Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Category: Disruption

  • Could a robot put you out of business?

    Could a robot put you out of business?

    Transaction based businesses are in the firing line as robots and algorithms are taking over the tasks that are the mainstay of many service businesses.

    In How To Know if a Robot Will Take Your Marketing Job, Gartner consultant Martin Kihn identifies two factors that indicate roles at risk of being overtaken by technology.

    “The two dimensions relate to the things computers do best: (1) repetitive tasks, and (2) structured data,” states Kihn. “If you’re a knowledge worker, your biggest enemy is routine. To the extent your work is predictable, it’s codable . . . and you’re a target.”

    Kihn describes a curve where repetitive, structured jobs are at risk of automation while at the other end are more abstract analytic roles which are relatively safe from the algorithms and robots.

    will-a-robot-take-your-job

    While Kihn is focusing on marketing jobs, his message is clear for all occupations and businesses – if your company makes most of its revenue from low skill, easily automated tasks then it is ripe for being overtaken by algorithms or robotics.

    Even for businesses that are higher up the value chain, there are roles that can be replaced within the enterprise; a good example are the mining companies replacing high paid drivers with automated pit trucks.

    There are even many management jobs that may be affected as artificial intelligence advances. Approving spending or hiring requests for example can be largely dealt with by algorithms with only the rare exceptional case requiring a manager to intervene.

    So the executive suite may well be just as vulnerable as the lower status roles in an organisation.

    MIT professor Andrew McAfee who Kinh quotes has been clear that we’re on the cusp of massive change in the workplace as robots, algorithms and artificial intelligence progress. It may well be there are far more jobs and businesses at risk than we think.

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  • Artificial meat and disruption of the cattle market

    Artificial meat and disruption of the cattle market

    In thirty years ‘cultured meat’ will be commonplace and it will disrupt the cattle market Professor Mark Post warned the Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association earlier this week.

    Artificial, or ‘cultured’, meat is a dramatic change for the food industries and it promises, or threatens, to radically transform the cattle grazing business.

    This is another example of an industry that wasn’t expected to be affected by change facing a radical transformation. It shows again few of us are immune from change.

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  • Prefabricating change in the construction industry

    Prefabricating change in the construction industry

    One of the industries being dramatically reinvented by China is the construction sector as the nation’s demand on labor and materials puts stresses on the economy.

    An answer local developers and builders have found to these constraints has been to turn to prefabricated construction.

    While prefab building isn’t new, Chinese builders are pushing the techniques of designing, manufacturing and assembling the structures.

    In Changsha, the capital of southern China’s Hunan Province, local construction company Broad Group built a 57-story building using 1200 in 19 days.

    Coupled with large scale 3D printing and computerised design tools, the Chinese builders are redefining the construction industry with methods that are far more efficient and less labor intensive.

    For companies, and countries, that depend upon the construction industry for employment and profit these techniques could be another disruption.

    Again we’re seeing there are few industries immune from major disruption as technology changes business.

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  • Software eats the sports cameraman

    Software eats the sports cameraman

    Since the beginning of industry technology has changed occupations in unexpected ways the demise of the sports TV cameraman is a good modern example of a highly skilled, specialised trade that may soon be redundant.

    Years ago television studios largely replaced cameramen with remote controlled cameras but sports grounds needed skilled operators with excellent attention spans to video action at sports grounds.

    At a lunch today in Sydney Michael Tomkins, Chief Technology Office of Fox Sports Australia, explained how a combination of high definition cameras and advanced software is changing the way sports are broadcast and recorded.

    “Last year we put two 4k cameras in to cover the length of the ground,” Tomkins said. “Two 4k cameras can see the length of the whole ground so I get rid of four cameramen and replace them with one joystick bunny.”

    “He moves a box around the screen and those become a virtual camera. The resolution of a 4k camera is four times that of our HD broadcasts. It’s quite cost effective and I don’t have to roll a crew out.”

    A demonstration of how the technology works is in a YouTube clip of an Australian Rules football match from last year. While the ‘joystick bunny’ and the software is somewhat clumsy in the segment, the clip shows the power of the technology.

    With abolishing most of the camera, the opportunity to rationalise the production suite also becomes possible; at present most sports events have a producer instructing a group of assistants to cut between cameras, prepare replays and all the other effects expected by viewers. With a software based system most of that labor and its skills become redundant.

    Over time as higher resolution cameras become available this application is going to become common, in fact most junior and amateur sports will be able to afford static hi-res cameras for their ground that allows them to record their games.

    While the demise of the sports cameraman and producers is a shame in the same way loom weavers and hansom cab drivers disappeared, it is a reflection of  changing technologies creating then destroying occupations.

    TV camera image through wikipedia

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  • Will the tech industry beat the car makers?

    Will the tech industry beat the car makers?

    Despite the current hype over wearables and smartphones at Mobile World Congress, the real battle in tech is increasingly in the automobile industry; it’s no accident that smartcars were the start turn at the Consumer Electronics Show at the beginning of the year.

    It may be however that the tech companies might take over the automobile industry as Timothy B. Lee in Vox suggests.

    Lee’s argument rests mainly on the tech industry’s superior supply chain management – this is questionable as automotive manufacturing is several orders of magnitude in its complexity than PCs or smartphones – and the changing role of the motor car in modern society.

    That latter aspect is probably the more crucial aspect, as car ownership falls and sharing vehicles becomes commonplace, design and manufacturing imperatives change along with the economics.

    While it’s stating the obvious to say the incumbent automobile manufacturers currently have the advantage due to scale and experience, the same was said when Apple introduced their smartphone to compete against long established incumbents such as Nokia and Motorola.

    Re-inventing the global automotive sector is a far bigger task than changing the smartphone or personal computer industry, although it certainly is going to happen. It may be though that Chinese or Indian groups end up dominating rather than Silicon Valley.

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