Page 63 - The Fourth Industrial Revolution

in beta” (always evolving) will become more prevalent. This suggests that

the global number of entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs (enterprising company
managers) will increase. Small and medium-sized enterprises will have the
advantages of speed and the agility needed to deal with disruption and
innovation.

Large organizations, by contrast, will survive by leveraging their scale
advantages and investing in their ecosystem of start-ups and SMEs by

acquiring and partnering with smaller and more innovative businesses. This
will enable them to maintain autonomy in their respective businesses while
also allowing for more efficient and agile operations. Google’s recent

decision to reorganize into a holding company called Alphabet is a vivid
example of this trend, driven by the need to sustain its innovative character
and maintain its agility.

Finally, as the next sections detail, the regulatory and legislative landscapes
will significantly shape how researchers, businesses and citizens develop,
invest in and adopt both emerging technologies and the operating models
that enable them to create value for users. While new technologies and

innovative businesses offer new products and services that can improve the
lives of many, those same technologies and the systems that support them
could also create impacts we wish to avoid. These range from widespread

unemployment and increased inequality, which was discussed previously, to
the dangers of automated weapons systems and new cyber risks.

While perspectives on what constitutes the right mix of regulation may vary,
my conversations with government, business and civil society leaders
indicate that they share the same overarching goal: to create agile,
responsible regulatory and legislative ecosystems that will allow innovation

to thrive while minimizing its risks to ensure the stability and prosperity of
society.

Box B: Environmental Renewal and Preservation

The convergence of the physical, digital and biological worlds that is at the

heart of the fourth industrial revolution offers significant opportunities for
the world to achieve huge gains in resource use and efficiency. As Project

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