ALIF
ACCELERATOR
A
Academy
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STEP ONE:
ENABLE
LEADERS
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The Academy is Executive Education designed to help decision-makers think about the new disruptive technologies as a manager would need to; It is organized to help you “walk the talk”.
Cloud Computing
Internet of Things
Fourth Industrial Revolution
The Second Syzygy
A girl of about four years old approaches another girl at the playground to play. The father of the second little girl shrugs and apologizes to the mother of the first little girl and says, "I'm sorry. We are new in the neighborhood and my daughter does not speak English." The first little girl asks for her mother's smart phone, and instructs Siri to open Google Translate. The second little girl speaks into the phone and the language is detected. The girls run off and play with Siri and Google. This girl's nine year-old sister wants to grow up to design cars. She opens an AI application on her tablet and enters a prompt "An autonomous car that Milly Bobbie Brown would like in the style of 2000s Alexander McQueen." Within seconds, a sleek vehicle with tartan interior accents and "Eleven" on the hood in chrome appears.
That is the world of the next generation. We, in our lifetimes, will experience this as a second transformational technology syzygy . The first syzygy was the alignment of distributed networks, packeted information protocols and ubiquitous devices, which gave rise to the Internet we know today. The second syzygy occurring at this very moment is the development of cloud computing, software-as-a-serve, smart objects (IoT) and advanced machine learning (AI). Everything the Internet has done to change they way we perform or even think about everything from work, to management, to education, to commerce, to transportation, to medical care, to entertainment, to how we find our romantic partners, to how our children will make friends on the playground will transform yet again.
Several factors lead to the lifting of China to a position of preeminence in the world within the incredibly short span of about 25 years. Among those things were advancements in container ship logistics and the rise of a Chinese middle class and subsequent domestic demand for consumer goods. Nonetheless, there is simply no denying that China’s social, political and industrial rise rode squarely on the shoulders of 4G mobile networks. For the first time ever, factories be erected and operated in remote locations. Those operations could communicate with and be driven by customers across the globe without the necessity of a wireline infrastructure.
AI
As the example of China in the early 200s has shown the world, economies and organizations, which understand and are prepared to harness the capabilities of emerging technologies, will be able to leapfrog ahead to the top of the game, despite their current size or current technological level. In fact, certain “left behind” economies may actually be at an advantage, because they are not burdened by legacy system infrastructures. The emergence of cloud computing, Internet of Things and advanced machine learning–what we are calling the Second Syzygy–is this opportunity.
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The Second Syzygy is here. The changes are paradigm and permanent. That said, not all clouds are the same. Not all Software-as-a-Service products and business models are the same. Not all smart products are the same. Not all AI is the same. Ultimately, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has little in common with its predecessors.
Are you ready?
As fundamental as they are, transformation projects fail to stay on schedule or within budget, and many have a negative return on investment. 75% of EPR transformations, for example, fail to meet on-time, on-cost targets and fully two-thirds cost more than they were intended to save. In many instances, conflicting objectives of individuals or departments may be at the root, calcified through knowledge silos. Organizations moving through the Second Syzygy are no different: Organizations without a transformation strategy are pockmarked with ad hoc solutions which fail to capitalize on the advantages inherent in the technology.
Organizations no longer have the luxury of accepting a few inefficiencies to keep the peace. The second paradigm alignment of technologies within a generation is changing everything again. The good news is that this transformation no longer requires organizations to manage major IT projects and multi-vendor programs. The playing field is being leveled yet again: Technologies and capabilities once only available to such organizations with the necessary level of in-house IT management are now available to organizations of any size and experience. Furthermore, organizations are becoming less and less tied to software companies. Migration is easier and more flexible.
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The ALIF Accelerator is a four-stage launch protocol, starting with engaging leadership and solidifying the senior management mindset, moving through a hands-on lab to empower department-level management and teams, which leads directly into the final stages of organizational-wide implementation. ALIF is laser focused on improving client metrics and bottom-line results. Leading disruptive technology experts from industry and academia will lead discussions and real-world experiments in this next generation technology landscape.
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Academy:
Executive Education
Incubator:
Prototype development
Living Lab:
Team/ Department Development
Facilitator:
Organizational roll-out and implementation
Organizational Ownership
Leap to Agile Organization
Leadership development Consulting Solutions
Each ALIF stage will focus squarely on the challenges and opportunities present within that sector. Learning will be vertical, as well as horizontal, as all participants will have similar experiences and common challenges.
syzygy
[ siz-i-jee ]
noun, plural syz·y·gies.
1. Astronomy. an alignment of three celestial objects, as the sun, the earth, and either the moon or a planet : Syzygy in the sun-earth-moon system occurs at the time of full moon and new moon.
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2. Any two related things, either alike or opposite.
"Artificial intelligence will reach human levels by around 2029. Follow that out further to, say, 2045, we will have multiplied the intelligence, the human biological machine intelligence of our civilization a billion-fold."
-RAY KURZWEIL, futurist
