The Discontinuity. The new entrepreneurial challenge.

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“The new industries with their new technologies loom much larger in our eyes than the old familiar steel mills and automobile assembly plants.They capture our imagination and furnish the glamour stocks in our investment portfolios.” Peter Drucker, The Age of Discontinuity.

Must of the new industries are base on twentieth century knowledge, their foundation are the physics of that century.

However equally important to the new industries are the knowledge areas outside of what traditionally is called “Science”.

The fact that new technologies are not based on science alone but on new knowledge ( data ) in it’s entirety also means that technology is no longer separate and outside of culture but an integral part therefore.

Equally important and equally new is the fact that every one of the new emerging industries is squarely based on knowledge, not a single one is based on experience.

Knowledge that is systematic, purposeful organized information, had almost nothing to do with any of them.

The new emerging entrepreneurship industries , therefore embody a new economic reality : Knowledge has become the central economic resource.

The systematic acquisition of knowledge when combined with creativity businesslike, in methodical formal education has replaced experience acquired traditionally through apprenticeships as the foundation for productive capacity and performance.

Computer programming or AI, with it’s enormous employment opportunities is a semiskilled work. All that is needed to be a programmer is a junior high school arithmetic , three months of training and six month of practice, while the skill is not very elevated it is based on knowledge rather than experience or manual training.

Here come the link the businessman and entrepreneur as well will have to acquire a number of so called new abilities all of them entrepreneurial in nature , no just to have the money to make an investment but to understand the dynamics of technology and anticipate the direction and speed of technological change base on knowledge, data acquisition.

Analyzing technology and it’s dynamics is not a scientific process but it is not intuition either. It is true analysis.

This is why knowledge, leveraging data and creativity plays an outstanding role in the new industries.

This analysis it is done best by someone who thinks as an entrepreneur and who ask :

1.Where are the opportunities for a new industries or for major process ?

2.What are the major need of an existing industries or an existing market ? in retailing, finance, logistics, mass production.

Understanding the market dynamics through knowledge base information is necessary to prevent loss of the fruits of technological achievements.

Innovative marketing knowledge and creativity creates markets; and new technologies always needs news markets which were no even conceivable until the new technologies creates new demands.

The businessman or entrepreneur must base their endeavors not just in knowledge and date but in creativity as well. Because the job that is based solely in knowledge will be automated or done by machines in the future.

At the end new technology revolution has brought lots of good things and develops and new strings of challenges as well that will take a good amount of effort from us to be prepare for the adversity and globals challenges of the coming decades.

Adapted from:

The Age of Discontinuity by Peter Drucker

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