Coping with the Fourth Industrial Revolution

The fourth industrial revolution is knocking at the doors. Today we are facing lot of diverse and fascinating challenges. The most important aspect of 4th IR is the shape of a new technology revolution. Klaus Schwab gave an idea about the fourth industrial revolution in 2015. The fourth industrial revolution is changing the way of life, way of work and relate to one another. The fourth industrial revolution is very complex which humankind never experienced before.

The First Industrial Revolution was water and steam power to mechanize production. To create mass production the Second industrial revolution used electric power. To automate production the third industrial revolution used electronics and information technology. Now, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is the fusion of technologies that are blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.

Third Industrial Revolutions came from the hardware field and the Fourth Industrial revolution originated from the software field. According to Chinese researcher Li Guoping et al.,2017, Digital technological drivers are the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial intelligence and machine learning, Big data and cloud computing, Digital platform; Physical fields are Autonomous Cars, 3D printing; Biological fields are Genetic Engineering and Neurotechnology.

The quickness of fourth industrial revolution breakthroughs have no historical precedent because the breadth and depth of these switches announce the metamorphosis of entire systems of production, management and governance.

Billions of people use mobile devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, and access to knowledge which will be multiplied by emerging technology breakthroughs in fields such as AI, robotics, the IoT, autonomous cars, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and quantum computing.

World Economic Forum found that 70 per cent of the 169 targets that are foundational to the United Nations’ 17 Global Goals could be enabled by the technology already in play as part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

No matter what, that the stage is set with the global GDP awaited to nearly surpass $90 trillion- magnitudes more than the $1 trillion just twenty years ahead.

In 2017, a European Patent Office study found that there was a 54% increase in patents filed that were related to the fourth industrial revolution in the past three years.

The Economist Intelligence Unit reported that healthcare is the sector that will benefit most from the merging of physical, digital, and biological systems.Our health sector isn’t digitalized till now. We should take the advancement of digitalisation so that we can cope up with the fourth industrial revolution soon.

Artificial intelligence is all around us. It is used in computing power and data analytics to predict our interest. Engineers, designers and architects use computational design, additive manufacturing, materials engineering and synthetic biology.

In 2017,The Davos Forum announced 12 hopeful technology where AI and robotics are of the highest value.Experts predict that IoT, robotics, 3D printing, Big Data, and AI will be the top five technologies.The ICT related technologies, physics,and biology will create new markets for business through new products and services.

“Innovating to Zero” idea has sparked Copenhagen to be the first carbon-neutral capital in the world. For this, the population and investors will become more carbon-neutral city-oriented. Smart product is slated to be worth $2.57 trillion by 2025. Bangladesh can take this opportunity to attract more investment.

ABI Research says that “City as a customer” is slated to generate $2.5 trillion in direct contributions, $866 billion in indirect contributions, and $3.2 trillion in productivity gains by 2028. If Bangladesh can make carbon-neutral capital or city in our country it would be a tremendous job for making city as a customer.

Economists Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee point out that the revolution could yield greater inequality, particularly in its potential to disrupt labour markets. As automation substitutes for labour across the entire economy, the net eviction of workers by machines might exacerbate the gap between returns to capital and returns to labour. Also, possible eviction of workers by technology will, in the aggregate, result in a net increase in safe and concerning jobs. Disruption of labour markets for the fourth industrial revolution will create an unprecedent situation in Bangladesh. As Bangladesh is undergoing an unemployment problem so we need to prepare for the future world. Otherwise, suddenly we will face a lot of problems.

The fourth industrial revolution will have four key effects on the business which are customer expectations, product enhancement, collaborative innovations and organizational forms. Data and analytics will be a great resource to develop customer experience and demand. It helps also to establish a new business model where talent, culture and organizational forms will have to be considered. So we need to be data literate. In the future, data would become a great resource for any country to develop any business idea or policy. To make Data Scientists in the country our education system needs to be revised.

In 2018, Korean professor MinHwa Lee and his team conducted research and they suggested that the way to effectively address the Fourth Industrial Revolution is the development of dynamic open innovation business models with the prolongation of open innovation culture, and the continuation of the feedback loop of an open platform businesses model.

The fourth industrial revolution may become more robotized which will deprive us of our heart and soul. So we need to take the necessary steps so that this type of change is more reliable and sustainable for mankind.

Drive from the third industrial revolution (simple digitization) to the fourth industrial revolution; innovation based on the combination of technologies is forcing us to rethink and re-examine the way we do business. Business specialists, leaders, stakeholders and senior positions need to take steps to change their environment, challenge the assumptions of their operating teams and they need to become most innovative.

The writer is a development researcher