The Road to Responsible
- Andrew and Jim
- May 28, 2019
- 7 min read
Updated: Sep 23, 2020
Some of the greatest questions ever asked are those posed by children that go unanswered – and they often start with ‘why’ and ‘how’ and ‘what’. A characteristic, which surely, the majority of us can identify with from our own childhood experience - the relentless curiosity, driving ones parents to distraction, the constant asking and interrogation! However, with the passing of time we get exposed to the world, gain experience, make choices, build character, and hopefully accumulate some wisdom along the way.
From both a personal and professional standpoint, being able to answer the ‘why’, ‘how’ and ‘what’ with clarity, and resolve, has a major impact on the course we choose to plot for ourselves. Thus, as we began to think about founding our own business we had to answer the self-same questions – ‘Why do we want to do this?’, ‘What is our purpose?’, ‘How are we going to be different?’ – and so on.
Ergo, we felt it important to write down, and share with you, our rationale and motivation behind Digital Nexus Associates. It will hopefully provide you with a sense of what we’re about as people, the road it’s taking us down, and the parallels it has to the approach we believe businesses need to adopt as they wrestle with the spectre of change and transformation.
Front Row Seats
Over the last three decades we have been in the fortunate and privileged position of having 'front row seats' to both the machinations and innovations coming out of Silicon Valley. We've seen ideas grow from nascent concepts to advancements that changed the world, often with profound consequences. From the introduction of the commercial internet in the 90s, to Smart Phones, Social Media and Cloud Computing in the 00s, to the rise of the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics today.
Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, our roles also required us to engage globally with both private and public sector leaders, sharing our insights and advising on how best to ride the tide of innovation. This global exposure (for the record, Andrew alone has been around the world 150 times in miles travelled over the last 20 years - that's once around the globe every other month!) has given us a first-hand, and deep, understanding of how those self-same technologies don't just transform business, but change people's lives.
We’ve seen remote areas of the world become connected, giving access to education and services; we’ve seen a co-worker successfully cured of cancer due to the affordability and speed of modern genome sequencing; we’ve seen human catastrophes averted through vast improvements in HPC-enabled severe weather prediction; and already, Waymo’s autonomous vehicles have surpassed 10 million road miles. Wow!
The list of incredible breakthroughs, many of which have only recently become possible, goes on and on. And, working in the Silicon Valley ‘bubble’, it’s easy to over indulge on the Kool-Aid and get drawn into all the ‘good news’ hype, believing technology alone is going to be our salvation! Sadly, however, life just isn’t that simple and straight forward.
Progress and Paradoxes
For those of us fortunate enough to travel the world, if you’re paying attention to where you are, who you meet, and really listen to what they have to say, you start to weave a rich and colourful tapestry depicting what’s actually going on. This exposure means you get to directly experience, and feel, how rapidly things are changing (vs reading about it online) socially, culturally, technologically, politically and in business - which in turn allows you to see through the digital-hype bubble. You come to see that for all the progress and good that’s achieved, there’s often a flip side of consequences that were simply never considered in the first place. So, you end up with somewhat of a paradox – the ‘Duality of Digital’ – at once being both a Saint and a Satan. To expand on this, consider the following:
Social Media – on the one hand its brought undeniable good to the world, it’s given a voice to the oppressed, shone a light on inequalities, championed women’s rights, exposed corruption, brought new friendships to lonely people, and inspired random acts of kindness to strangers. On the other, however, its been used to promote fake news, wrongly influence the democratic process (Cambridge Analytica anyone?), fuel hate speech, stalking and even put our children at risk.
Rise of the new Middle Class – undoubtedly, technological progress has played a huge role in developing economies, especially in the far east. The progress we’ve witnessed, first-hand, over 20 years of visiting China and India, for example, is both remarkable and breath-taking. With that progress, quite literally billions of people have been lifted out of poverty. They’ve become better educated, better fed, healthier, and their values and life goals have been transformed. With the middle-class set to grow to 5.5 billion people over the next 10 years, the follow-on increase in disposable income, and captive new markets, offers tremendous potential for business. But, it also means increased consumption, more competition for finite resources – energy, food, clean water, materials, and so on – and therefore, greater carbon footprint at a time when every one of us has at some point personally felt the impact of climate change. Just how do we tackle this growing opportunity and threat?
We’re living longer – thanks again to technology! It’s well documented, often discussed, and has major implications for all of us on the challenges and choices we need to make in order to turn greater life expectancy into a blessing, and not a curse. This also has huge implications for business and government in terms of healthcare, economics and disproportionate demographics, especially in the mature economies.
These few examples alone represent significant and seismic shifts in the way we live, work, and need to think about the future.
The 4th Industrial Revolution
And, as if this wasn’t enough to deal with, we’re now living on the cusp of the next great wave of digital innovation – termed, by the World Economic Forum, the 4th Industrial Revolution. The profound changes this is likely to usher in, as the digital world continues to fuse ever more deeply with our physical and biological realities, will present us with ever more paradoxes to contend with.
Advancements in Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Cybernetics, Molecular Biology, 3D Printing and Block Chain - to name but a few of the catalysts – will instigate a re-think on our approach to life, the universe and everything (to borrow a phrase from Douglas Adams).
Purpose and Values
And so it was, extricated from the Silicon Valley hype-bubble, but armed with a sense of realism and perspective born of engagement on a global level, ‘at the coalface’, we began to answer our own burning questions of ‘how’, ‘why’ and ‘what’.
We concluded that we’re at a point of singularity, for both public and private sectors, and that we need to strive to use the technology that underpins much of this as a platform for both economic growth, but also for good. To achieve this requires a considered, pragmatic, and deliberate approach to the undertaking of Digital Transformation in a RESPONSIBLE manner. An approach that is starting to become known as Corporate Digital Responsibility. Given the power of the technology to spawn both optimistic and pessimistic futures, it’s an approach we feel isn’t optional, but is rapidly becoming a necessity.
Consider Artificial Intelligence on its own for moment, it’s potential for job displacement, reskilling, changing employee expectations, consumer privacy and trust, and ethical usage, means it should be deployed with an eye on both the good and the bad, thus done with great care and responsibility. And, whilst AI may be one of the more transformational advancements, it is but one of many.
Our dual perspective, shaped over the last 3 decades – staring into the technology crystal ball, then directly experiencing and feeling the effects globally – we think sets us apart. It’s this unique vantage point that’s had a direct bearing on the nature of our business and its purpose, which, after much consideration, we have defined as:
To provide advice and guidance to leaders on the re-imagining of business through the responsible use of digital, enabling financial growth with tangible social and ethical progress.
And also our core values:
Disruptive Technology: we are committed to the thoughtful application of advanced and disruptive technologies, as a vehicle to create financial value and economic growth
Digital Responsibility: we are committed to the development and application of Corporate Digital Responsibility as a doctrine, to drive tangible social, ethical and environmental progress
Knowledge Transference: we are committed to the transference of knowledge and skills, enabling leaders to practice digital transformation in a responsible manner that delivers both 'growth' and 'good'
Inspire Others: we are committed to 'giving back' in a material way, by inspiring the next wave of bright, inquisitive, minds across the social spectrum, through a program of educational initiatives
For us, these values, and the beliefs they’re based upon, have been part of the fabric of what drives us, and makes us tick, for quite some time. A catalyst for the timing of this, as many of you will appreciate, is the acceleration of change itself, the global reach of it, the pace of it, that it impacts ALL of us, and that the stakes (both positive and negative) are higher now than ever.
We called this blog the ‘Road to Responsible’ for a reason – it’s a journey some have found, and others are finding, but it’s ultimately a journey we all need to take. A responsible future is something we all need to own, and it doesn’t have to come at the cost of business and growth; quite the opposite. Good business and economic growth aren’t mutually exclusive
values in today’s world.
We’d love to know what you think, if you’ve been on, or are currently undertaking, a similar journey. What changes you are seeing? And, how are YOU are addressing them?
Thanks for reading.
Andrew and Jim
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