AI Foundations - Part 1.

Understanding Digital Technology Essentials.

The purpose of this module is to develop the skills to add value, innovate, and distinguish client with technology in a competitive marketplace. A focus on advanced technology - which includes AI, Blockchain, Robotics, and Internet of Things – is becoming a requirement for most companies, their clients and customers alike, and this module is intended to help you to start the journey towards gaining an understanding of these areas.

Technology is a vast subject area. Its scope covers the most basic tools through to the most extreme complexity imaginable.  

To understand the digital world in which AI sits, we need to understand computing, programming, software, the internet and how businesses use technologies.

Figure 1. Recent evolution of digital technologies

New Business Models

The World Economic Forum (WEF) predicts that digitalization could deliver around $100 trillion in value to business and society over the next decade. “Business models that have been successful for decades are being disrupted by digital innovation. New business models only accounted for a 1-5 % share of total revenues in 2015, but are expected to be responsible for 30% of total revenues by 2020”. [i]

[i] http://reports.weforum.org/digital-transformation/introducing-the-digital-transformation-initiative/

Business Technology Value 

Business value obtained from technology investment was very different for each of the businesses case-studied above. In summary, we can see that collectively each case study achieved several of each of the benefits in the following model, which we can use to frame business value for other cases.  

Figure 31. Business Technology Value Model