Summary
CEO roundtable on technological innovations - Panel Discussion
Fourteen CEOs and technology experts discuss the potentials and pitfalls of the rapid pace of technological innovation and the future of the altered business environment. PricewaterhouseCoopers Managing Partner Paul Turner predicts that business will continue to evolve due to high technology, and that computing power will become cheaper and silicon-based devices will become more sophisticated. Alex Pentland of MIT Media Lab foresees an increasingly tighter link between the real world and the virtual world. For her part, PricewaterhouseCoopers' Chief Knowledge Officer and Global CIO Ellen M. Knapp, believes that technology will not ensure success in the 21st century. She contends that what is more important is knowing the economies of scale that can be achieved and the technologies needed to leverage these economies of scale.See the full content of this document
Extract
Fast-lane technology.
Hold onto your PDAs. With science so speedy and technology so trendy, business is going on a revolutionary ride. What are the potentials and pitfalls of this new virtual world order? CE pulled 14 chief executives and other experts into its own "chat room" to explore the shape of things to come.
FEEL THE NEED FOR SPEED Suddenly you're sending out mass e-mails to employees; you're covertly clicking through competitors' Web sites; you're relishing the fact that your cell phone is lighter than your last proxy statement - what in the name of ENIAC is going on? In his introductory remarks, PricewaterhouseCoopers's Paul Turner placed today's technology in perspective and warned CEOs not to underestimate the importance of human behavior. Paul Turner (PricewaterhouseCoopers): I believe we're now just at the end of the beginning in terms of how high technology is going to change business. The Silicon Age still has plenty of room left to run. There's nothing on the horizon that says that Moore's Law [the amount of information storable on a silicon chip doubles roughly every 18 months] is going to get overturned any time in the foreseeable future. Not only does that imply that there'll be ever-cheaper computing power, it also says that there'll be a wide range of other silicon-based devices that will be able to sense and react to physical and biological properties. So the second generation - the micro-mechanical devices based on silicon - is just in its infancy, but promises to have an enormous impact. For years, while the silicon world was on its juggernaut roll, its twin sister in communications was not developing the same inevitable, ongoing price-performance imp...See the full content of this document
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