Digitization 4.0

The Digital Transformation is now really breaking through after the corona pandemic. It is used strategically by companies to make their operational organization more efficient, to improve their value proposition and to put customer satisfaction even more central. Only 27 percent of companies have a cohesive digital strategy. Digital Darwinism, however, is becoming the norm: ‘change or disappear’. The moment has come when all major digital trends have reached their tipping point. Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) have all come of age, they merge and reinforce each other: a nexus of forces. The Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Virtual Reality (VR) are now being added to this, technologies that provide even more acceleration. They reinforce each other and form a digital storm that is sweeping business with devastating effect. Old revenue models are disappearing, new ones are taking their place.

A digital nervous system of 1 trillion sensors provides a continuous stream of real-time data and with it many new insights. The global IT solutions market will be worth $7.2 trillion by 2020. Digitization is turning the existing value chain completely upside down. The way in which consumers interact with companies is also fundamentally changing. In addition to increasing information power, digitization also brings a lot of convenience to consumers, for example when shopping, arranging banking, making appointments, booking travel or monitoring their health. But digitization trends are not linear.

In 2020, many pure webshops will be bankrupt (IBM), because omnichannel and bricks&clicks determine the new shopping: an integration of physical and digital. Reason why webshops such as Amazon and Zalando are now also opening physical stores. The digital transformation leads to the loss of 80 percent of current jobs (Singularity University). To date, not enough new work has been created. A 3-day work week, a basic income and ‘helicopter money’ are coming. Old coins are disappearing and new ones are coming, based on blockchain technology.

At the same time, all digital connectivity increases our vulnerability to terrorism. In society, IT security is therefore becoming more important than ever. You could call it “Israeliization of the economy”: most startups and patents per capita can be found in Israel, and that growth and prosperity is precisely the result of a permanent threat.

The underground media that is now emerging in the US has already led to only 23 percent of citizens believing the mainstream media. The same will soon happen in the Netherlands and Europe. Elites losing power and control over civilians react confused. Censorship is back and never gone. The privacy debate is getting heated, and dictators are curbing social media, as is now happening in Turkey. The fear of loss of power among elites, combined with social unrest from mass unemployment and the threat of jihadism, brings us the perfect storm for a new world war. Cyberwarfare will soon be a task for the renewed army. The ‘smart’ of all kinds of objects leads to completely new economic entities that, just like companies, governments and consumers, will run independently in the economy.