Winning the Digital Race

In this Ivey Business Journal interview, the digital information technology pioneer Tom Jenkins talks to Ivey Business School Professor Gerard Seijts about profound public policy challenges being created by the digital revolution and what Canada can do to overcome them. Despite real concerns about Canadian productivity and the ability of its largest corporations to remain competitive, Canada is doing well in the digital race. But it is not thinking enough about the implications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and has not sufficiently discussed the public policy challenges presented by an “always on” world that will continue to evolve rapidly. Significant change is coming and we need to consider it in terms of major public policy issues: productivity and innovation, infrastructure, information and security, governance and machines, talent, and education. Many professions may be eliminated within a decade because the big data analytics trend reduces the need for humans to perform deductive reasoning. The sharing economy along with autonomous vehicles could dramatically reduce our need for infrastructure investment. To support business development in the future, we must realize that digital enterprises will require “digital roads” and better Internet infrastructure. Sectors like transportation and financial services are being transformed by computer scientists, and future breakthroughs in other areas such as healthcare and education are probably also going to be driven by computer scientists.