Perspectives — digital & 4IR technologies

3D printing is ushering in a new atomic model for physical objects and a new era of pan-industrial competition. Any factory anywhere can potentially manufacture not just parts, but complete products for any number of industries, continually iterate and hyper-personalise these at low cost in response to market demand.

As both consumers and organisations struggle with cognitive overload from the rapidly escalating volume and velocity of data from ever more connected devices, AR offers up a much-needed panacea. Where current internet technologies place access to the right information at the right time at our fingertips, with AR, we will now have it in plain sight.

The disruptive potential of AI is perhaps unprecedented, and while the popular media focuses on a dystopian vision of the future, AI is augmenting our human capability perceptually, cognitively and physically, transforming everyday experiences as well as enabling a collaborative human and machine led transformation. 

The ‘big data’ generated by smart connected products is business’ new core asset, and capability in analytics the key to unlocking trapped value from the aggregation of multiple data sources within new data lakes. For those who move quickly, there is the opportunity to significantly expand their current industry boundaries.

Having a very clear view of your customers, their problems, the business you're in and how this may be restructured to deliver enhanced value has never been more critical. Agile startups are harnessing innovative technologies to disrupt, transcend and pick off the lucrative elements of businesses posing a threat to every industry. For Australian retailers, one of the greatest perceived threats is the imminent arrival of Amazon - no longer a startup but a behemoth - which continues to pursue a relentless program of agile, lean start up style experimentation as it strives to win across all categories of retail.  Amazon's ambition is to be the 'everything retailer', to generate more revenue that Walmart, and in order to do...