Why the pace of technological change is faster than ever?

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From the course by Institut Mines-Télécom

Innovating in a Digital World

565 ratings

Institut Mines-Télécom

Innovating in a Digital World

565 ratings

Facebook, AirBnB, Tesla, Amazon, Uber. In just a few years, companies like these have changed the face of the global economy. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of start-ups are disrupting old business models, taking on centennial industrial groups – and winning. It’s clear that the rules of business have changed forever. This MOOC provides a knowledge toolkit for the ongoing digital revolution. You’ll discover 15 concepts that are essential for understanding the new mechanisms of digital business and innovation. Each concept is explained in its own beautifully designed, content-rich instructional video, along with additional resources for you to explore. The ideas are illustrated with up-to-the-minute case studies and examples from a wide range of industries. Week 1 : Why Digital Changes Everything Week 2 : Creating Value in a Digital World Week 3 : Thinking and Acting Differently Week 4 : Entrepreneurship in a Digital World This MOOC is ideal for learners from a wide range of backgrounds. It is brought to you by four expert professors and researchers from Telecom ParisTech, a leading European graduate school in the field of digital technology and social science. This MOOC is supported by the Patrick and Lina Drahi Foundation.

From the lesson

Why Digital Changes Everything

Many people have yet to realize just how rapid and profound the current digital revolution is, or how quickly it’s breaking down old institutions. Yes, we’re always hearing about Google, Uber, and all those “pirate entrepreneurs.” Yes, we know technology has something to do with it. But the future is approaching even more quickly that we think. Right now, all the pieces are in place to completely change the face of products, technologies, organizations, and entrepreneurship over the next few years. This module will tell you how and why.

Why the pace of technological change is faster than ever?5:13

Meet the Instructors

Thomas Houy
Associate Professor
Management Science
Laurent Gille
Emeritus Professor
Economics
Valérie Fernandez
Professor
Management Science
Rémi Maniak
Full-Time Professor
Innovation Management

[MUSIC]

The pace of digital technology change.

April 1960, Theodore Maiman developed the first laser.

During the cold war, journalists dubbed this the death ray.

But luckily there were more peaceful needs for this new technology and

50 years later lasers are everywhere.

November 1971, Intel develops the first microprocessor.

Since then,

it's performance has doubled every two years with incredible regularity.

Today, the explosion of networks validating transactions on BitCoin

has a power expressed in zetaflops.

As for today's microcomputer,

it now has the power of a supercomputer of the early 2000s.

The progress and techniques used for the processing of information has become so

fast over the last 50 years that it has given birth to an industrial revolution.

This obviously refers to the industrial revolution of the 19th century

where we saw the domestication of energy.

However, this revolution is occurring at a much faster pace.

Advancing at unheard of speeds.

The growth and

performance of digital devices is occurring at unprecedented speeds.

The world has faced successive technological revolutions, but

the progress was measured on an arithmetic scale,

reflecting a constant factor of improvement every single year.

For the past 50 years, the performance of digital technology literally exploded and

followed geometrical laws.

We no longer add a constant factor to the existing performance.

But rather multiplied each year by this constant factor.

To account for this progress, it is necessary to resort to logarithmic

representations that allow us to find the linearity of these developments.

Everybody knows Moore's law, named after one of the founders of Intel.

This law illustrates the effects of technical progress on microprocessors.

The number of transistors there in doubles every two years.

This law is obviously not a physical law of nature, but a goal

that the semiconductor industry have been able to meet for more than 40 years.

It should find its limit with the achievement of molecular scales, but

other parameters seemingly provide solutions around this wall of physics.

Most digital technologies have similar progress which have to consider

Moore's Law, or it's equivalence on other digital areas as emblematic.

Infinitely big and infinitely small.

Expressed on the scales of the decimal system,

digital performance goes through two scales.

The infinitely big, which is that of system performances.

For example, in 10 to 20 years,

we jump from one unit to the next, which is 1,000 times larger.

And the scale of the infinitely small, the scale which one uses in matters,

the miniaturization that goes along with the lowering of energy consumption.

Technology currently offers a capacity in excess of one terabyte, and

is therefore between the petabyte and the exabyte, while working at the micro or

even nano scales.

Doubling the capacity of a system every year, is to say that we will have

progressed as much as the original system within the coming year.

Moreover, the evolution of performance does not lead to similar price increases.

On the contrary, whatever the considered technical system, a computer,

a smart phone, memory, robots, higher performance rarely at fixed prices,

but rather are associated with a decline in price.

Straining the digital economy.

The upward velocity of technological progress brings about paradoxical effects,

three of which must be emphasized.

1, techniques are not progressing at the same speed,

creating gaps that are very quickly exposed due to rapid progress,

as with software technologies and hardware technologies.

This lack of homogeneity, in technical progress,

leads to frequent substitution techniques in complex systems.

This explains why modularity is needed to allow substitutions of technical building

blocks within these complex systems.

2, if progress frequently results from breakthrough innovations,

as with the laser or the microprocessor, innovations paradoxically present

themselves on a daily basis very incrementally in order to control wait and

see expectations, both on the part of consumers and

producers and to not produce too strong a gap in competition or use.

3, any project built on a digital platform

must anticipate the digital world in which it will see the light of day.

This can be very tricky.

But it is crucial to understand that nothing will remain equal.

In 2025 our smartphones, our cars, or

our robots will have the power of the largest supercomputers of today.

[MUSIC]

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