The Fourth Industrial Revolution

The changes are so profound that, from the perspective of human history, there has never been a time of greater promise or potential peril.

To a large extent, the millennial generation is setting consumer trends. We now live in an on-demand world where 30 billion WhatsApp messages are sent every day32 and where 87% of young people in the US say their smart phone never leaves their side and 44% use their camera function daily.33 This is a world which is much more about peer-to-peer sharing and user-generated content. It is a world of the now: a real-time world where traffic directions are instantly provided and groceries are delivered directly to your door. This “now world” requires companies to respond in real time wherever they are or their customers or clients may be.

when two people are talking, the mere presence of a phone on the table between them or in their peripheral vision changes both what they talk about and their degree of connectedness.65

The fourth industrial revolution, however, is not only about smart and connected machines and systems. Its scope is much wider. Occurring simultaneously are waves of further breakthroughs in areas ranging from gene sequencing to nanotechnology, from renewables to quantum computing. It is the fusion of these technologies and their interaction across the physical, digital and biological domains that make the fourth industrial revolution fundamentally different from previous revolutions. In

The fact that a unit of wealth is created today with much fewer workers compared to 10 or 15 years ago is possible because digital businesses have marginal costs that tend towards zero.

Shared understanding is particularly critical if we are to shape a collective future that reflects common objectives and values.

As all these trends happen, the winners will be those who are able to participate fully in innovation-driven ecosystems by providing new ideas, business models, products and services, rather than those who can offer only low-skilled labour or ordinary capital.

My concern, however, is that decision makers are too often caught in traditional, linear (and nondisruptive) thinking or too absorbed by immediate concerns to think strategically about the forces of disruption and innovation shaping our future.

It may be too soon to tell, but extrapolating from current trends indicates that mobility will play an ever more important role in society and economics in the future than today:

This work indicates that the fourth industrial revolution is unique, driven as it is by a global network of smart (network-driven) cities, countries and regional clusters, which understand and leverage the opportunities of this revolution – top down and bottom up – acting from a holistic and integrated perspective.

Technology is not an exogenous force over which we have no control. We are not constrained by a binary choice between “accept and live with it” and “reject and live without it”. Instead, take dramatic technological change as an invitation to reflect about who we are and how we see the world. The more we think about how to harness the technology revolution, the more we will examine ourselves and the underlying social models that these technologies embody and enable, and the more we will have an opportunity to shape the revolution in a manner that improves the state of the world.

Today, a middle-class job no longer guarantees a middle-class lifestyle, and over the past 20 years, the four traditional attributes of middle-class status (education, health, pensions and house ownership) have performed worse than inflation.

On the societal front, a paradigm shift is underway in how we work and communicate, as well as how we express, inform and entertain ourselves.

The second industrial revolution has yet to be fully experienced by 17% of the world as nearly 1.3 billion people still lack access to electricity.

Technology is not an exogenous force over which we have no control. We are not constrained by a binary choice between “accept and live with it” and “reject and live without it”. Instead, take dramatic technological change as an invitation to reflect about who we are and how we see the world.

The more we think about how to harness the technology revolution, the more we will examine ourselves and the underlying social models that these technologies embody and enable, and the more we will have an opportunity to shape the revolution in a manner that improves the state of the world.

the cost of storing information is approaching zero (storing 1GB costs an average of less than $0.03 a year today, compared to more than $10,000 20 years ago).

we are at the threshold of a radical systemic change that requires human beings to adapt continuously. As a result, we may witness an increasing degree of polarization in the world, marked by those who embrace change versus those who resist it.

In all moments of major technological change, people, companies, and institutions feel the depth of the change, but they are often overwhelmed by it, out of sheer ignorance of its effects.

An estimated 90% of the world’s data has been created in the past two years, and the amount of information created by businesses is doubling every 1.2 years.

I am convinced that the fourth industrial revolution will be every bit as powerful, impactful and historically important as the previous three. However, I have two primary concerns about factors that may limit the potential of the fourth industrial revolution to be effectively and cohesively realized. First, I feel that the required levels of leadership and understanding of the changes under way, across all sectors, are low when contrasted with the need to rethink our economic, social and political systems to respond to the fourth industrial revolution. As a result, both at the national and global levels, the requisite institutional framework to govern the diffusion of innovation and mitigate the disruption is inadequate at best and, at worst, absent altogether. Second, the world lacks a consistent, positive and common narrative that outlines the opportunities and challenges of the fourth industrial revolution, a narrative that is essential if we are to empower a diverse set of individuals and communities and avoid a popular backlash against the fundamental changes under way.

As in previous industrial revolutions, regulation will play a decisive role in the adaptation and diffusion of new technologies. However, governments will be forced to change their approach when it comes to the creation, revision and enforcement of regulation. In the “old world,” decision makers had enough time to study a specific issue and then create the necessary response or appropriate regulatory framework.

Productivity is the most important determinant of long-term growth and rising living standards so its absence, if maintained throughout the forth industrial revolution, means that we will have less of each.

10% de las personas usarán ropa conectada a internet 91,2 El 90% de la gente tendrá almacenamiento ilimitado y gratuito (patrocinado mediante publicidad) 91,0 Un billón de sensores estarán conectados a internet 89,2 Primer farmacéutico robótico en Estados Unidos 86,5 El 10% de las gafas de lectura estarán conectadas a internet 85,5 El 80% de las personas tendrán presencia digital en internet 84,4 El primer automóvil impreso en 3D estará en producción 84,1 Primer gobierno que sustituirá su censo poblacional por uno basado en el Big Data 82,9 Primer teléfono móvil implantable disponible comercialmente 81,7 El 5% de los productos de consumo estarán impresos en 3D 81,1 El 90% de la población utilizará teléfonos inteligentes 80,7 El 90% de la población tendrá acceso regular a internet 78,8 Los automóviles sin conductor serán el 10% de todos los vehículos en las carreteras de Estados Unidos 78,2 Primer trasplante de un hígado impreso en 3D 76,4 El 30% de las auditorías corporativas

The fourth industrial revolution, however, is not only about smart and connected machines and systems. Its scope is much wider. Occurring simultaneously are waves of further breakthroughs in areas ranging from gene sequencing to nanotechnology, from renewables to quantum computing. It is the fusion of these technologies and their interaction across the physical, digital and biological domains that make the fourth industrial revolution fundamentally different from previous revolutions. In this revolution, emerging technologies and broad-based innovation are diffusing much faster and more widely than in previous ones, which continue to unfold in some parts of the world. This second industrial revolution has yet to be fully experienced by 17% of world, as nearly 1.3 billion people still lack access to electricity. This is also true for the third industrial revolution, with more than half of the world’s population, 4 billion people, most of whom live in the developing world, lacking internet access. The spindle (the hallmark of the first industrial revolution) took almost 120 years to spread outside of Europe. By contrast, the internet permeated across the globe in less than a decade.

As media strategist Tom Goodwin wrote in a TechCrunch article in March 2015: "Uber, the world's largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world's most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world's largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate.

Las empresas capaces de combinar múltiples dimensiones —digital, física y biológica— a menudo son exitosas en generar una disrupción de toda una industria y sus sistemas de producción, distribución y consumo.

strategies which primarily focus on reducing costs will be less effective than those which are based on offering products and services in more innovative ways. As we see today, established companies are being put under extreme pressure by emerging disruptors and innovators from other industries and countries. The same could be said for countries that do not recognize the need to focus on building their innovation ecosystems accordingly.

Четвертая промышленная революция изменяет не только то, что мы делаем, но и то, кем мы являемся. На нас, индивидуумов, это окажет многоплановое влияние, скажется на нашей идентичности и различных гранях ее проявления: на наши представления о неприкосновенности частной жизни, о собственности, характер потребительского поведения, то, сколько времени мы посвящаем работе и отдыху, как мы развиваем свою карьеру и совершенствуем наши навыки.

blockchain technology records financial transactions made with digital currencies such as Bitcoin, it will in the future serve as a registrar for things as different as birth and death certificates, titles of ownership, marriage licenses, educational degrees, insurance claims, medical procedures and votes