Separating the Myth from Reality

The rapid rise of digital technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), big data analytics and mobility has not just enabled businesses to run more efficiently and effectively. In addition, companies that fully embrace these tools have found them to be a key source of competitive advantage. In a matter of years, trailblazing companies such as Netflix, Amazon and Facebook have evolved from scrappy startups to global behemoths, threatening the very existence of their decades- or even centuries-old counterparts. These advancements, however, come with a downside. As more human jobs are (or are threatened to be) displaced by the emergence of innovations like self-driving cars, humanoid robots and AI-produced medical diagnoses,it is unsurprising that some worry about a dystopian future in which people are rendered obsolete and only a rarified set of professions still require work by humans.