Advance Praise for Digital Transformation
“Tom Siebel’s Digital Transformation should alarm every CEO and government leader about the simultaneous arrival of an existential technological threat—and an historic opportunity. A must-read for every leader in business and government.”
—Robert M. Gates,
Former U.S. Secretary of Defense
“Siebel explains why business evolution is speeding up, ushering in a new era of real-time data analysis and prediction. Digital Transformation is a top-priority read for CEOs and boards.”
—Rich Karlgaard,
Publisher and Futurist, Forbes
“Digital technology is changing the world with breath-taking speed. In a clearly written book that combines market-tested experience and piercing insight, Tom Siebel provides leaders with the advice they need to guide organizations.”
—Christopher L. Eisgruber,
President, Princeton University
“With great panache, Tom Siebel provides readers with an insightful insider’s guide to the risks and opportunities posed by the confluence of four technologies: cloud computing, big data, the internet of things, and artificial intelligence. It should be essential reading for decision-makers within any public or private organization that hopes to navigate the challenges posed by digital transformation with clarity and vision.”
—Anantha P. Chandrakasan,
Dean of the School of Engineering, MIT
“In Digital Transformation, Tom Siebel describes how the disruptive technologies of artificial intelligence, cloud computing, big data, and the internet of things are propelling massive changes in how nations, industries, and corporations function. Throughout the book, he offers valuable advice to corporations and individuals working in this transforming landscape.”
—Robert J. Zimmer,
President, University of Chicago
“Tom Siebel describes the monumental importance of the ongoing digital transformation in historical context by way of compelling examples, at a level that can be easily understood by anyone broadly familiar with business or the tech industry. Digital Transformation is an excellent introduction to an important topic.”
—Zico Kolter,
Assistant Professor, Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
“Tom Siebel provides a cogent and accessible explanation of this new generation of information technologies, and he gives a clear account of the specific nature of its disruptive effect upon commerce and government. This book is an essential roadmap for leaders in business and government.”
—Richard Levin,
22nd President of Yale University
“Bracingly written and vigorously argued, his book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the revolutionary technological changes transforming our world.”
—Carol Christ,
Chancellor, University of California, Berkeley
“Tom Siebel, long-time IT visionary, has demonstrated via his pioneering company C3.ai that AI can positively transform a breathtaking array of sectors. He convincingly explains how AI, if we ensure security, privacy, and ethical implementation, will improve the security and health of the planet and all its inhabitants.”
—Emily A. Carter,
Dean, School of Engineering, Princeton University
“Siebel more than makes the case for why transformation is imperative—presenting the world-changing opportunities and challenges jointly brought about by cloud computing, big data, IoT, and AI.”
—Ian A. Waitz,
Vice Chancellor, MIT
“Tom Siebel chose a deceiving title for his latest work. This book is really about our ability to predict the future. We are all mesmerized by our future and this explains why it is such a fascinating read.”
—Francesco Starace,
CEO, Enel
“After four decades as a thought leader as well as a very successful entrepreneur, Tom Siebel has gathered in this fascinating book the knowledge that every executive should have on all critical digital technologies: big data, IoT, the cloud, and of course, AI.”
—Isabelle Kocher,
CEO, ENGIE
“A must-read for any CEO trying to navigate the digital age maze. Tom’s personal digital success and clear explanations about how it works and how to do it as a CEO make this a compelling study for CEOs.”
—Dave Cote,
Chairman and CEO, Honeywell (Retired)
“Digital Transformation is an essential read for those in charge of today’s economic, political, and social systems, and a call to action for those who will look after our world’s safe and prosperous future.”
—Andreas Cangellaris,
Vice Chancellor and Provost, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“This book is a compelling read for those of us who may not be deep into the technology but are trying to reshape businesses and industries. Tom is one of those unique individuals who has the credibility and experience to speak to both.”
—Tilak Subrahmanian,
Vice President, Energy Efficiency, Eversource Energy
“Tom Siebel is, simply said, one of Silicon Valley’s most outstanding entrepreneurs and leaders. His new book offers a seminal description of the profound technologies that are colliding today, and that offer remarkable opportunities for those entrepreneurs and leaders who act passionately and swiftly.”
—Jim Breyer,
Founder and CEO, Breyer Capital
“Following Tom Siebel’s journey into the amazing digital world is both fascinating and threatening. He helps you see the coming challenges and offers a way to manage them as opportunities.”
—Fabio Veronese,
Head of ICT Infrastructure & Networks Solution Center, Enel
“In this remarkable book, Tom Siebel is taking us through the dynamics of high tech from the Cambrian explosion to the latest developments of machine learning and AI. This deliberate long-term historical perspective is giving us the keys to understand in depth the industry that propels the world into the 21st century.”
—Yves Le Gélard,
Chief Digital Officer and Group CIO, ENGIE
“This is a brilliant, rigorous, and visionary analysis of the dramatic and disruptive impact of digital transformation on our post-industrial society. With his unique talent and experience, Tom Siebel has captured and clearly outlined the main challenges of the technology transition that we are facing.”
—Marco Gilli,
Rector (Ret.) and Professor of Electrical Engineering at Politecnico di Torino; “Scientific Attaché” at the Embassy of Italy in the USA
“Tom Siebel’s Digital Transformation is a marvelous and timely book. The author’s historical placement of the subject and his thorough grasp of the capabilities of next generation digital technology make for an excellent read.”
—Tim Killeen,
President, University of Illinois
“This book will force you to think about the effects of digital transformation on your business and will change your perspective.”
—Cristina M. Morgan,
Vice Chairman, Technology Investment Banking, J.P. Morgan
“Tom brilliantly surveys the tectonic forces at work and persuasively expresses the urgency with which industry CEOs and policymakers must adapt to this new reality or become extinct.”
—Brien J. Sheahan,
Chairman and CEO, Illinois Commerce Commission
“Everyone talks about digital transformation, and here is our chance to actually understand and execute it well.”
—Jay Crotts,
Chief Information Officer, Royal Dutch Shell
“Tom Siebel envisions a world in which the risks are
as great as the rewards, a world transformed by technologies equipped with the freedom and force of mind. His book is both an inspiration and a warning. To ignore it is to make a serious mistake.”
—Lewis H. Lapham,
Editor, Lapham’s Quarterly; Former Editor, Harper’s Magazine
“Few people are as well-suited to bring together the business, technical, and historical perspective that Tom so cogently weaves together. I recommend this book to any business leader who wants to cut through the buzzwords and understand how we got to where we are today.”
—Judson Althoff,
Executive Vice President, Worldwide Commercial Business, Microsoft
“With Digital Transformation, Tom Siebel has brilliantly provided much more than an essential survival guide for organizations in the Information Age. He charts a true course for both civilian and military leaders and their teams to successfully navigate the turbulent waters of dynamic change towards much greater security and human value for global society.”
—Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn,
U.S. Navy, Retired; Former Assistant Secretary of the Navy
“The book is a must-read for any executive who needs to understand both the challenges and also the opportunities of where the world is headed during this time of frame-breaking change.”
—Robert E. Siegel,
Lecturer, Stanford Graduate School of Business
“Business is fundamentally different in the 21st century, and digital transformation is more urgent than ever. The difference between thriving or becoming the next Blockbuster or Kodak is how far businesses are willing to go in setting their organization up to compete digitally. Digital Transformation provides the clearest blueprint yet for leaders looking to reinvent their businesses across information technology, operations, culture, and business models.”
—Aaron Levie,
Co-founder and CEO, Box
Digital Transformation: Survive and Thrive in an Era of Mass Extinction
Copyright © 2019 by Thomas M. Siebel
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, please contact RosettaBooks at [email protected], or by mail at 125 Park Ave., 25th Floor, New York, NY 10017
First edition published 2019 by RosettaBooks
Cover design by Regan McCamey
Interior design by Scribe Inc. and Jay McNair
Illustrations by Alberto Mena
ISBN-13 (print): 978-1-9481-2248-1
ISBN-13 (ebook): 978-0-7953-5264-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Siebel, Thomas M., author.
Title: Digital transformation : survive and thrive in an era of mass extinction / by Thomas M. Siebel.
Description: New York : RosettaBooks, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019012706 (print) | LCCN 2019017316 (ebook) | ISBN 9780795352645 (ebook) | ISBN 9781948122481 (print)
Subjects: LCSH: Digital electronics--Social aspects. | Technological innovations--Social aspects. | Information society. | Success in business.
Classification: LCC HM851 (ebook) | LCC HM851 .S5483 2019 (print) | DDC 303.48/33--dc23
www.RosettaBooks.com
CONTENTS
Foreword by Condoleezza Rice
Preface: Post-Industrial Society
1. Punctuated Equilibrium
2. Digital Transformation
3. The Information Age Accelerates
4. The Elastic Cloud
5. Big Data
6. The AI Renaissance
7. The Internet of Things
8. AI in Government
9. The Digital Enterprise
10. A New Technology Stack
11. The CEO Action Plan
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Notes
FOREWORD
A Call to Action
O ver the years as an advisor to business leaders and in my own roles in government, I have learned firsthand the importance of identifying risks and opportunities—their sources, their scope, and their potential impact on the achievement of key goals. In his new book, Tom Siebel takes on what is simultaneously one of the largest risks and greatest opportunities facing both public- and private-sector organizations globally: digital transformation. Tom’s book brings much-needed clarity to a critical subject that, while widely discussed, remains poorly understood.
As Tom lays out in the pages of this book, the confluence of four major technological forces—cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, and the internet of things—is causing a mass extinction event in industry after industry, leaving in its wake a growing number of organizations that have either ceased to exist or have become irrelevant. At the same time, new species of organizations are rapidly emerging, with a different kind of DNA born of this new digital age.
Thus far we have seen the most prominent effects of this tsunami-like wave of digital transformation in industries like retail, advertising, media, and music at the hands of digital-age companies such as Amazon, Google, Netflix, and Spotify. Digital transformation has created whole new industries and business models—on-demand transportation services like Uber and Didi Chuxing; lodging services like Airbnb and Tujia; and digital marketplaces such as OpenTable in the restaurant industry and Zillow in real estate. In the not-too-distant future, digital transformation is poised to reinvent the automotive sector with the arrival of self-driving technologies powered by artificial intelligence like Waymo.
We are beginning to see signs of digital transformation in financial services, as hundreds of fintech startups—backed by billions of dollars in venture capital—are eating away at every piece of the financial services value chain, from investment management and insurance to retail banking and payments.
In complex asset-intensive industries such as oil and gas, manufacturing, utilities, and logistics, digital transformation is taking hold through the deployment of applications powered by artificial intelligence, driving dramatic gains in productivity, efficiency, and cost savings. While not as widely publicized or visible as the digital transformation of consumer industries, these asset-intensive industries are undergoing massive change resulting in substantial economic and environmental benefits.
It is only a matter of time until digital transformation sweeps across every industry. No company or governmental agency will be immune to its impact. In my conversations with business executives and government leaders globally, digital transformation ranks at or near the top of their concerns and priorities.
At a nation-state level, the degree to which countries embrace and enable digital transformation today will determine their competitive stance and economic well-being for decades to come. History teaches that those who take the lead in technological revolution—which today’s digital transformation most certainly is—reap the greatest rewards. The imperative to act, and to act swiftly, is clear and present.
No discussion of digital transformation would be complete without an account of its impact on national and global security. As Tom makes clear, artificial intelligence will have a profound role in determining national military capabilities and relations among the world’s leading powers. Tom’s realistic assessment of the global competition for AI leadership, and what it implies for the future, will surely capture the attention of business and government leaders.
Few people are as well qualified as Tom Siebel to help organizations understand and successfully navigate the challenges of digital transformation. For nearly a decade, I have had the privilege of working closely with Tom in my role as an outside director on the board of C3.ai—the company Tom founded and leads as CEO, which provides a technology platform specifically designed to enable enterprise digital transformation. Informed by a career that spans four decades as a technologist, business execu
tive, and entrepreneur, Tom brings a unique perspective to the subject of digital transformation. He has gained the trust and respect of business and government leaders around the world.
In this book, Tom explores specific examples and case studies based directly on the experiences of organizations C3.ai works with around the globe. These are real-world digital transformation initiatives—some of the largest of their kind ever undertaken—at organizations such as 3M, Caterpillar, Royal Dutch Shell, and the U.S. Air Force.
Successful digital transformations, Tom writes in these pages, require the mandate and leadership of an organization’s top executives: Digital transformation must be driven from the top down. While the intended readers of this book are CEOs and other senior leaders in both the private and public sectors globally—leaders who today are grappling with the risks and opportunities presented by digital transformation—every reader will learn much from Tom’s insightful examination.
Like all accomplished entrepreneurs, Tom is both a constitutional optimist, always seeing a world of half-full glasses, and a person of vision and action. His goal is not just to help readers understand what digital transformation is but to provide actionable advice—based on proven experience—to help them move forward and achieve meaningful results. The CEO Action Plan he lays out at the conclusion of his book gives readers concrete guidance on how to get started with their digital transformation initiatives.
My advice to business and government leaders everywhere: Read this book. Study its lessons. Take its advice to heart. There is no better guide than Tom Siebel to show the way to digital transformation success.
Condoleezza Rice
Denning Professor in Global Business and the Economy,
Stanford University Graduate School of Business
Digital Transformation Page 1