Technology

Global CXOs believe the internet of things, artificial intelligence, cloud, and big data/analytics will have the most profound impacts on their organizations in the future.

“It’s no longer relevant just to talk to our customers; we also need to talk to our customers’ customers. We need to talk to the app developers and the tech companies to really understand what’s on their minds, what they want to create, and what they want to have available to consumers by 2025. That will then help us establish and determine what technology we need to develop and facilitate, and the investments that we should make as all this happens.”

Roger Dassen, CFO of ASML

Only 26 percent of Danish execs consider ‘protecting their organisations from disruption’ a top Industry 4.0-priority.

“Many of today’s leaders were brought up on the old systems and the mindset that things will last. The rate of change and amount of data today can be overwhelming in comparison. In this environment, leaders today must lead with courage, let their old ways go, allow younger generations to step up, and get comfortable with change.”

Jeff Gravenhorst, CEO, ISS

The degree to which CXOs believe technology will have a profound impact on their organizations varies by region. EMEA is by far the most bullish of all the regions, while APAC is the most skeptical of the “big four” technologies’ impact. The Americas net out around the average of all global participants.

“There is a strong correlation and dependencies between several Industry 4.0 technologies. IoT sensors will generate a ton of data that will be relevant for machine learning-based automation. Most of these technologies will be delivered and consumed in the cloud even as we see the emergence of edge computing. Next-gen robotics will see the convergence of IoT, machine learning, and cloud computing as robots start getting better all the time through cloudbased machine learning from data from IoT sensors in the robot.”

Deepak Krishnamurthy, chief strategy and transformation officer of SAP

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