Concluding Remarks

Business environment, business institutions, business processes, and business conduct are going through the nearest thing to a revolution. It is a multi-track revolution touching the roots, the premises, and the outcomes. Technology stands at the heart of this revolution. Change in technology, whether inputs, outputs, transformation processes, or the feedback element, has been taking place at a breathtaking pace. A process that is extending over more than a decade now. The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI), data sciences, internet of things (IOT), and other related and unrelated technologies have shaken the roots of many a phenomenon. AI paradigm, whether system, capability, or competency-related, has rendered many management processes, products, institutions, and even concepts obsolete. AI’s progress toward the “state of mine” and the “self-awareness status” will, very likely, take some time to emerge, but once matured, the revolution will go into overdrive. Managerial processes as strategic thinking, organization structuring, and control will enter a new era. Those radical shifts will change the essence of the top management function with issues such as awareness, predictivity, vision, and plasticity assuming key role. So also is the structure and the flows within organizations with a traditional hierarchy and authority and responsibility premises may all but disappear and be replaced by more technology-compatible concepts and operations. All of that will require a process of “re-education” of all those involved in a business process. Top management as well as other layers of organizations involved in the fulfillment of a business function will have to learn to look at things through different eyes. They will have to learn to live with a technology that is changing the very parameters of the business process. Also, with competencies that change scope, depth, and reach almost every business day. This will take time and consume resources but no organization will be able to afford to ignore those developments and if it does it may be at a heavy price. A price that will go beyond simple market share and reach the very existence of the organization. Technology will create visions that were not conceived before, functions that did not exist in the past, tasks that were not imaginable yesterday, competitive domains that opened new boundaries, strategies that would strain conventional limits, and business competencies that could very well belong to the realm of science fiction. The following two cases provide an illustration.