Dancing With Robots

The 29 Strategies for Success In the Age of AI and Automation

Bill Bishop

• Publisher: Dundurn Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781459749047
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Prise de décision

Survive and thrive in a world being taken over by robots and other advanced technology. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, algorithms, blockchains, the Internet of Things, big data analytics, 5G networks, self-driving cars, robotics, 3D printing. In the coming years, these technologies, and others to follow, will have a profound and dramatically disruptive impact on how we work and live. Whether we like it or not, we need to develop a good working relationship with these technologies. We need to know how to "dance" with robots. In Dancing with Robots, futurist, entrepreneur, and innovation coach Bill Bishop describes 29 strategies for success in the New Economy. These new strategies represent a bold, exciting, unexpected, and radically different road map for future success. Bishop also explains how our Five Human Superpowers — embodied pattern recognition, unbridled curiosity, purpose-driven ideation, ethical framing, and metaphoric communication — give us a competitive edge over robots and other advanced technology in a world being taken over by automation and AI.

THE 29 STRATEGIES FOR SUCCESS

IN THE AGE OF AI AND AUTOMATION

STRATEGY NO. 1

Increase Well-Being Using Fewer Resources

EVERY CULTURE HAS a master project. The project pursued by ancient Athenians was to create a democracy of equals (unless you were a woman, slave, or poor person). In Europe during the Middle Ages, the project was the Christian Crusades (let’s go and kill the heretics). In revolutionary Bolshevik Russia, the project was to create a communist paradise of the proletariat as envisioned by Karl Marx (didn’t quite work out that way).

The cultural project gives the tribe, nation, or race a historical trajectory and purpose, even though the project itself might not be overtly communicated. It informs and directs the decisions made by the culture’s community. This cultural project is also based on a formula for success, once again rarely communicated directly or generally acknowledged. In Nazi Germany, the formula was racial purity equals greatness. In ancient Rome, the formula was bigger empire equals greater power. In Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan England, the formula was anti-papist piety equals spiritual salvation.

In the Western world since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century, the cultural project has been to generate economic growth through the expansion of production and consumption. The formula for success driving this project was greater consumption equals greater happiness. Every participant in this culture was raised on this mother’s milk. Our parents, teachers, celebrities, media personalities, and political leaders have exhorted us to consume more, and by extension, produce more.

Bear in mind, I’m not judging this formula for success as good or bad; I’m just pointing out that we’ve been using a formula for success to achieve a cultural project. There’s no arguing that this project has been successful. Billions of people around the world have been raised out of poverty. This formula has helped eradicate many diseases and foster greater equality and social justice (still a work in progress, of course). But it’s also folly to argue that this formula hasn’t produced its share of problems: environmental degradation, species extinction, nihilistic materialism, systemic inequality, and endemic racism. What I’m arguing is that this cultural project and its underlying success formula is now obsolete and not conducive to economic and personal success in the New Economy.

Using the equation greater consumption equals greater happiness is obsolete because the network marketplace mandates something else. It demands and selects products and services that serve another equation: increase well-being using fewer resources. Companies, organizations, individuals — and robots — that observe this equation are in high demand. (Note: the equation could also be stated as achieve a better result using fewer resources. However, the ultimate result is well-being, so it eventually points to that beneficial peak outcome.)

There are plenty of examples of this formula already being rewarded in the New Economy marketplace. Let’s start with Google Navigator. Its raison d’être is to help achieve a better result using fewer resources: get to a destination using less time and energy. Airbnb helps book a room, home, or even a treehouse easily while generating new kinds of revenue for hosts. Grocery Gateway, a Canadian grocery-delivery service, helps its customers spend more time doing what they love and less time and energy driving to and from the grocery store. Local tool libraries help their members get construction projects done by lending out tools for an annual fee. People no longer need to buy tools or even rent them. They can be taken out and returned just like books from libraries. Once again, increasing well-being using fewer resources.

Now it might seem that I’m promoting an environmental green lefty agenda that will undermine economic growth and lead to a totalitarian socialist nightmare, but far from it. I’m an ardent entrepreneur with a pro-business agenda. My conjecture is that this New Economy formula is great for business. In fact, it’s the only viable formula for success going forward. Why? Because consumers will reward products or services that help them get a better result (well-being) using fewer resources. If a way is shown to save on energy bills (using LED light bulbs and a smart thermostat, for example), people are inclined to buy them. If an electric-or hydrogen-powered car is demonstrated to be 50 percent less expensive to operate and maintain, we’re inclined to buy it. If there’s an app-for-anything or platform-for-anything that gets better results for less time, money, energy, or effort, we’re all over it.

It sounds obvious that this formula is a winner for any company to pursue, but our old factory thinking gets in the way. In the old economy, we wanted customers to consume more because we thought that was the only way to make money. More consumption equals more money. But that’s not true in the New Economy. If your competitor offers your customer a better result using fewer resources, your customers will drop you in an instant.

As I explained in The New Factory Thinker, the old formula puts us at odds with customers because our incentives don’t align with their incentives. If we want our customers to consume more, and they want to consume less, that’s a fundamental disconnect. But if our incentives are aligned (we help them get a better result using fewer resources), then market success is more likely. But to get there, we have to eschew the old economy formula and embrace the new one.

This is the first strategy for success in the New Economy because it’s the overriding principle that underpins all other strategies. All of them point back to this strategy.

Observing economic and business trends through this lens is a helpful way to reinforce this strategy in our minds. It’s my prognostication that this new success formula will completely transform our economy and then our society. As more entities serve this new cultural project, the changes will accelerate.

Such a transformation will be driven by robots, especially AI, whose principal task, if we think about it for a second, is to help achieve a better result utilizing fewer resources. As machine learning AIs become smarter and faster, they’ll constantly look for ways to wrest better results out of our physical world employing fewer and fewer resources. That’s why we might see that fossil fuels and other earthbound resources are no longer needed in the quantities we consume them now (a process is called dematerialization). The price of oil might fall dramatically. We might see that money isn’t needed as much as it used to be, leading to negative interest rates where a bank pays us to borrow money and charges us to deposit it in its vault. Every day there will be new ways to get better results using fewer resources. While these changes will be imperceptible on a daily basis, the drip-drip-drip of these changes will eventually result in an oceanic change in how we live. That’s why I’m so bullish on the future, because economic incentives now point to well-being rather than increased consumption, promising a more sustainable future.

With regard to this fundamental principle, human beings play a key role in the dance with robots. While robots will get better at achieving a better result utilizing fewer resources, human beings are needed to ensure these efforts actually produce greater well-being for people. If we ask robots to protect the earth from its enemies, they might turn their guns away from potential alien invaders and start eradicating humans because they consider the species hostile to the health of the planet. We have to make sure we don’t fall into the trap of Technopia (all technology is good). We need to make sure our technological partners work toward well-being.

So our task is clear: start brainstorming. How can we help others achieve greater well-being using fewer resources? And while this might feel hard at first, if we persevere, we’ll generate dozens of original ideas. Then the dance will truly begin.

STRATEGY NO. 2

Focus First on Who We Want to Help

THE FIRST FEW years of college are often more about having a good time than pursuing higher realms of learning. I can certainly attest to that. My early years in journalism were a party-fuelled whirlwind that’s frankly hard to remember in great detail. But eventually we have to get our acts together and do what my friend Eddy used to say: “Sooner or later, you’ve got to wake up and smell the coffee.”

So when my stepdaughter, Robin, woke up one morning in her twenties at university and smelled the coffee, a palpable degree of panic set in. “What am I going to do with my life and career?” she bemoaned one night around the dinner table. “There are so many things I could do and I just can’t decide.”

I remember asking the same questions when I was her age. I was perplexed because I didn’t fit into any of the normal categories. I didn’t want to be a lawyer, doctor, or journalist, even though the last was my major. It was scary and depressing not to have a direction, and I desperately believed I needed to choose one or I was going to live out of a dumpster. Never in my wildest imagination would I have guessed I’d be an entrepreneur running a business called The BIG Idea Company and write a book entitled Dancing with Robots.

In the old economy, choosing a career meant picking a skill, trade, or profession. It meant selecting an industry to work in and finding a role in that industry. Sometimes people fell into these roles by accident. Sometimes they were compelled by their parents. And sometimes they made decisions proactively on their own. Regardless of the circumstances, the principle was clear: to get focused meant to choose a trade or profession.

From the context of a company, the principle was the same. Each company was part of a particular industry and sold a specific product or service. The company or organization was defined by its product or service: we make pencils, we sell furniture, we clean houses, we sell insurance.

In the New Economy, this way of thinking is breaking down for two major reasons. One, when we build careers or businesses around a particular established product or service, we face lots of competition, which drives down how much income we can make. Simple supply and demand. Two, in a world that’s constantly changing, it’s foolish to build businesses or careers around something that might be rendered obsolete, either by new technology (robots), new kinds of competition, or changes in market conditions.

In addition, choosing a product or service specialty in the New Economy limits potential. In my mind, everyone has the potential to be a gourmet chef (providing premium-level products and services), but most people go to work every day and sell hot dogs (commodities). That’s because there’s already an industry in place for selling hot dogs. We just have to learn how to run a hot dog stand. But how many of us really want to sell hot dogs for 40 or 50 years?

Although this hot dog concept is an analogy, I actually did sell hot dogs one summer on the Toronto Islands when I was 16 years old. It entailed 10-hour days, and I got paid the grand sum of $1.65 per hour, the minimum wage at the time. It was boring and ultimately nauseating. When we’re on the inside, we learn that hot dogs are truly odious, especially in 32ºC-heat with high humidity.

That’s why I’m so passionate about helping people become gourmet chefs. We can all do it, but there’s one huge impediment. Unlike hot dog industries, there’s no ready-made system out there for a unique gourmet business. We have to invent it. And most people don’t know how. That’s one reason my BIG Idea Company has been so enjoyable. We help people who are fed up selling hot dogs to create packages and systems to sell gourmet meals, and it’s extremely gratifying to see their transformation. They’re happier, more fulfilled, they make more money, and they work less. They’re also in a much better position to prosper in the New Economy. Instead of being replaced by robots (who are great at running hot dog stands), they work in conjunction with robots to serve up one-of-a-kind, high-value gourmet meals.

So how do we get to this better place? Instead of choosing a particular product, service, skill, profession, or industry, decide instead who we want to help. Think about what kind of person, company, or organization we want to work with. For example, 20 years ago, I decided I wanted to help forward-thinking business people with good intentions. I didn’t start by deciding what I wanted to make, sell, or deliver. I decided first with who I wanted to have business relationships for the rest of my working life.

Focusing first on who we want to help sounds so simple, yet it’s actually quite difficult at first. It’s difficult because our old factory brains are wired to first choose a product or service. We’re also not wired to think about others; we’re wired to think about ourselves. (That’s not to say we’re inherently selfish or self-centred; it’s just that 200-plus years of industrial conditioning has wired our brains that way.) I notice this general trait when I talk to people about their businesses. They usually talk about their companies and rarely talk about their customers. It’s all about them.

Focusing first on who we want to help makes everything much clearer and opens up an unimpeded path forward. It gives us a solid, immutable anchor that will stabilize our lives, careers, and businesses. If our businesses or careers are built around helping a particular type of person or organization, change, even the unpredictable kind, won’t upend our strategic directions. In fact, change will be our ally because a key value we can provide in the New Economy is to help our customers deal effectively with change. And because change is an unlimited resource, we’ll never run out of ways to help our target customers.

This leads to the key point of this New Economy strategy. When we pick our “customer types,” we also adopt the attitude that we’re prepared to help them any way we can. We’re prepared to build a “value hub” around them, which means anything is possible. We’re also willing to combine different “value components” to help our customers solve problems and achieve goals (more on value hubs and value components later).

If we start our thinking with who we want to help, we’ll be better dance partners with robots. Instead of feeling threatened that robots will take over our hot dog stands, we’ll look for ways to work with robots to cook up better gourmet meals for our customers.

This New Economy strategy also fosters greater well-being. Instead of getting caught up in the frenzied endeavour to sell more hot dogs, which might or might not be good for our mental or spiritual well-being, we focus instead on helping people. That’s our first and foremost intention. It makes us feel better about ourselves and what we do for a living.

This New Economy strategy certainly helped my two kids. When my stepdaughter, Robin, had her wake-up-and-smell-the-coffee moment, I told her: “Instead of trying to figure out first what you want to do, figure out who you want to help.” It didn’t take her long to come up with an answer: “I want to help people who are less fortunate than us,” she said. I told her to keep that thought front and centre when thinking about her career. She did. Over the years that followed, she completed her master’s degree in social work and now has a great job working in a social services agency. She’s gratified that she’s doing meaningful and interesting work that helps people.

I also gave my son, Doug, the same advice. And today he and his life partner run an organic farm in Quebec near Ottawa. They’ve combined their knowledge and skills in organic farming, art, and marketing to build a thriving entrepreneurial enterprise.

To dance with robots, start by deciding who we want to help, not what we want to make, sell, or deliver. Begin there.

Who do we want to help?

STRATEGY NO. 3

Build a Value Proposition Around a Big Idea

WE NEVER KNOW where we’ll be born. When I was about six years old, my mother showed me my birth certificate. I was surprised that you needed a document to prove you were born. “Obviously, I was born,” I said precociously. “Why would you need a piece of paper for that?”

My mom explained that the document certified I was a Canadian citizen born on April 5, 1957, in Edmonton, Alberta. Holding the birth certificate in my hand, I felt an odd sense of pride and personhood I’d never experienced before. But I was also surprised. “Where’s Edmonton?” I asked. “We live in Toronto. Why was I born in Edmonton?”

It turned out my parents lived in Edmonton in the late 1950s because my father was sent there to open a branch office for Ronald Reynolds, an ad agency. That’s the reason why the blessed historic event, my birth, took place in Edmonton and not Toronto. I thought that was cool but didn’t realize my Edmonton lineage would come in handy many years later.

Being born in Edmonton is useful because I often find myself giving speeches and workshops in Alberta. Normally, a person from central Canada, especially from Toronto, can expect a rough ride from an Albertan audience. There’s a strain of anti-central-Canada animosity prevalent in Alberta that has deep roots in t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: The Five Human Superpowers
• The 29 Strategies for Success in the Age of AI and Automation
• Conclusion: They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
• Afterword: Tentacles
• Acknowledgements
• Bibliography
• About the Author
• Back Cover