Executive Summary
Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States, was what you could call a polymath: an individual who masters a wide variety of subjects and is able to tap into all of them to solve specific problems.
Just like other polymaths – think Leonardo da Vinci, Al-Biruni, Leibniz, Hildegard of Bingen, Rabindranath Tagore – he covered areas as diverse as science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and the arts. He was an influential writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Today, he would no doubt have been an accomplished data scientist, software engineer, and enterprise architect as well. Portfolio management might even be his forte, as he has been credited as the inventor of the Pro & Con list, which is still an effective decision-making tool.
He would also have been a popular meme-maker on social media. Always quick with a bon mot, he produced an impressive longlist of quotes: “Haste makes Waste”, “If you desire many things, many things will seem few”, “Lost time is never found again”. These are just a few examples of his one-line wit that remain as relevant as ever.
Do Well by Doing Good
Then there is a quote that is usually attributed to Franklin but cannot be validated as his: “Do Well by Doing Good” – to achieve social or financial success because of a charitable and/or benevolent disposition toward others. Selfish altruism, as some would call it.
Whether it comes from Benjamin Franklin or not, the quote is perfectly illustrative of the Technology Business landscape of 2023. We see the world straining; its natural and human resources are no longer able to sustain our current levels of living and consumption. The scarcity of almost everything is now a determining economic and social factor. We see continuously rising pressure on the climate, resulting from an excess of carbon emissions.
We see inequality, food shortages, and a lack of medical care and education in many places across the globe. All of this takes place within an obviously shaky geo-political context, driving unprecedented disruption potential.
Organizations in this Technology Business landscape see their purposes evolve. From ‘simply’ creating revenue, profit, shareholder value, and superior performance to actively contributing to society and addressing the big challenges of our time, shaping better futures. One thing leads to the other: the Capgemini Research Institute has found organizations that actively pursue sustainability goals achieve more revenue, are more profitable, and enjoy more customer loyalty. Also, the next generation of workers carefully considers the kind of organization they work for, actively seeking compatibility with their own values, such as sustainability, diversity, and inclusion. This is even more crucial in a time where scarcity of committed skilled people is a given. Doing the right, good things thus leads to organizations doing well.
Kid in a Candy Store
With every business now being a technology business – or ‘Technologyϵ϶Business’ as we like to put it in TechnoVision – technology is an integral, fully entangled part of whatever business scenario pans out. Yet in 2023, the range of technology options to choose from is more dazzling than ever before. We might feel like a kid in a candy store if we look at the transformative power of technology that is already looming on the horizon in areas as diverse as creative / generative AI, cloud, edge computing, the Internet of Things, microservices, data sharing, the Metaverse, Web3 (or the ‘Mesh Web’ as we prefer to call it), intelligent process automation, team collaboration, autonomous systems, and even biotechnology and quantum computing.
We believe there is not one of the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals that would not benefit from – and even be enabled by – technology. Equally so, a compelling vision – such as the Japanese ‘Society 5.0’ (“a human-centered society that balances economic advancement with the resolution of social problems by a system that highly integrates cyberspace and physical space") – can only be built on top of the smart connected products and technology-enabled operations of Intelligent Industry.
So many opportunities, so many options. TechnoVision is a framework that helps you to navigate key technology trends, put them together, and craft compelling digital stories. It is a tool to enable smart choices, identifying the right technology drivers for doing well by doing good and doing the right things.
Less with Less
However, as abundant as these technology drivers seem to be, the resources they require are no longer copious. This scarcity applies to any resource needed for a successful technology business transformation: natural resources (including chips), energy, reliable supply chains and transport, ‘cheap,’ low-interest money, simply enough time, and – arguably above all – skilled, experienced, and committed people.
In this context, and as counter intuitive as it might sound initially, TechnoVision 2023 therefore makes a plea for doing ‘less with less’.
Right the technology – as part of our main theme this year – not only suggests choosing the right (and good, more beneficial) technology options, but also to right-size and rationalize both existing and new technology solutions, potentially even down-sizing them, to create better balances between the positive and negative impacts of technology.
Furthermore, whatever future a business wants to write enabled by technology, it might need to consider the harsh realities of a time in which scarcity of all key resources determines success or failure. Shaping a lean portfolio of well-chosen, smart initiatives might work better within this context than following the established digital innovation motto of ‘letting a thousand flowers bloom’ (itself a common misquotation of Mao’s ‘let a hundred flowers blossom’ quote).
So, in many ways, there’s More to Less. Let’s further explore this sentiment a bit.
Technology for Positive Futures
In previous editions, we have highlighted how innovative technologies can create better, customer-first businesses, improve enterprise management, even build a next generation of intelligent industries. We have also shown how technology can make organizations more ‘water-like’: achieving the agility, adaptiveness, responsiveness, and resilience that are needed to deal with a highly unpredictable economic and societal context. The TechnoVision sector playbooks have further illustrated this fluidity with hundreds of sector-specific, best-practice uses cases.
However, the anticipated scarcity of everything and the increasing scrutiny on climate impact means it is now vital for everyone to tune and optimize business operations on using less resources while being more sustainable. Many technologies described in TechnoVision 2023 are of major help here. Let’s look at some examples.
In the field of infrastructure (‘Invisible Infostructure,’ as we call it in TechnoVision), we see the emergence of industry clouds that enable companies within sectors to benefit faster from innovative solutions that deal with shaky supply chains, limited availability of natural resources, and measuring, managing, and acting on emissions data.
Also, industry clouds help organizations to lessen the weight of their existing, custom-built IT landscape, becoming less dependent on the scarce resources that still master that legacy. Finally, the further evolution of the Internet of Things and edge computing brings solutions much closer to where the action is happening – in a factory, at a farm, on the road, at work – so that real-time, smart algorithms and intelligent automation (such as to save energy or reduce CO2 emissions) can be applied to greater effect.
A combination of AI, intelligent automation, the Web3 ‘mesh web’, and even self-driving, self-optimizing autonomous business processes and installations, can lead to value chains that continuously tune themselves. This optimization is done increasingly without the need for human intervention, costly travel, and energy-consuming assets, while achieving objectives that are key to the company’s purpose.
The same premise pertains to the extended realities of the Metaverse and the related concept of Digital Twins (the ‘Internet of Twins’): they provide ways to conduct key business or consumer activities without the potentially negative impact of excess physical presence and movement.
According to recent Capgemini research, data shared in business ecosystems plays a key role in the journey to net-zero emissions. Related research shows how Climate AI reduces greenhouse gas emissions and improves power efficiency. Similarly, the intelligent data platform of Project ENHANCE addresses food security. As food decisions impact our environment, it’s aiming to minimize the negative impact on it (with regards to its recipients), making the solution more sustainable while providing policymakers with better insights.
Hence, more technology leads to less pressure on scarce resources and less environmental and societal impact: more technology indeed creates positive futures.
Rightsizing Technology
However, while technology innovations might make businesses more sustainable and able to thrive using less resources, they come with their own substantial footprint as well. Think about the machine-learning systems that underpin next-generation AI solutions: a single training cycle for a large natural language transformer model (such as GPT-3) emits as much CO2 as five American-built cars during their entire lifetimes. The blockchain-based distributed ledgers of Web3 are also hungry for energy: maintaining the public blockchain requires as much energy as powering a country the size of Austria. And then there’s the compute-intensive, extended reality of the Metaverse, which will no doubt require similarly high levels of resources.
We already know that the scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions generated by the IT industry are responsible for 4% of CO2 emissions globally – one and a half times more than those generated by the aviation industry. What’s more, this level of emissions is projected to grow steadily in the forthcoming years, up to 14%. And then we are still leaving out primary energy usage, water usage and rare earth materials needed for manufacturing of all smart devices. Aging hardware leads to an ever-growing heap of e-waste.
Meanwhile, ever-increasing application sprawl and a relentless hunt for ‘bigger’ data creates an appetite for resources that may no longer be balanced by the values they deliver to business and society.
We must be smart when selecting, implementing, and delivering technology, carefully balancing the expected positive business impact with the resulting externalities. The same principle applies to rationalizing and decommissioning existing applications, datasets, and infrastructure: a less densely populated, more lightweight IT landscape – ‘righted’ to balance the value it creates – is a crucial element of rightsized technology.
Finally, those professionals who deliver technology need to drink their own champagne. After all, IT processes are ‘just’ another set of business processes. The phenomenal potential of AI, intelligent automation, and self-optimizing technologies should be considered to deliver next-generation innovative solutions with less (highly specialized) people and less environmental impact. The benefits of this approach can be seen in technology areas such as infrastructure (software-driven platforms and AI that autonomously runs IT operations and security), applications (low- and no-code development, increasingly with generative AI), data (automated machine learning and self-service Business Intelligence), and service management (automated onboarding and ticket resolution). A special place in TechnoVision 2023 is reserved for insights around ‘Green Software Engineering’, which points to approaches and tools that can minimize the environmental impact of both existing and new applications.
Lean Portfolio, Light Technology
Clearly, we are not suggesting businesses ‘do less,’ stop growing or even decrease their business activities and volume (although it could be a strategic direction for some). We do promote the sense that organizations should be smarter and more selective about the innovative technology business initiatives they pursue. In times of abundance and relatively low risk, many businesses could take the opportunity to start a variety of digital initiatives, with “failing fast and failing often” as the ubiquitous mantra. Now, with the combined pressure of overall societal impact (including sustainability) and scarcity of resources, more careful, better-informed balances are needed between what innovation initiatives will deliver to the business and society – and at what total cost and impact.
We have entered a time in which, in terms of technology, much that we once dreamed of has become possible. From a financial point of view, many of these dreams have also become feasible (not in the least because of the easy availability of solutions through the cloud). But now attention shifts towards the social – and sometimes even ethical – desirability of what we are creating. The question is no longer 'can we build it?' or 'can we afford to build it?', but 'should we build it?'
When it comes to providing answers to those questions, ‘Just Say No’ might well be a perfectly healthy stance. A leaner, smarter portfolio will be the result. TechnoVision 2023 is designed to help shape that approach.
It’s important to note that the concept of ‘lean’ does not only apply to the portfolio of solutions: it applies to the solutions themselves as well. TRIZ, a world-leading engineering-driven approach to innovation, defines the ‘Ideal Final Result’ of a product, system, or process as having all the benefits, but none of the initial harm and costs. This approach might lead to a ‘pure function’ that no longer occupies space, has no weight, requires no labor, requires no maintenance, and delivers benefits without harm. Many trends in TechnoVision 2023 help to achieve this optimal business innovation by doing less, as illustrated by ‘touchless’ processes, ‘frictionless’ customer experiences, ‘handsfree’ industrial installations, autonomous devices, and even ‘leaderless’ business models.
Indeed, the concepts of ‘less’ and ‘no’ have consistently played a key role in TechnoVision over the years. But in this year’s edition, they take center stage in many places. This centrality is not only apparent in leaner, lighter business models and activities. These concepts also pop up in technology. Take, for example, ‘serverless’ computing in IT infrastructure, ‘headless, ‘shrunken’ services in applications, the shift from ‘big’ data to ‘less’ or even ‘tiny’ data and ‘touchless’ process automation, all the way up to the ‘frictionless,’ emphatic interfaces that emerge around user experiences.
These examples all help to illustrate why a plea for ‘lean portfolio & light technology’ makes perfect sense in an edition of TechnoVision that is nevertheless full of innovative ideas.
Need to Upcycle
With a focus on both achieving sustainability and addressing the scarcity of resources, we should aim to recycle and reuse more, rather than giving in to Pavlov’s urge to rip and replace systems for every new initiative. By transforming the linear take-make-waste system to a more regenerative process (also illustrated by the ideas behind ‘permaculture’), everyone and everything can benefit, not least the corporate agenda. Then, if we unleash our creative and innovative powers, recycling even becomes upcycling: creating products and assets of higher quality or value than their originals.
In last year’s TechnoVision edition, we referred to the Indian concept of “Jugaad”: a flexible and pragmatic way of problem-solving, using limited resources in an innovative way. This frugal innovation approach – which may go by another name in various parts of the world – is an infinite source of examples and inspiration. Applied to IT, it helps us find ways to tease more life out of technology in business. We need to think much more creatively about the hardware and software we discard. We must acknowledge that precious resources are finite. As an industry, and as businesses that consume these IT products, we have a responsibility to do better. We must find ways to extend life, to reuse, and even upcycle the technology we already have.
We must be smart when selecting, implementing, and delivering technology, carefully balancing the expected positive business impact with the resulting externalities. The same principle applies to rationalizing and decommissioning existing applications, datasets, and infrastructure: a less densely populated, more lightweight IT landscape – ‘righted’ to balance the value it creates – is a crucial element of rightsized technology.
Still Being Like Water
We could have easily held on to the key theme that has dominated the TechnoVision editions of the past two years: ‘Being Like Water’ is still a key mantra for organizations in 2023. Disruptions in the economy and environment, around geopolitics, but also in terms of social dimensions and technological evolutions: they all come together in a melting pot we have come to identify as Uncertainty2 (although by now Uncertaintyn might be even more to the point). This disruptiveness makes the quest for a ’water-like’ technology business that is agile, adaptive, creative, responsive, and resilient – yet always flowing – even more relevant. The uncertainty we all face today still calls for a ‘StratOps’ approach to the continuous implementation of strategic, organizational change.
The mantra of Being Like Water builds on three foundational technology business concepts that manifest themselves through many key trends in 2023, showing how technology and business concepts are merging into one:
MESH Originating in loosely coupled, lightweight networks of autonomous nodes, ‘mesh’ has expanded to the world of applications, data, user experience, and even complete business models. Mesh emphasizes the power of decentralization and federated ownership, rather than monolithic command and control.
EDGE Edge computing’ emerged from the Internet of Things. As IT and OT (Operational Technology) fuse, devices are increasingly enchanted with sensors, storage, networking, intelligence, and automation. Innovations appear magically ever closer to the distributed edge – away from the center – where the rubber meets the road.
AUGMENT AI and intelligent automation bring augmentation of humans across the full spectrum of technology. From smart products and services, intelligent applications and killer algorithms, to ‘self-driving’ business processes and and even creativity (as evidenced by the spectacular rise of generative AI such as chatGPT). The scarcity of talent in major business areas desperately needs AI and intelligent automation for powerful, sustainable fixes.
For much more on these concepts, we refer the reader to our TechnoVision Being Like Water 2022 edition, which we believe will remain relevant for years to come.
Journey With Benefits
Doing well, by doing good. We combined this desire with a plea for a more selective, smart, and frugal approach to innovation and turned it into the key design principle of TechnoVision 2023: Do Good, Do Less, Do Well. Doing the right things for society and the company’s purposes – enabled by innovative technology – is a journey in itself. But it turns out to be a journey with benefits. As we clean up and modernize our IT infrastructure and applications landscape, get our data skills to the next level, learn how to benefit from intelligent automation, create new ways to collaborate, and provide immersive user experiences, we realize all aspects of our technology business are boosted by doing the right things, including ‘mundane’ elements such as revenue growth, profit optimization, cost-effectiveness, and overall corporate performance. Now, who could be against that?
Didn’t Dave H. Comins once say “People will accept your idea much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first”? Never mind that. We will tap one more time into the almost infinite pool of (attributed or less attributed) quotes from our archetypical polymath: “Look Before, or you’ll find yourself behind.” Sounds about right. Right the Technology, Write the Future. Nothing less.