The rate of business and societal change fuelled by innovative, emerging and disruptive information technologies is well known, with impacts being felt in almost every facet of life. The forces driving the evolution and adoption of such technologies are complex, diverse and not always well understood. How can organisations predict the consequences of future tech? How should they fortify against the chaos of change while taking advantage of innovation? This public lecture provides a concise perspective on the implications of emerging technologies and offers practical insights on how many enterprises and individuals survive, and also thrive, in a world of rapid technology-induced change.

1. UTSpeaks: Future Tech
11th
July 2013
THINK.CHANGE.DO
Rob Livingstone

2. Agenda
1. Exploring the concept of a ‘success trap’
2. Perspectives of the new and emerging technology
landscape
3. Information technology retrospective
4. Exploring the digital democracy from various angles
Suggestions for Avoiding the Technology Success Trap
5. - Organisations
6. - Individuals
7. Our uncertain digital future, and lastly
8. Open questions and discussion

3. 1. Exploring ‘The Success Trap’

4. 1. Exploring ‘The Success Trap’
Attributes of the success trap:
• What’s been successful up to now, may be self limiting
at a point in the future
• Keep exploiting existing opportunities along the same
lines until you run out of resources and/or options,
resulting in a collapse or catastrophic change
By way of illustration, let’s explore its relevance in areas
such as:
Medicine, Fishing, Population, Commercial and Economic

5. 1. Exploring ‘The Success Trap’: Medicine
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria
Can you die from a cut finger?
Success has led to widespread
use including:
•Over prescription
•Use in food production
•No new class of antibiotics
discovered since the 1980s.

6. Fishing:
Subsistance → Ιndustrialisation → Hi Tech → Depletion?
1. Exploring ‘The Success Trap’: Fishing
77%

7. Population
• Explosion in global
population due to
science, living longer,
wealth, and other
factors.
• Spaceship earth has a
finite capacity
• Is this our ultimate
Success Trap?
1. Exploring ‘The Success Trap’: Population

8. 1. Exploring ‘The Success Trap’: Commercial
Commercial
• What can businesses
do to anticipate,
innovate and adapt
with agility to avoid the
Success Trap?

9. 1. Exploring ‘The Success Trap’: Economic
Economic
• GFC – Could not stop
ourselves gorging on
easy money and the
Ponzi economy.
• Constellation of
organisations, not to
mention whole
countries – impact on
society – widespread
and profound and still
being felt

10. 2. Perspectives of the new and emerging technology landscape
The present
1. Globally, IT led innovations are:
– Expected, ‘the norm’
– Disruptive
– Volatile
2. Creating new opportunities, careers, removing others, etc
3. Creating the ‘flat earth’, fuelling ‘Globalisation’
4. Unleash societal and behavioural changes
5. Individuals becoming ubiquitously connected and ‘digital’.

11. 3. Information technology retrospective

12. 3. Information technology retrospective
Antikythera
mechanism
~100 BC
2700-2300 BC, the
appearance of the first
Sumerian abacus
During the late 1980s, the first
Internet service provider (ISP)
companies were formed. Birth
of the ‘internet of everything’
era

13. 3. Information technology retrospective
The IT industry compared to others:
•Medicine :Since Adam and Eve
•Finance and accounting is said to date back more than
7000 years.
•Law has been around since the start of civilized society;
some argue it helped underpin its formation.
•Management as a discipline pre-dates the Pyramids.
•Sales, commerce and trading has been in place since
humankind’s earliest records
•Marketing as an industry has its origins in the late 1800s.
•IT is the latest arrival, yet as impacted almost every aspect
of society in one form or another.

14. 4. The digital democracy

15. 4. The digital democracy
• The recent U.S. National Intelligence
Council’s report Global Trends 2030 has
identified that the top megatrend over the
next 15-25 years will be individual
empowerment.
• Fuelled in part, by the combination of the
progressive reduction in global poverty,
increasing levels of education and the
continued uptake of innovative, ubiquitous
information and communications technology
is expected to reshape how organisations,
societies and countries operate.
http://info.publicintelligence.net

16. Let’s explore this from a number of
perspectives, such as….
Democratisation of …..
• Information Technology
• Information and Knowledge
• Skill
• Innovation
• Enterprise IT – Shadow IT, in particular
• Risk
• Privacy
• Education
4. The digital democracy

17. Rise of our U.S. centric digital landlords such as Apple, Amazon,
Google, Microsoft, and others are shaping the agenda. +
4. The digital democracy – Democratisation of TECHNOLOGY
Industrialisation of IT +
Cloud computing +
Mobility (Smartphones and tablets) +
Low / Nil financial barrier to adoption +
Herd mentality = +
Democratisation of technology

18. 4. The digital democracy – Democratisation of TECHNOLOGY
• The democratisation of technology is the cornerstone of
the digital democracy.
• For the first time, individuals and organisations alike are
able to select from a burgeoning array of innovative,
powerful, easy to use and low cost information and
communications technology solutions.
• For organisations, IT is no longer the sole domain of
enterprise IT departments
• Regulators and legislators playing catch-up as speed of
development and viral adoption of consumer technologies
is high.

19. Democratisation of information is not a new concept.
• Cave paintings, Hieroglyphics to books
• Now to the digital domain, the ability to access a seemingly
infinite array of information is akin to drinking from a fire
hydrant.
• The democracy of information can also be a double edged
sword, however. …..
• The dissemination of information that has been subject
to appropriate verification could be seen as more
‘trustworthy’..
• Will discuss the risks associated with misinformation
and the concept of the Digital Wildfire later…
4. The digital democracy – Democratisation of INFORMATION

20. • Will Globalisation + Technology + Communications =
inevitable disruption of knowledge intensive careers?
• Knowledge workers should be aware of impacts on
careers associated with the democratisation of skill.
• Certain categories of skilled work can be done by
anyone, anywhere in the world with access to the
internet.
• Crowd-sourcing marketplaces (eg: Odesk,
Freelancer) for all categories of knowledge work
4. The digital democracy – Democratisation of SKILL

21. Case in point:
• The legal industry, one of the classic ‘professions’, is being
transformed by the democratisation and globalisation of skills.
4. The digital democracy – Democratisation of SKILL
http://www.lawyersweekly.com.au/news/power-shifts-to-lpo-providers
“As more and more companies
bypass law firms and go straight to
LPO providers, Australian firms are
now realising the influence LPO
providers have in the market and
are turning to them to co-pitch for
new clients.”

22. 4. The digital democracy – Democratisation of INNOVATION
• Defined challenge + Crowdsourcing + Social media = Innovation?
• Traditional barriers to information technology innovation lowered:
• Low / no capital investment needed
• Geography no longer a limitation
• Crowsource skills, globally
• Can be highly leveraged (eg 2 people starting Google)
• Convergence of separate technologies the new digital frontier:
• Wearable technology
• Micro Drones
• 3D printing …….

23. 4. The digital democracy – Democratisation of ENTERPRISE IT
Everyone is a consumer of technology in one form or
another and therefore is entitled to an opinion on how IT
can be used in the organisation
http://www.theperceptionconundrum.com/

24. • The phenomenon of Shadow IT is where departments and
individuals within a business can source enterprise IT systems
without knowledge or oversight from their IT departments or key
executives such as the CSO, CFO.
• Fuelled by Cloud computing – all users need is a credit card.
• Shadow IT is a re-shaping expectations of IT within the enterprise
by users
4. The digital democracy – Democratisation of ENTERPRISE IT
Tony Soprano “You see out there it's the 1990s
but in this house it's 1954”
… Is this what people often feel about their work IT
systems when compared to what they can do in
the Cloud, their home PC, tablet or SmartPhone?

25. • Benefit: Rapid prototyping of new systems and business
processes can be of real value to the organisation,
provided Shadow IT is managed.
• Gartner recently stated:
“Shadow IT can create risks of data loss, corruption or
misuse, and risks of inefficient and disconnected
processes and information”.
• What Gartner is talking about is not just an IT problem but
an organisation-wide, systemic problem that requires an
organizational response. This is not an IT problem to be
solved.
4. The digital democracy – Democratisation of ENTERPRISE IT

26. 4. The digital democracy – Democratisation of RISK
http://reports.weforum.org/global-risks-2013/
In the societal context

27. Distinguish between technical risks and systemic risks.
Technical Risk:
“All systems are running
perfectly, Captain!”
Systemic Risk: “What
iceberg Captain?”
4. The digital democracy – Democratisation of RISK
In the organisational context

28. 4. The digital democracy – Democratisation of RISK
• Taking a systemic view of risk will give you a better perspective
of the actual risk, rather that what you think the risk might be.
• Systemic risks are those with the greatest potential impact as
they affect the entire system (ie: Organisation, government,
country, world…)
• Case in Point: How is that the finance industry, which is one
of the most regulated, and invests heavily in risk
identification, mitigation and transference could be the cause
of the recent global financial problems?
In the organisational context

29. 4. The digital democracy – Democratisation of RISK
• Identifying, categorising and ranking technical and functional
risks is core to conventional IT risk assessment approaches:
• Risk of a specific event = (Impact x Probability of that event
occurring) + Risk Adjustment
• Underpins conventional risk certification frameworks e.g. ISO
2700X
• Often focusing on the diverse range of technical risks, does not
always effectively account for the interaction between risks.
• Systemic risks are often more significant than the sum of the
individual, technical risks
In the organisational context

30. But what about privacy in an era in which your every move
has been recorded somewhere in the digital world through
your electronic transactions?
4. The digital democracy – Democratisation of PRIVACY
Install Collusion add-on for your Firefox
browser. Collusion is an experimental add-
on for Firefox and allows you to see all the
third parties that are tracking your
movements as you visit websites
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/collusion/

31. • Does the fact we’re churning out ever greater volumes of
data mean we are safe, by virtue of pack anonymity, or are
we at risk of serious violations of the individual’s privacy
rights? i.e.: Everyone’s on Facebook… Why worry?
• To comply with relevant privacy legislation, data that is to be
externally released for purposes such as marketing, analysis
and reporting should have the individual’s personal
information removed – a process known as anonymising, or
deidentifying.
• BUT……..
4. The digital democracy – Democratisation of PRIVACY

32. • …..when disparate data from a range of anonymised,
independent data sources can be matched using specialised
algorithms to geotagged information, it may be possible to
reidentify data that was previously anonymised.
• A number of researchers* have already shown
reidentification to be possible by using specially crafted
matching algorithms.
• The risks associated with the possible reidentification of
personal information should be a topic high on the agenda
for industry regulators, legislators and those concerned
about information security and privacy.
4. The digital democracy – Democratisation of PRIVACY
* http://tinyurl.com/lnj5oqq

33. 4. The digital democracy – Democratisation of PRIVACY

34. 4. The digital democracy – Democratisation of EDUCATION
http://theconversation.com/moocs-and-the-battle-to-open-up-higher-education-15823

35. 4. The digital democracy – Democratisation of EDUCATION
MOOCs – (Massive Open Online Courses) have the potential to disrupt the
tertiary education market… The looming ‘perfect storm’ is fuelled by the
combination of forces:
Short term focus.
• The concept of ‘build once – deliver many times’ is very appealing from a
return on investment perspective. Great business case!
• The reduction in Government funding in real terms is likely to magnify
the appeal of the online eLearning model.
MOOC evangelists are promoting this delivery model as the next ‘big thing’
in tertiary education, however the 100% MOOC trained Doctor is
unlikely to ever become a reality.
Hype and some expectations that the compelling nature of MOOCs will
trump the traditional rich, multi-modal learning experiences and eliminate
the barrier to entry to education.

36. 4. The digital democracy – Democratisation of EDUCATION
• Facilitated by technology, Multitasking seems to be de rigueur for the
contemporary student. ( %’age of ‘screen time’ in a day?)
• Plugged into Facebook, listening to music and studying at all the same
time seems to be the default position.
• So, what role does the technologically rich, concurrent learning
experience have to do with the overall pedagogy?
• According to Professor Clifford Nass of Stanford University*
“The top 25 percent of Stanford students are using four or more
media at one time whenever they're using media ……The
research is almost unanimous, which is very rare in social
science, and it says that people who chronically multitask show an
enormous range of deficits. They're basically terrible at all sorts of
cognitive tasks, including multitasking”.
* http://www.npr.org/2013/05/10/182861382/the-myth-of-multitasking

37. 4. The digital democracy – Democratisation of EDUCATION
Process governance and stewardship of education standards in
the Hi Tech world needs to keep pace…
•School and university students can now freely outsource their
assignments for the cost of a can of soft drink to low cost
countries through sites such as realassignmentwriting.com
and dissertationindia.com.
•As these assignments are hand crafted, automated plagiarism
filters would be rendered mostly ineffective.
•The implication for the veracity of educational certification and
accreditation standards not requiring in-situ demonstrated
competencies are obvious…

38. 5. Avoiding the Technology Success Trap
NINE Suggestions for ORGANISATIONS

39. 5. Avoiding the Technology Success Trap - Organisations
1. Institutionalise innovation in your organisation
– best antidote for surviving disruption
Outsourcing: FROM COST MANAGEMENT TO INNOVATION AND BUSINESS VALUE. CALIFORNIA MANAGEMENT REVIEW VOL. 50, NO. 4
SUMMER 2008 Pg 127. Michael R. Weeks & David Feeny
Have expectation that enabling new and
superior ways of exploiting IT, which would
in turn enable business improvements to
be achieved
Change the way the business operates
Can have significant impacts on the whole organisation,
its stakeholders, customers, staff, etc…

40. 5. Avoiding the Technology Success Trap - Organisations
2. Formally adopt agile methodologies throughout your
organisation
• Agile is a build on iterative and incremental delivery of change.
• Agility framework should start at the enterprise strategy level.
• Make intra-organisational silo’s porous.
• For IT, Agile development and project management mitigates
against mega-project failures, that have so scarred the reputation of
enterprise IT. (eg. QLD Gov’t payroll system)
• Agile built on concepts such as:
• Team & employee empowerment to act and make decisions
• Active customer or stakeholder involvement
• Capture requirements at a high level; lightweight & visual
• A collaborative & cooperative approach between all
stakeholders is essential.

41. 5. Avoiding the Technology Success Trap - Organisations
3. Review managerial and staff incentive schemes
• Framing short term financial incentives primarily around
functional responsibilities will reinforce behaviours that will
drive results that may not be in the best long term interests
of the whole organisation.
• Incentives drive temporary compliance.
• Localised / functionally focussed incentives reinforce silos
• Obsessive focus on driving localised short term targets can
hamper or even undermine enterprise-wide innovation
initiatives that could well contribute to the ultimate survival of
the organisation.

42. 5. Avoiding the Technology Success Trap - Organisations
4. Transform your IT departments from a technology cost
center to a business relevant services broker
• SaaS: Strategy as a Service: Proactively deliver business relevant strategies to
meet defined or expected changes with agility.
• Clearly define the accountability locus for enterprise IT across the
organisation.
- What’s in-scope for the management of IT services?
- What is /is not negotiable in the IT portfolio of services?
- IT should be the trusted advisor, not consultants or vendors!
• IT should constantly and proactively articulate the implications for disruptive and
emerging technologies for their organisation
• Upgrade / coach IT leadership to operate confidently and with business
relevance at most senior levels of management

43. 5. Avoiding the Technology Success Trap - Organisations
5. Recognise that your IT department (or vendor) cannot drive
innovation unilaterally
‘IT relentlessly drives and delivers
innovation at a global, societal, and
individual level at phenomenally fast
rates, yet, paradoxically, IT departments
within organisations often struggle to
drive innovation from within their own
organisations to the same extent’ **
** ‘The IT Innovation Paradox’ CIO Magazine Summer 2010/2011, Pg 14.

44. 5. Avoiding the Technology Success Trap - Organisations
6. Upgrade your technology vendor management practices
• The conventional RFP-bid-response approach to engaging IT vendors
may not be adequate in the uptake of new, emerging and disruptive
business technology.
• Complex, monolithic contracts inhibit agility and partnering across a range
of providers – also interactions between providers can be complex.
• Need for a far tighter, more transparent ongoing working relationship
between you, your provider(s) and between the providers themselves
• ‘X-as-a-Service’: You may now dependent on their performance.
• Implicit in this model (eg Cloud) is that fact that you have little to no
influence or visibility over the provider’s security, operational
governance, quality and other elements comprising the service.
• Their problem immediately can become your sleepless nights.

45. 5. Avoiding the Technology Success Trap - Organisations
7. Protect your crown jewels
• Intellectual property is often your organisation’s primary asset – ensure
your IT and organisational security controls are effective and
appropriate
• For Cloud and outsource service providers, do not assume compliance to
specific legislation such as privacy, data protection, or respect for
jurisdictional boundaries.
• Cybercriminal activity is a multi billion dollar industry – and it’s a constant
arms race between the good guys and the bad guys – sometimes the bad
guys win
• Organisations often reluctant to report that they have been successfully
hacked or compromised for reasons of brand damage, adverse impact on
share price, etc. Mitigates against industry-wide collaboration to fight
cybercrime & lowers the perceived level of risk

46. 5. Avoiding the Technology Success Trap - Organisations
7. Protect your crown jewels
http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/organized-crime/expert-group-to-conduct-study-cybercrime-feb-2013.html
Read authoritative, vendor
independent reports and
work out what’s relevant to
your organisation

47. 5. Avoiding the Technology Success Trap - Organisations
8. Monitor Systemic Risk
Technical Risk:
“All systems are running
perfectly, Captain!”
Systemic Risk: “What
iceberg Captain?”

48. 5. Avoiding the Technology Success Trap - Organisations
8. Monitor Systemic Risk
• All managers should play an active part in discussions on latent
systemic risk associated with inappropriate adoption of new and
emerging technologies.
• Ensure key stakeholders appreciate how current decisions
could influence future risk profile in a volatile environment
• Clarity over the positioning of all aspects of risk need careful
dissection amongst the noise, opinions , loaded agendas and
mixed messaging.

49. 5. Avoiding the Technology Success Trap - Organisations
8. Manage the technology evangelists in your organisation

50. 5. Avoiding the Technology Success Trap - Organisations
9. Manage the technology evangelists in your organisation
• The technology evangelist is typically categorised by the persistent
advocacy and promotion for the use of a particular product or technology
with a view to its broad adoption
• Distinguishing the true technology evangelist from an enthusiastic and
persuasive acolyte of a particular vendor’s offering may be a challenge
for senior Non-IT executives.
• The single minded technology evangelist's enthusiasm for their specific
solution may gain a groundswell of support without the appropriate due
diligence and rigour being applied to the solution.
• This can fuel the emergence of Shadow IT, which, if not managed
appropriately could set the seeds of future systemic risk for the
organisation through inappropriate use of technology

51. 5. Avoiding the Technology Success Trap
FOUR Suggestions for INDIVIDUALS

52. 6. Avoiding the Technology Success Trap - Individuals
1. Recognise that identity theft is the holy grail for
cybercriminals targeting specific individuals
• Comprehensive Identity theft can be devastating for the individual.
• Can take many forms
• somebody using your banking details or credit card details to illegally
make purchases
• Your entire identity being assumed by another person to act as if they
were you to take out loans, open and operate bank accounts even
conducting illegal business under your name.
• Visit Attorney-General’s Department website – Download “Protecting your
Identity” Booklet
http://www.ag.gov.au/RightsAndProtections/
IdentitySecurity/Pages/default.aspx

53. 6. Avoiding the Technology Success Trap - Individuals
2. Understand where your liability ends and your technology
provider’s starts
• Reading the terms and conditions of your favourite social media site,
App, or cloud application (webmail, etc) is impractical:
• Time consuming,
• In most cases, can vary terms and conditions at will
• Future proofing your digital assets – all your photo’s in the Cloud? How
to protect your important Digital artifacts. At risk.?

54. 6. Avoiding the Technology Success Trap - Individuals
3. Treat all your online transactions as public
• Includes email and all social media transactions such as Twitter,
Facebook, etc. as potentially evidentiary content.
• Reading the terms and conditions of your favourite social media site,
App, or cloud application (webmail, etc) is impractical:
• Time consuming,
• In most cases, can vary terms and conditions at will
http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/

55. 6. Avoiding the Technology Success Trap - Individuals
4. Understand your financial institution’s liability cut-off point
• We are all being sent down the marble run of convenience by Financial
Institutions, retailers, etc:
• Mobile banking,
• ‘Frictionless’ payment eg: ‘Tap and Go’ style checkout, Digital Wallet
• Being weaned off traditional physical transaction models
• Online payments, financial transactions preferred by financial institutions
• Understand the liability boundary between you and your financial
organisation in disputed transactions (eg suspected cyber-theft )
• Understand what constitutes your contributory negligence in disputed
transactions with your financial institution. (Eg not reset your password
recently?)

56. 7. Our uncertain digital future
The Digital Narcotic
• Collectively, will our increasing
dependency on new and emerging
disruptive information and
communications technologies lead
us into a Success Trap?
• Take a moment to take your
attention off your Smartphone and
look to the skies for an answer……

57. 7. Our uncertain digital future

58. THINK.CHANGE.DOThankyou
I trust that you have found this presentation informative,
and of value
Rob Livingstone
Fellow, University of Technology Sydney
Principal, Rob Livingstone Advisory Pty Ltd
rob@rob-livingstone.com
www.rob-livingstone.com
8. Open questions and discussion