Things I learned from the future

One story that stands out involved a small family-owned cookie maker in Whitby, England. (Whitby, interestingly, is the same port that Captain James Cook set out from to chart previously unexplored lands.) This family was one of the early adopters of e-commerce, I told my audience, explaining how this traditional business was leveraging the new digital world to reach customers far beyond the Yorkshire area.

I remember the skeptical chuckles and laughter from the audience. The idea of buying baked goods online seemed absurd to people. “Who would order cookies on the internet?”

But the cookie maker saw the future, recognizing the Internet’s potential long before it became mainstream. And while others laughed, it was busy launching a business model that would change the world.

Waves of technology are breaking fast

As Mark Twain once said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”  The technology waves that we’ve lived through—the shift from analog to digital, the rise of the internet, the migration to the cloud, etc.—can inform and illuminate us as we prepare to unlock the full potential of AI, quantum and other technologies.

The challenge is that technological waves are breaking faster these days. And waiting or pausing is not an option.

We’ve entered an era where the speed of change is exponential, with each innovation building on previous ones. While it took the rise of the Internet 16 years to fully permeate business and society, we no longer have the luxury of a long-term adoption and experimentation phase. Each new wave doesn’t just introduce new tools; it creates new business models, leaving room for anyone to seize the opportunity.   

For example, in a matter of years, cloud computing completely changed how we work. Suddenly, you could spin up a website from a laptop at a coffee shop, paying for only the computing power you used. And entire industries were transformed. This democratization of access allowed small startups to compete with established giants.

The release of the iPhone brought another seismic shift. Suddenly, with social media apps and the web literally in the palm of your hand, individuals could connect, share, and influence audiences anytime, anywhere.

Companies had a new way to reach their customers, making marketing more accessible, targeted and measurable than ever before.

And now, with AI top of mind and technological advancements occurring at an unprecedented pace, how can companies keep up?  How can we effectively harness AI and integrate it into our business models to avoid being overwhelmed by the impending wave of change?

In his book, Thank You for Being Late, Thomas Friedman emphasizes the importance of pausing and reflecting in an era of rapid acceleration, rather than reacting impulsively. But in today’s era of AI, do businesses still have that luxury?

Thanks to its democratization, AI will become more accessible to a wider range of people. But companies need to start experimenting with AI as soon as possible to effectively put it to work.  This aligns less with Friedman and more with the Japanese proverb, “Fall seven times, stand up eight.” To gain quick impact, iterate and fail repeatedly. In other words, build the airplane while flying it.

To do so, businesses need to put collaboration front and center, and work with partners who understand how to navigate the future and push the limits of what AI makes possible.

We’re seeing clients quickly take that leap by starting small, thinking big and demonstrating quick wins.

AI as a core element of strategy

One example is the financial services company Equitable Holdings (Equitable Holdings is a DXC client), which built a GenAI-powered virtual service agent that analyzed thousands of documents, enabled customer representatives to respond 80% faster, and freed them up to focus on more value-added tasks.

And we’re seeing banks, airlines, healthcare organizations, car manufactures, and others move swiftly from experimenting with AI to making it a core element of their strategy. Helping clients embrace each opportunity with the passion of a first-time entrepreneur sets the stage for broader implementation based on the insights we learn together.

Just as people know to swim through ocean waves so they don’t get knocked over, companies can’t afford to shy away from what’s ahead. They need to dive in and start imagining a world where machines can automate, analyze, and even predict the future.

As I reflect on the journey from those early days of skepticism to the cutting-edge AI-powered solutions we’re deploying today, one thing remains clear: embracing the future is not just a choice, it’s a necessity. The speed of technological change is accelerating, and businesses that hesitate or cling to the past will be left behind.

And just like that family-owned cookie maker in Whitby, those who see beyond the present will be ready to boldly move forward.