• Google Kubernetes Engine:
https://www.coursera.org/learn/google-kubernetes-engine
• Cloud Computing Applications, Part 1:
Cloud Systems and Infrastructure:
https://www.coursera.org/learn/cloud-applications-part1
• Business and Financial Modeling Specialization:
https://www.coursera.org/specializations/wharton-business-financial-modeling
• TensorFlow:
https://www.coursera.org/specializations/machine-learning-tensorflow-gcp
• Advanced Machine Learning Specialization:
https://www.coursera.org/specializations/aml
• Cloud Computing:
https://www.coursera.org/specializations/cloud-computing
• IoT and AWS:
https://www.coursera.org/specializations/internet-of-things
• Functional Programming Principles in Scala:
https://www.coursera.org/learn/progfun1
You will want to curate a curriculum specific to your company’s needs. I offer the above only by example. But you should think about this. The returns are staggering. As you implement a similar self-learning program for your company, it is not sufficient to assign this to your HR department. You, as CXO, need to take ownership, participate, lead by example, recognize participation, and make it central to your ongoing corporate culture.
The Road to Digital Transformation
I hope this book has given you a practical understanding of enterprise digital transformation powered by cloud computing, big data, AI, and IoT. I have described how the evolution of these technologies and their confluence in the early 21st century has produced the current period of mass extinction and mass diversification in the business world.
As in evolutionary biology, the new environment created by the confluence of these technologies poses an existential threat for incumbent organizations, but also creates a massive opportunity for those that take advantage of these new resources. Organizations that recognize the magnitude of the opportunity, and are willing and able to adapt, will be well-positioned to unlock significant economic value. Those resistant to change face a rocky road ahead.
AI- and IoT-driven digital transformations are challenging, but they can unlock tremendous economic value and competitive benefits.
The coming two decades will bring more information technology innovation than that of the past half century. The intersection of artificial intelligence and the internet of things changes everything. This represents an entire replacement market for all enterprise application and consumer software. New business models will emerge. Products and services unimaginable today will be ubiquitous. New opportunities will abound. But the great majority of corporations and institutions that fail to seize this moment will become footnotes in history.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Digital Transformation is the result of a decade of collaboration, discussion, and debate with hundreds of colleagues, customers, co-workers, researchers, and friends.
I first heard the term in board rooms in New York, Shanghai, Rome, and Paris in 2010. In 2011, 2012, and beyond, Digital Transformation was increasingly raised as a strategic corporate mandate by CEOs and executive teams who visited me and my team at C3.ai in Silicon Valley.
I found the term curious. Digital Transformation? As opposed to what? Analog Transformation? What did it mean?
It was clear, as I heard the term bandied about—and with great import—that there was something about this idea that was perceived to be critical. It was also clear there was a lack of common understanding of its meaning. When I probed to find the intended meaning, I found little in common and little of substance.
After hundreds, perhaps thousands, of discussions over the past decade, this book is an attempt to distill the essence of what I have learned from corporate, government, and academic leaders, the core motivation that is driving the mandate, and its social and economic implications in the context of the past 50 years of innovation in the information technology industry.
I have had the great professional privilege to engage with and learn from many of the great corporate and government leaders of the 21st century who are driving innovation at massive scale, including Jacques Attali; Francesco Starace, Livio Gallo, and Fabio Veronese at Enel; Isabelle Kocher and Yves Le Gélard at ENGIE; Jay Crotts and Johan Krebbers at Royal Dutch Shell; Mike Roman and Jon Lindekugel at 3M; Brandon Hootman and Julie Lagacy at Caterpillar; John May at John Deere; Tom Montag at Bank of America; Gil Quiniones at New York Power Authority; Manny Cancel at Con Edison; Lorenzo Simonelli at Baker Hughes; Mark Clare and David Smoley at AstraZeneca; Jim Snabe at Siemens; Heinrich Hiesinger; Secretary Heather Wilson and Assistant Secretary Will Roper at the United States Air Force; Under Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy; Mike Kaul and Mike Brown at Defense Innovation Unit; General John Murray at U.S. Army Futures Command; Mark Nehmer at the Defense Security Service; General Gustave Perna at the U.S. Army Materiel Command; and Brien Sheahan, Chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission.
Many have contributed to this book. Pat House, with whom I co-founded two leading Silicon Valley software companies, was the driving force to organize the completion of this project. Eric Marti served as editor-in-chief with a thankfully heavy editorial hand. Many of my colleagues made significant contributions to this effort, including Ed Abbo, Houman Behzadi, Adi Bhashyam, Rob Jenks, David Khavari, Nikhil Krishnan, Sara Mansur, Nikolai Oudalov, Carlton Reeves, Uma Sandilya, Rahul Venkatraj, Merel Witteveen, Danielle YoungSmith, Lila Fridley, Erica Schroeder, Adrian Rami, and Amy Irvine.
This effort benefited greatly from the generous and active engagement of many leaders in the academy including Condoleezza Rice at Stanford University; Shankar Sastry at UC Berkeley; Andreas Cangellaris and Bill Sanders at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Vince Poor and Emily Carter at Princeton University; Anantha Chandrakasan and Ian Waitz at MIT; Jacques Biot at École Polytechnique; Michael Franklin at the University of Chicago; Zico Kolter at Carnegie Mellon University; Pedro Domingos at University of Washington; and Marco Gilli at Politecnico di Torino.
Thank you all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thomas M. Siebel is the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of C3.ai, a leading enterprise AI software provider. With a career spanning four decades in technology, he has been at the forefront of several major innovation cycles including relational databases, enterprise application software, internet computing, and AI and IoT.
Following a career at Oracle Corporation beginning in the early 1980s, he pioneered the customer relationship management (CRM) category in 1993 with the founding of Siebel Systems, where he served as chairman and CEO. Siebel Systems rapidly became one of the world’s leading enterprise software companies, with more than 8,000 employees, over 4,500 corporate customers, and annual revenue exceeding $2 billion. Siebel Systems merged with Oracle in January 2006.
The Thomas and Stacey Siebel Foundation funds projects supporting energy solutions, educational and research programs, public health, and the homeless and underprivileged. The Foundation supports the Siebel Scholars Foundation (providing grants to graduate students in computer science, engineering, and business); the Siebel Energy Institute (funding research in energy solutions); and the Siebel Stem Cell Institute (supporting research to harness the potential of regenerative medicine), among other philanthropic activities.
Mr. Siebel has authored three previous books: Virtual Selling (Free Press, 1996), Cyber Rules (Doubleday, 1999), and Taking Care of eBusiness (Doubleday, 2001).
He was recognized as one of the top 25 managers in global business by Businessweek in 1999, 2000, and 2001. He received the EY Entrepreneur of the year award in 2003, 2017, and 2018, and received the Glassdoor Top CEO Award in 2018.
He is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he received a B.A. in History, an M.B.A., and a M.S. in Computer Science. He is a former trustee of Princeton University, and
serves on the boards of advisors for the University of Illinois College of Engineering and the UC–Berkeley College of Engineering. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2013.
NOTES
Data Sources for Figures
1.2 Cosmos Magazine, “The Big Five Mass Extinctions,” (n.d.): https://cosmosmagazine.com/palaeontology/big-five-extinctions
2.1 World Economic Forum, “Societal Implications: Can Digital Create Value for Industry and Society?” June 2016; PwC, “Sizing the Prize,” 2017; McKinsey, “Notes from the AI Frontier: Modeling the Impact of AI on the World Economy,” September 2018; McKinsey, “Unlocking the Potential of the Internet of Things,” June 2015; Forbes, “Gartner Estimates AI Business Value to Reach Nearly $4 Trillion by 2022,” April 25, 2018
3.4 Cisco, “Cisco Visual Networking Index, 2018”
6.3 AIIndex.org, “2017 AI Index Report”
7.3 IHS Markit, “IoT platforms: Enabling the Internet of Things,” March 2016
7.4 McKinsey, “Unlocking the Potential of the Internet of Things,” June 2015
7.5 Boston Consulting Group, “Winning in IoT: It’s All About the Business Processes,” January 5, 2017
7.6 The Economist, March 10, 2016
8.1 OECD, “Science, Technology and Innovation Outlook 2018”
8.2 Congressional Budget Office, “The Cost of Replacing Today’s Air Force Fleet,” December 2018
10.5 Amazon Web Services
11.2 Bain, “Predator or Prey: Disruption in the Era of Advanced Analytics,” November 8, 2017
Preface
1 Tom Forester, The Microelectronics Revolution: The Complete Guide to the New Technology and Its Impact on Society (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981).
2 Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-industrial Society (New York: Basic Books, 1973).
3 Malcolm Waters, Daniel Bell (New York: Routledge, 1996), 15.
4 Ibid.
5 Forester, Microelectronics Revolution, 500.
6 Bell, Coming of Post-industrial Society, 126.
7 Ibid., 358–59.
8 Ibid., 126–27.
9 Waters, Daniel Bell, 109.
10 Bell, Coming of Post-industrial Society, 359.
11 Ibid., 127.
12 Ibid.
13 Waters, Daniel Bell.
14 Bell, Coming of Post-industrial Society, 359.
15 A. S. Duff, “Daniel Bell’s Theory of the Information Society,” Journal of Information Science 24, no. 6 (1998): 379.
16 Ibid., 383.
17 Forester, Microelectronics Revolution, 505.
18 Ibid., 507.
19 Ibid., 513.
20 Ibid., 513–14.
21 Ibid., 521.
22 “Gartner Says Global IT Spending to Grow 3.2 Percent in 2019,” Gartner, October 17, 2018, https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2018-10-17-gartner-says-global-it-spending-to-grow-3-2-percent-in-2019
23 Larry Dignan, “Global IT, Telecom Spending to Hit $4 Trillion, but Economic Concerns Loom,” ZDnet, June 21, 2018, https://www.zdnet.com/article/global-it-telecom-spending-to-hit-4-trillion-but-economic-concerns-loom/
Chapter 1
1 This alludes to a quote frequently attributed to Mark Twain, but there is no record that he actually said it. See: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/12/history-rhymes/
2 Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (London: John Murray, 1859).
3 Dinosaurs in Our Backyard, Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC.
4 Jeffrey Bennet and Seth Shostak, Life in the Universe, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Pearson Education, 2007).
5 Stephen Jay Gould, Punctuated Equilibrium (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007).
6 Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge, “Punctuated Equilibrium Comes of Age,” Nature 366 (November 18, 1993): 223–27.
7 NASA, “The Great Dying,” Science Mission Directorate, January 28, 2002, https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2002/28jan_extinction
8 Yuval N. Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (New York: Harper, 2015).
9 Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, “The Oxygen Holocaust,” in Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution (California: University of California Press, 1986), 99.
10 Bennet and Shostak, Life in the Universe.
11 Phil Plait, “Poisoned Planet,” Slate, July 28, 2014, https://slate.com/technology/2014/07/the-great-oxygenation-event-the-earths-first-mass-extinction.html
12 “50 Years of Moore’s Law,” Intel, n.d., https://www.intel.sg/content/www/xa/en/silicon-innovations/moores-law-technology.html
13 Harari, Sapiens.
14 “Timeline,” Telecommunications History Group, 2017, http://www.telcomhistory.org/timeline.shtml
15 “Smartphone Users Worldwide from 2014–2020,” Statista, 2017, https://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartphone-users-worldwide/
16 Benjamin Hale, “The History of the Hollywood Movie Industry,” History Cooperative, 2014, http://historycooperative.org/the-history-of-the-hollywood-movie-industry/
17 America on the Move, National Museum of American History, Washington, DC.
Chapter 2
1 Tanguy Catlin et al., “A Roadmap for a Digital Transformation,” McKinsey, March 2017, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/a-roadmap-for-a-digital-transformation
2 “Overview,” DigitalBCG, n.d., https://www.bcg.com/en-us/digital-bcg/overview.aspx
3 Brian Solis, “The Six Stages of Digital Transformation Maturity,” Altimeter Group and Cognizant, 2016, https://www.cognizant.com/whitepapers/the-six-stages-of-digital-transformation-maturity.pdf
4 Frederick Harris et al., “Impact of Computing on the World Economy: A Position Paper,” University of Nevada, Reno, 2008, https://www.cse.unr.edu/~fredh/papers/conf/074-iocotweapp/paper.pdf
5 Gil Press, “A Very Short History of Digitization,” Forbes, December 27, 2015, https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2015/12/27/a-very-short-history-of-digitization/
6 Tristan Fitzpatrick, “A Brief History of the Internet,” Science Node, February 9, 2017, https://sciencenode.org/feature/a-brief-history-of-the-internet-.php
7 Larry Carter, “Cisco’s Virtual Close,” Harvard Business Review, April 2001, https://hbr.org/2001/04/ciscos-virtual-close
8 Brian Solis, “Who Owns Digital Transformation? According to a New Survey, It’s Not the CIO,” Forbes, October 17, 2016, https://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolis/2016/10/17/who-owns-digital-transformation-according-to-a-new-survey-its-the-cmo/#55a7327667b5
9 Randy Bean, “Financial Services Disruption: Gradually and Then Suddenly,” Forbes, October 11, 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2017/10/11/financial-services-disruption-gradually-and-then-suddenly/2/#7f15b6e0392
10 Avery Hartmans, “How to Use Zelle, the Lightning-Fast Payments App That’s More Popular Than Venmo in the US,” Business Insider, June 17, 2018.
11 Galen Gruman, “Anatomy of Failure: Mobile Flops from RIM, Microsoft, and Nokia,” Macworld, April 30, 2011, https://www.macworld.com/article/1159578/anatomy_of_failure_rim_microsoft_nokia.html
12 Rajeev Suri, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution Will Bring a Massive Productivity Boom,” World Economic Forum, January 15, 2018, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/01/fourth-industrial-revolution-massive-productivity-boom-good/
13 Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014).
14 Michael Sheetz, “Technology Killing Off Corporate America: Average Life Span of Companies under 20 Years,” CNBC, August 24, 2017, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/technology-killing-off-corporations-average-lifespan-of-company-under-20-years.html
15 BT, “Digital Transformation Top Priority for CEOs, Says New BT and EIU Research,” Cision, September 12, 2017, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-rel
eases/digital-transformation-top-priority-for-ceos-says-new-bt-and-eiu-research-300517891.html
16 “Strategic Update,” Ford Motor Company, October 3, 2017, https://s22.q4cdn.com/857684434/files/doc_events/2017/10/ceo-strtegic-update-transcript.pdf
17 Karen Graham, “How Nike Is Taking the Next Step in Digital Transformation,” Digital Journal, October 26, 2017, http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and-science/technology/how-nike-is-taking-the-next-step-in-digital-transformation/article/506051#ixzz5715z4xdC
18 Chris Cornillie, “Trump Embraces Obama’s ‘Venture Capital Firm’ for Pentagon Tech,” Bloomberg Government, February 21, 2018, https://about.bgov.com/blog/trump-embraces-obamas-venture-capital-firm-pentagon-tech/
19 “The Digital Transformation by ENGIE,” ENGIE, n.d., https://www.engie.com/en/group/strategy/digital-transformation/
20 Ibid.
21 “Incumbents Strike Back: Insights from the Global C-Suite Study,” IBM Institute for Business Value, February 2018, https://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/98/en/98013098usen/incumbents-strike-back_98013098USEN.pdf
22 Ibid.
23 “Letter to Shareholders,” JPMorgan Chase, 2014, https://www.jpmorganchase.com/corporate/investor-relations/document/JPMC-AR2014-LetterToShareholders.pdf
24 Julie Bort, “Retiring Cisco CEO Delivers Dire Prediction: 40% of Companies Will Be Dead in 10 Years,” Business Insider, June 8, 2015, http://www.businessinsider.com/chambers-40-of-companies-are-dying-2015-6
25 “Geoffrey Moore—Core and Context,” Stanford Technology Ventures Program, April 6, 2005, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emQ2innvuPo
26 Curt Finch, “Interviewing Geoffrey Moore: Core versus Context,” Inc., April 26, 2011, https://www.inc.com/tech-blog/interviewing-geoffrey-moore-core-versus-context.html
27 Geoffrey Moore, Dealing with Darwin: How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of Their Evolution (New York: Penguin, 2005).
28 “Digital Transformation Index II,” Dell Technologies, August 2018, https://www.dellemc.com/resources/en-us/asset/briefs-handouts/solutions/dt_index_ii_executive_summary.pdf
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