Digital transformation plans, from remote workforce training to digital customer experiences, are more on the agenda than ever and are changing the way we do business. New technology trends are gaining momentum, adding to the list of strategic priorities that every manager should consider.
In this fast-moving landscape, it is crucial to look at emerging technologies: from quantum computing, to AI-based collective intelligence, to blockchain and NFTs applications. Let's look at some of them in detail here.
1. Quantum computing
Quantum computers are computers that exploit the laws of physics and quantum mechanics, which study subatomic particles. Their fundamental unit is the quantum bit or qubit, which is linked to the state in which a particle or atom is located and whose peculiarities allow calculations to be carried out much more quickly. The first commercial model was presented by IBM and is already being used in financial models, medicine, weather forecasting and cryptography.
Innovation runs fast and in a few years' time many companies will be able to buy them. By 2023, IBM plans to offer entire families of pre-built runtimes tailored to different applications, callable from cloud-based APIs that use a common set of development frameworks. This will provide a solid foundation for kernel and quantum algorithm developers to innovate more easily.
2. Collective intelligence and AI social process management
All companies need to 'know more' and are led to reflect on the importance of being able to access the information they need quickly, accurately and easily while minimising the risk of error. This need for knowledge poses new challenges to those who work with and develop Artificial Intelligence, and invites them to adopt an approach that goes beyond the sphere of technological innovation, however important, to embrace the relationship between artificial intelligence and human intelligence.
Collective intelligence techniques are also a problem-solving technique and one of the recent research paradigms in the field of Artificial Intelligence for the development of collective and cooperative rational agents, where the natural mechanisms of collective intelligence are artificially generated in computer algorithms in order to seek the best solutions to a problem.
Applications of this kind are already being seen in some sectors. In the energy sector, for example, it is possible to use 'image recognition' based on machine learning with the aim of automating and speeding up analysis processes for detecting anomalies and criticalities in the infrastructure network. In the oil and gas sector, on the other hand, there are document search solutions based on NLP technology (Natural Language Processing) applied to text recognition, the recognition of the texts contained in documents that facilitate research by operators.
3. Blockchain
Leading analysts now agree that most industries could benefit to a greater or lesser extent from the use of distributed ledger technologies typical of blockchain. There are several cases of commercial use of blockchain, with transactions that are automatically verified and organised by a decentralised platform that does not require the supervision of a central (super party) entity or party while ensuring resistance to tampering and fraud. Our own platform uses blockchain for all document processes, thanks to the registration of 2meet2biz.com as a Commercio.network validator node. Here is the link to learn more.
4. NFTs
NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) are unique cryptographic tokens that represent a digital property on the blockchain. They are not mutually interchangeable. In contrast to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin which are by nature fungible. To explain the difference through an example, the money we have in our wallet, is the ultimate fungible asset. If we were to exchange some of our cash for as much of the same value, our assets would remain unchanged. This is because each banknote represents an identical value. This is why money is considered a fungible asset.
If, on the other hand, we think of a work of art, this is a unique piece and even if there is some other good that has the same economic value, there is nothing identical in the world. A work of art is therefore by definition non-fungible, because it cannot be exchanged for an identical good.
The most common use of NFTs is the representation of a digital property. Most systems supporting NFTs today allow tokenizing a digital work, be it a work of art, an image, a game or a video. Although all these assets are indeed reproducible in copies, an NFTs represents ownership of the same: unique and non-duplicable.
In conclusion
The adoption of new business technologies such as digitisation of paper documents, virtualisation of servers and cloud computing enables the automation and optimisation of certain processes.
The new digitisation opportunities imply a higher speed of execution. This allows the remaining time to be used for other business processes and thus to grow the business. Another aspect that should not be underestimated is that new technologies also improve collaboration between employees by facilitating faster and more effective sharing of information.