As part of the launch of the Business as Unusual book (click on badge on left to get to the Amazon page) by Thomas Saueressig and Peter Maier that we helped conduct interviews and research for, we will share excerpts from each of the 10 chapters/300 pages, and also give you a “behind the scenes” view by sharing snippets of some of the over 100 SAP, customer and partner video interviews that ended up in the book.
Here are some excerpts from the final chapter:
As we close this book, we want to highlight four more megatrends that will continue to change our world. We are looking forward to engaging with our customers and partners in actively shaping our future. (After all, Business as Unusual with SAP is about a forward-looking mindset and ongoing conversations, not a cookbook for using SAP solutions to address today’s and tomorrow’s business priorities.) So we conclude with an outlook on additional megatrends we are observing; we are curious to hear from our readers about your perspectives and points of view:
Metaverse
On Azeroth, the fantasy setting in the Warcraft franchise, our avatars wield swords and lasers in their quests for gimmicks and glory. Online shopping has become second nature for all of us…. Take a quick inventory of the different social media platforms you’re subscribed to. We can expect all these digital islands to mesh up, mash up, and form a parallel universe of business, people, and things.
Artificial intelligence
Perhaps you think the paintings are ugly, the poems weird, the novels bad, the translations error prone, the autonomous cars dangerous, and the conversations stilted, but if you extrapolate the exponential development of the field of artificial intelligence, you might find the future looks both exciting and a bit scary.
Urbanization and future cities
The United Nations has estimated that by 2050, almost 70% of the world population of close to 10 billion people will live in urban areas.[1] You don’t have to wait for this future to arrive to get an idea of the challenges for mayors and urban planners—just look at the biggest cities today.
Networked business and business networks
Important market mechanisms are based on information asymmetry and speed limits for information transmission. The stock markets show us what happens when differential information access for participants is reduced to microseconds. Digital business networks have a great potential for driving efficiencies, creating and disrupting business models, and changing the dynamics between participants.
A twin of this post will include video excerpts from conversations with many of these executives so you can put a face and voice to those in the book.
