small and medium sized businesses. Applied Tech is now the leading IT managed service provider in Dane County and has offices in Madison, Waukesha and Stevens Point.
