Latest / TIPS Podcast / Interview: Research Fellow, Shawn Cunningham on Technology

Transcript

Interview: Research Fellow, Shawn Cunningham on Technology · TIPS Podcast

• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies official podcast, a show where we delve into the fascinating world of economics and its impact on global development.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Nonre Majunana, and today we're exploring the latest trends and observations that are reshaping the world of technology with our special guest, tech enthusiast Sean Cunningham from MesoPartner.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome, Sean.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Nonre.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us today.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: So Sean runs the Technological Change and Innovation System Observatory project at TIPS.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it's been around for about five years now, since 2017.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: And this observatory project aims to track and create awareness of disruptive innovation and discontinuous technological change by organizations in the public, private, and not-for-profit sector.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: To kick things off, Sean, could you share a bit about your background and your experience in this industry?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: I've been working on economic development for the past 21 years.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: I started off by focusing at entrepreneurship development, and for a short period of my career I focused mainly on local economic development.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: But then I got really fascinated with how societies change institutions.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: So how institutions in the public and in the private sector adapt to change.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that then very naturally leads one to technology being a very big and very current topic, and how a society's change of technology then forces changes in institutions and in policies and so on.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: So that's in a nutshell what I've been working on.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Lovely.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: So can you tell us then why there is a broader need to understand the definition of technology from your perspective?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: What is technology and why is it helpful?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the Greek word for technology, the techni part, means knowing how to do something.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: So in the name technology already, it's very clear that technology is not so much about a thing, but it is about knowing how to do something.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: So if you look at the broader definition of technology, then you recognize it's not just the object, like the sound equipment that we're using for this podcast, but it's also knowing how to configure it, how to maybe even choose between alternatives.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: All of that is part of the definition of technology.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: And what happens in the world out there is that our parents and our friends mainly think of technology as an object, as a thing, which is a very narrow understanding of technology.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Alright.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: So to answer this fundamental question then, what is the overarching purpose of technology?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: How would you define the role that it plays in society in the broader context?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's a nice question, Andre.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: So, firstly, technology is about harnessing natural phenomena.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you think of a wind turbine, it captures our scientific understanding of how wind moves and hence how to turn wind movement into electricity.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: So understanding how we can harness natural phenomena is an essential part of technology.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: But then staying in line with this broader understanding of technology, even knowing how to organize our workplace, or for you and me, how to organize our projects so that we can work together, then also becomes a technology.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: So we get physical technologies and we get social technologies.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: And in the technology observatory, what we've been very worried about is the focus on physical technologies and how they are changing, and then the lack of attention being paid to social technologies and how these have to change in order for us to make our workplaces work.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: So you speak about technology influencing businesses.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Are there specific ways organizations can leverage some of this technological growth to innovate their organizations?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: So technology and innovation sometimes go together, but not always.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: So quite a lot of the changes that need to happen in workplaces would be about changing the way they are organized.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Which means that the way that people manage their subordinates or the way a team would work together would have to change to really harness the capacities of a new technology.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: So if you look at any of the emerging technologies that's in the news now, it's not just about opening up a website or using a new app.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that we can do as individuals, but for a team to really embrace a new technology would mean it's not just about procuring or acquiring the technology.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: You have to also figure out how to change the way your systems and your processes and maybe even your trust works in the organization.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a very difficult process.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you speak about it being difficult.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: What are some of the resistances that people have to integrating this technology seamlessly into their work?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: My late business partner always said people cannot plan for something they cannot imagine.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: And that's one of our first challenges with technology.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: You hear about this thing, you read about it, or a person younger than you tell you about this, and then it's very hard to imagine how you would have to make changes to embrace or maybe even confront this new technology.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's the one.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: The second thing is if you think about it, non-we, the technology frontier around you and me, even as we sit in this room, it's a really big frontier.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I can see what's behind you, and you can see what's behind me, and we can see what's between us.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: But the technology frontier of all the possible technologies that you and I would have to evaluate just because somebody tells us about it, it's very big.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: So what you find is that when people start figuring out their systems and their processes even in their business, even if it's not entirely effective, people would rather stick to that than try and stare over this horizon that goes 360 degrees around them.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of business people simply cannot handle having to decide about more technologies, especially when you've spent a huge fortune on buying existing technology.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so in a way it's very natural for companies to say, if I had to choose between making what I have now work, even if it's not perfect, or bringing in something completely unknown and then having to figure out how to manage that, I would rather stick with what I have.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: So people actually don't want to get out of their comfort zone.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: You would say it's a bit of a resistance or some of the fears that they harbor.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Some of these fears that you speak about with technology, how do we navigate out of that fear?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: If it's fear that you say is keeping people resistant to the technology, or bridge the gap between that knowledge?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think it's fear, but it could also simply be purely rational.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because the cost of figuring something out when you're already struggling to just keep everything that you know now pushing in the same direction could maybe be it's very rational.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: So we firstly have to start off by saying people will embrace or will explore new technologies if they suspect or believe that this technology will either save them money or will help them stabilize their processes or will help them achieve a new goal.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: So one of our challenges is the way that most technologies are sold.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's sold for its benefits, and the list of benefits just rolls on and on and on.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: But a business person or the head of an organization like TIPS might be wanting to solve just one problem, and when they look at all the benefits of the technology, they don't see their problem there.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of how technology is sold for a business person or operations manager or technology manager, it just doesn't speak to their needs.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so that is one of the challenges with technology and how it spreads, is that you must be able to understand from the characteristics of the technology what kind of problem or what kind of value this technology is meant for.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I see that technology is here to enhance the work or enhance society.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: But can you speak about some of the fears that they also have around technology replacing people and their jobs and job security?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: So no technology is inherently good or bad.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Every technology that you and I can use for good, somebody could use for bad.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we mustn't just think because something is innovative and something is new, that it's always better.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: I have visited companies using 40-year-old technology, outcompeting companies using cutting-edge technology, because they really understood the job that had to be done.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: So new technology isn't always better than old technology.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the first thing.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: People are afraid about technology because it's about the unknown.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: And especially if you've invested a huge amount of money and you've figured out how to recruit people and you've figured out your processes and you're able to manage this company with just a handful of people.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: New technologies would be a threat for ownership, and new technologies would be a threat for the workforce for different reasons.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: For management, new technology is a threat.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, imagine you and I, with what we know, have to now recruit a graphics designer.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: And this graphics designer arrives at the office and they insist on using a particular kind of computer that you and I have never even heard of.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: And they insist that their software license is going to cost what you and I used to earn as a salary.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's very difficult for us to manage people with new knowledge.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's difficult for us to manage new technology.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: So for management, whenever we talk about taking on a completely new technology, so it's not a technology that adds onto what you and I know now.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's a technology that requires us to manage somebody we don't understand.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's a risk.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so in the clothing and textile sector, for instance, for a company that's been making t-shirts and dresses for decades, to suddenly recruit a computer-aided design engineer, even if all their competitors are starting to do that, it's a very scary thing.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: And there's natural resistance to that.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: So management there would be concerned about new technology for a different reason to the workforce.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: The workforce is worried because new technologies come in and they don't displace a job immediately.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: What happens is they slowly but surely displace job functions.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then very often people with low skills that cannot easily port to a new job might find that their career options are completely limited or their employment options are completely limited, and the cost to switch from what you knew to something different is very hard, especially when you're not so young anymore and you have commitments and a family and all kinds of costs, then restarting your career or choosing a different path is very hard.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, as you say that, I'm just thinking about some of the challenges like poor literacy in a country like South Africa.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: How do you envision technology being applicable to people who already don't have, you know, some of the building blocks for knowledge, let alone, you know?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: The whole thing with skills and education and technology, there's also a lot of myths around this and misunderstandings.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: So even people that are not educated can operate cutting-edge technology.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: They do every day.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: They do every day.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: So but people conflate these two things, and true, in many senses, there is a big correlation.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: The thing that is very hard that you and I cannot predict at this moment, even if we have all the data at our disposal, is how fast would you and I have to learn when the next technology changes come on?
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: That is the big thing.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: So technology firstly is not only displacing people that are illiterate, it's also displacing people that are highly literate.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: So if you think of Chat GPT and the threats to the legal fraternity or to copy editors, for instance, the thing is you and I both know a lawyer or a legal professional might be able to reinvent themselves in thousands of ways, but the challenge is that our domestic helper might not, or you know, a factory worker might not.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: So that brings in a lot of challenges.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: And the first thing is that it's very hard to protect jobs against technologies.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: It is very hard to do that.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: There are countries that have tried, but it's very hard.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: The second thing is that typically institutions like a college or a community college, or maybe in some cases a university, would be critical in equipping people to change direction.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: But then those institutions must do what you and I cannot do, and that is select technologies.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: And again, as I said just now, the technology frontier is really long.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so, with a lot of our education institutions, it's very hard to figure out which technologies are we gonna bet on and then develop a program and develop a qualification around that so that we can train people.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: If you just think about that.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: Now, so if we are to change the way we do business management education, you know, in South Africa to re-accredit a course or to accredit a new course takes a long time, and the technology is changing very fast.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: So, actually, that takes me back to when we started the technology observatory was the realization that while it's part of a natural cycle for companies to be disrupted.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so one business fails, and maybe some of the staff that are really sharp and understood the technologies or the market can reinvent themselves, but one business or two businesses fail.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: The thing when an institution fails, it has a very big repercussion.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: So if you think of a university or a college that completely picked the wrong technology and they are training graduates or they're training young people by the 50 or by the hundreds, and those people hit the workplace and they are inappropriately qualified.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: So they could be certified, they could be tested, they could score in the top in their class, but they cannot do the work that is required because the companies have shifted to a different technology.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so technological disruption affects companies and it affects industries.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: But my concern is actually it really affects institutions, especially public institutions.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: So wouldn't you say then when you speak about public institutions, they should have a change agent or a technological champion or an innovation champion in each of the departments because clearly you need somebody who's always looking at the ways to advance technology for the business.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: You can't just leave it up to IT.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, actually, yes, I can go on on this point.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: In lots of our companies and in our public organizations, people confuse IT with technology management.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: So in management and in engineering management, there is a field called technology or technology and innovation management where you focus on the knowledge assets and the equipment and technology assets that you've procured, and you're trying to figure out how this might change going forward.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: So there is a job title called the technology manager, and very often the technology manager knows nothing about computers and IT.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: So if you look at a hospital, even in our public sector, you would have technology managers that are looking at how long do we keep on maintaining a particular kind of x-ray machine or a particular kind of device, and at what point do we replace that with something else.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: And typically, because the technologies are more and more interrelated, when you replace one technology, you typically then have to figure out what else do we have to change because it's not just like taking out one thing and putting in something else in its place.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: In our public sector, though, technology management is often conflated with IT management, and it's a different thing, it's a very different thing.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, okay, but do we have any examples or case studies of industries that are leveraging technology quite well to advance their businesses?
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think one of the things that we found in the technology observatory that simply affirms what other data is found, is that in every subsector that we have in South Africa, there are people that are at the technology frontier in every sector.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Our challenge is there's a very big gap between those companies that have a very active technology and innovation management policy or strategy, and the rest that are basically following the main trends.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: We have a lot of companies in South Africa that, if their clients told them that if you don't upgrade to this or if you cannot integrate into our procurement system like that, then we cannot do business with you.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: And those companies will upgrade overnight.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not anything but a lack of will.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: Quite a few of our companies read a lot of uncertainty into the policy environment, so they're not so actively investing.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: And um, Saul would probably be a lot less controversial than me.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: He would say some people are just lazy and they're making profits very easily now, so why on earth do they have to invest?
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because I mean, listen, just even looking at the sound equipment surrounded by us here, it's a lot of investment.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: Even to make a very small change would take a lot of money.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: So we have a lot of companies that are very risk averse, and at the same time, South Africa has really demanding markets, and so the South African companies that are not at the frontier are often displaced by companies from overseas that are at the frontier.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: South Africa's market is still sought after as a technology user.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: And not an innovator.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that would take you to the definition of innovation.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: I make a distinction between innovation and invention.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: So invention would be coming up with something completely novel that's never been done, and we're quite inventive in South Africa.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: But innovation is more broadly understood as this ability to be able to combine two or three different things and then to fill in the gaps.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of innovation is actually combining what already exists with something new.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: And we are very innovative.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: The challenge is that the innovation is not evenly spread in our society.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like everything else in South Africa.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: But you've been running with the Technological Change and Innovation Observatory since inception.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: What are some of the key patterns or trends that you think have emerged since you've been tracking?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the one thing that for us has been very important is that the whole focus on the fourth industrial revolution distracted quite a lot of people, both in the public and in the private sector.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, because people started treating the fourth industrial revolution like a thing, like something that you could install or something you could read up on, and then in the next few weeks you could implement it like installing a new app on your phone.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: And the real disruption is that our competitors, and when I talk of our competitors, I mean our subsectors, like the plastic sector, or the metal casting sector, or the agri-processing sector, they are competing with other countries where the businesses talk to each other a lot more and where industry associations play a critical role to help businesses navigate the unfolding future.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, to not just help companies to respond to what's happening, but to proactively say we want to shape it in this way.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: In South Africa, my pet frustration is it feels like we are talking the whole time about what should have been in place five years ago or ten years ago.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that is where a lot of our companies, where we've even wasted platforms, where we get companies and public sector officials together and then we talk about what should have happened instead of what do we want to make happen?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at what's happening in agri processing, I understand we have to be concerned about workers and laborers, but we have to figure out what is a hyper-automated manufacturing environment like?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: What kind of management systems would we need?
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: What kind of education would we have to need?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: Which of our laws would stand in the way of even doing that?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: And somebody better run over the horizon into the future and come back and tell us.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so that we so we have to talk about the future not and to not get carried away with technology optimism, but also say not everybody's gonna like this, we've got to think about that.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then also not everybody's going to be able to do this, and we have to think about that.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: So that was one of the themes that we picked up time and time again.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: In every subsector that we've worked with, we have found companies that are playing in the global technology field, they global problem solvers, or they've solved really difficult problems.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Often they are not known in South Africa, often they choose not to be known, they also prefer sometimes to be a little bit under the radar.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: But in general, it feels like our companies are not working together with the public institutions to create the future often enough.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: So when you speak about the public sector and what would you say is the difference between how the public sector and the private sector respond differently to technological advancement?
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have one public sector.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: So we have many.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at what the South African Revenue Service is doing, they are at the technology frontier in many instances.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: I work a lot in other countries as well, and I can tell you now that many countries do not have the kind of tax filing, personal returns, any of these systems, even digital certificates of incorporation.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: You can do that in South Africa, but not in Germany.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: So in some instances, South Africa, the public sector is very far ahead.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: In other cases, the public sector is lagging.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then within one government department, you could have one unit that is cutting edge.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: So it's very hard to say what they are doing right or what they are doing wrong.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: And in the private sector, in South Africa, because of costs, what I'm finding is That our bigger firms are often more innovative because they set aside a budget to do RD or to do problem solving.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: One of our automotive manufacturers told me the main way we embrace new technology is by watching YouTube videos, but they put aside the time for that.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay to watch YouTube videos during work time.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: Fun job.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: But what we found is that our smaller companies very often have to problem solve just to make things work that they would have otherwise been able to rely on.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: So what does the data tell you since you have been tracking all of this data with regards to the pace or direction of technological evolution?
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: Do we look at the data and the technology has already moved on by the time we look at the data, or is it at least giving us some metrics with regards to where we are?
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: In the first two years, when we started the observatory, which I think was back in 2018, we were very focused on the data.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: But the challenge is that all our data only tells us what already happened.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so you can make a forecast, but with technology, it's very hard to make a forecast.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we can say some technologies, look, this thing is going to get bigger, but it's very hard to predict how big.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: So that is our first challenge, is that our data makes it very hard to figure out how use of technology is changing.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, Norway, we know very little about how our workplaces are using technology because so much of our data relies on trade data.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: So we don't know whether the sound equipment that I bought is for trade, or is that for internal process, or is that for internal management?
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's very hard to use trade data to figure out why companies are buying certain technologies.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: So that's maybe one thing.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: Over the years, we started shifting more towards what people are telling us what technologies they are tracking.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I was very surprised because in some of our sectors, the technology tracking doesn't exist at all.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: Even in our skills landscape, the tracking of how technologies are changing is done using past data and not actually projecting going forward.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's very scary for me.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: So what we've been doing in the observatory is working more and more with groups of industry with a subsector, and then trying to figure out what are you looking at?
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: Are you only looking at technologies of use now in your industry?
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: Or are you looking at technologies that are being used in other industries that might have an effect on you?
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that last part is really very difficult.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: Most businesses want to look at are my peers, the people that's in my industry, what technologies are they using?
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: Where the very nature of disruption is something that comes from the side that you don't expect.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so something you're in the jewelry industry and somebody comes in with something that was developed in dentistry, and suddenly that thing comes in at the right price at the right time, at the right time, and your business and all of the investments that you've made, or some of the investments, significant investments, are no longer enough to keep you in the game.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: That is the heart of disruption.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it's been very hard for us to get groups of businesses to think about that.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you would have known with DVDs, they came out within a year or so, there were no longer any DVD shops because somebody disrupted technology and created what we have now in how we stream videos and things like that.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a very important point to make.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: You're giving away your age now, aren't we?
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I am.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: DVDs were around for a little while, but yes, they disappeared very suddenly.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: Quite quickly, like all the shops had to shut down because of that advancement in the technology.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: But as we consider the future, what would you say, Sean, are emerging technologies that you know you find particularly promising or noteworthy, or that they should really be looked at by industry?
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think with Chat GPT, a lot of workplaces don't know it, but the individual employees have already embraced it, even if the company hasn't.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: So that is really a point for concern because it would mean that the productivity gains are fully in favor of the employee, but not the workplace.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that's one concern.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: For me, Nantwe, a topic that is important in the manufacturing sector is while Europe and the US is very concerned about volume production and reducing variability and reducing waste and being green.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: In South Africa, a lot of our manufacturers, by their very nature, are actually more job shops or flexible manufacturing outfits, which means that ways of making flexible manufacturing work, of integrating these different systems, that's not run to efficiency, but it's run to be integrated.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: For me, that is important, which means the technologies that connect different areas of the business will become more important.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then where we are behind other countries is we're often very far from our customers.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: We're still exporting most of our advanced equipment to Europe and we have a disadvantage.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: So technologies that allow us to better track how customers use our equipment or our processes or our solutions will become more important as we go forward.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: Any closing remarks as we wrap up this very informative discussion today?
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: What I think is very important for business people is to pay attention to the technologies in the industries adjacent to them and to then not pay attention only to physical technologies but to try and figure out how people have changed the way they are organized.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: It could be the way they've organized a business model, but I'm not even talking about that.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think mainly pay attention to how people have organized their teams and how people have changed the way they track and stay abreast of technology.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I know of industry associations in South Africa that's spending a small fortune to go to trade exhibitions in Europe, and this is still one of the best ways to confront the technologies that's three to five years away.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: So as we conclude this episode, a heartfelt thank you to you, Sean, for sharing your expertise, your insights.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: You have really illuminated the intricate dance between technology and society.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: To our listeners, I hope this exploration in technological observations sparks your curiosity and inspires you on your journey through the ever-changing landscape of innovation.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Nandre, your host.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: And until our next conversation, stay curious, stay tech savvy, and remember to listen to our podcast on all streaming platforms.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: Subscribe, leave a review, connect with us on social media, and remember to find all of our body of research as well as the tech observer on the tips website www.tips.org.za.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: Join us next time as we continue to explore policies that shape economies.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Until then, cheers.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.