Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

Curt Hall predicts an increase in enterprise adoption of AI and, echoing Andriole’s sentiments, emphasizes “calls for new regulations to help guide and ensure the fair use of the technology.” He also anticipates a demand for greater transparency, fairness, and “explainability” in AI applications and products from developers and end-user organizations.

Autonomous systems are on the rise and, according to Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant San Murugesan, will “transform many different sectors in unimaginable ways.” He describes how technologies such as IoT, drones, robotics, ML, AI, and nano, among others, will extend the capabilities of autonomous systems. Current applications of autonomous systems technol­ogy draw attention to the adoption challenges.

Claude Baudoin addresses the issue of trust, or mistrust, in the information we rely on to stay informed or to make decisions. He writes, “This article is not a definitive proposal to achieve the elusive goal of knowing what we can trust, but rather a set of per­spectives and considerations to justify the urgency of addressing this issue.” Some reasons for our untrusting mindsets include “deep fakes,” voting sys­tems breaches, bias in decision algorithms, unknown sources of email, insufficiently secured IoT systems, and robocalls.

To create an organization that can effectively respond to heightened customer centricity and product customization, you need effective and coordinated product development teams. To respond to customer needs quickly, teams need to be autonomous, empowered, self-organizing, and cross-functional. They must take high-level direction from management and then, through intense collaboration, complete work more quickly than their predecessors. In this Advisor, we share our thoughts on putting up guardrails for your teams.

To increase the chance for blockchain/distributed ledger technology (DLT) to gain traction and for improved market awareness and adoption of the technology, what should the reference model of the regulatory sandbox dedi­cated for blockchain/DLT technology look like?

Cybersecurity urgently needs attention from businesses and government, according to Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Paul Clermont. He highlights how several colliding trends — complexity, AI, and inter-connectedness — are compounding long-standing risks. Clermont discusses the tactics necessary to address them but cautions that “compounding the difficulty of these tasks is the need to be able to execute algorithms and procedures in nanoseconds — a tall order that should inspire a bit of conservatism about how much functionality and connectivity we might want versus what we truly need.”

According to Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Whynde Kuehn, “Amid a backdrop of digital trans­formation and a continually shifting landscape of change, business architecture is gaining momentum and relevance.” In her article, she discusses the areas in which business architecture will continue to play a key role and illustrates how three specific scenarios will lead the way to increased relevance and leadership. Kuehn lays out what this might mean to you, along with the steps you need to take to realize these benefits.

Steve Andriole discusses the lack of technology regulatory action by the US government. He opens with the assertion that “the proliferation of misinformation on social media, drones flying in protected airspace, and the exploding personal surveillance of Americans are but three examples of the crying need for regulatory action.” Andriole details 10 technology areas in need of attention, and the associated guidelines, policies, and regulations that would go a long way in keeping technology misuse in check.