by Chris Price, TechDigest

A new report commissioned by Samsung which examines the impact that changes in society and technology will have upon the future of the workplace, warns that businesses have three years to embrace digital technologies or risk getting left behind.

The report claims that businesses must adjust to the fast changing digital landscape in which a highly dispersed workforce want to work on any device, at any time, from anywhere.

In particular ‘millennials’, who are fast becoming the default decision makers within organisations, have come to expect consumer-driven technologies and ideas in their working lives too. Everything from virtual and augmented reality to an emerging generation of personal artificial intelligences.

However, the reality is that many organisations are still well behind the curve in terms of the speed at which they adopt new technologies.

With an estimated 7.3 billion connected IoT devices by 2020, the need to secure every individual device will become critical, the report claims. This new Open Economy will be characterised by a deep co-operation with freelance workers, routine embedding of startup driven innovation and a new kind of collaboration between former competitors.

The report claims there is a very clear danger that technology is running ahead of the game, and that the pace of change of technology is far exceeding the speed at which many organisations are changing their behaviours and working practices.

Not only will there be infrastructure hurdles and planning issues to overcome, but the real challenge for businesses is how they connect up all the new technologies to meet the needs of a new cohort of talent.

Predictive intelligence is a particular growth area that is going to have a profound effect on businesses over the next three years and it’s important that organisations put in place the right security layers to maximise the benefits in an open, yet secure way.

Businesses need to build customisable security platforms that span the entire ecosystem of products and allow companies to open their borders to new opportunities more confidently.[…]

Brian Solis, founder of digital disruption consultancy the Altimeter Group: “We are looking at a future in which companies will indulge in digital Darwinism, using IoT, AI and machine learning to rapidly evolve in a way we’ve never seen before.”

Many unknowns remain as companies start to realise their visions of a more productive future. Machine learning and AI technologies present enormous opportunities but also levels of risk that have not yet been fully quantified, according to research from The Future Laboratory which formed the basis of the report.

That makes simultaneous investments in secure platforms which open borders to new technologies even more critical. By making those investments now, organisations will be able to safely integrate any new entity into the business environment – not just machines, but a new generation of people too.

Reshaping conventional offices to embrace the technology of the Open Economy is a particular challenge. Exactly which of the tools they choose will vary widely but there will be some common factors; not least the urgent need for a platform that supports every device or application securely, the report claims.

Only then will they be able to properly open their borders to new workers and partners – and in particular, to a new source of innovation embedded directly into the organisation itself.