Management Perspectives

Deep technologies are now creating a revolution which has implications for every aspect of an organisation, resulting in new opportunities to thrive in the most technologically important era since the industrial revolution. The term ‘deep tech’ was coined in 2014 by Swati Chaturvedi, CEO, Propel(x), to define a new category of start-ups, which are built on tangible scientific discoveries and which have the ability to disrupt several markets.

Early stage investment in deep tech startups has now reached billions of dollars, with the potential rewards in the order of trillions. This new era of the digital economy is built on advanced innovation such as blockchain, automation and robotics, 3D printing, the internet of things, artificial intelligence, data analytics, cloud computing, and high-speed networks. Deep tech also includes developments in the life sciences such as genetic modification, nanotechnology, quantum computing and new materials.

The two clear leaders in this emerging digital economy are the US and China. Their current dominance in platform-based enterprises means that they are the most prepared for the forthcoming wave of disruption, which is due to their ‘platform vision’, i.e., their understanding of the underlying logic and digital architectures of the new digital economy. China especially is demonstrating long-term strategic thinking with considerable investment and technology partnerships in other countries.

Rapid advances in deep tech innovation mean that leaders must now understand the essential role that digital platforms play in the digital economy, how they function and how they generate, amplify and sustain value. Despite their impact, however, there is still widespread misunderstanding about platforms and how they will generate new forms of value in the digital economy.

In our book Deep Tech and the Amplified Organisation we define digital platforms as open, flexible, and extensible set of digital interactions, services and human networks that elevate, scale, and amplify value in the digital economy. We use the word elevation in relation to the lifting of a concept to a higher level; you transcend what you have done previously and create something far more inclusive. Our conception of deep tech is therefore dynamic, consisting of three design movements: the elevation of value propositions, scaling through platform services and amplification through new waves of innovation.

The ability of platforms to scale represents a significant opportunity to raise the quality of life for people. Due to the low marginal cost of scaling, once a value proposition has been elevated, it can then be scaled globally at a minimal cost.

The impact of deep technologies means that the dynamics of the digital economy have reduced the relevance of Porter’s traditional Five Forces model of competition. In 2015, Holonomics developed the New 4Ps framework of platforms, purpose, people, and planet to help executive teams understand their organisations from a systemic perspective and how they can scale and achieve impact in a manner which benefits people and our planet through solving our most pressing social and ecological challenges. The New 4Ps therefore are a synthesis which form the basis of decision-making in an organisation, providing the direction of the development of more innovative business models and elevated value propositions.

Our value proposition elevation process is a way of discovering new and innovative forms of value for customers in a manner which integrates universal human values with an organisation’s corporate values, strategy and platform architectures. They are developed through implementing a design process which starts by expanding the definition of customer to include the voice of all stakeholders who will be impacted by the value proposition.

By including the voice of all stakeholders in the design process, leaders naturally change the way in which their organisations design and implement technology by focusing on whole ecosystems, rather than target customer markets, thereby elevating their value propositions and amplifying the impact of their purposes.

In the era of deep tech, CEOs now need to become leaders of collective mastery. Leaders need to be able to manage collaborations across innovation ecosystems, networked supply chains and the communities in which they operate and impact upon. And they also need to understand how to optimise remote collaboration using the next generation of digital collaboration tools and virtual spaces such as ‘metaverses’—digital worlds which blur the distinction between our real-world and virtual lives with social media becoming more of a gaming experience.

Metaverses are already changing the way in which we will consume and interact with brands.

Developments such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are now allowing digital-only fashion houses such as The Fabricant to work with brands such as Adidas, Puma and Tommy Hilfiger to produce highly-desirable fashion that only exists digitally.

NFTs can track the ownership of both digital and physical assets across their lifetimes. This means that the creators of any product that becomes tokenised will always receive a royalty whenever an NFT is resold.

The internet is about to transform rapidly as we enter a new era of deep collaboration between people and machines. The most advanced AI solutions such Cerebras Systems’ CS-2 accelerator and China’s Jiuzhang 2 are now approaching brain-scale levels of performance enabling them to solve real-world problems in the areas of medicine, molecular dynamics and materials science for example. Humanity will advance alongside those developments in technology when we are able to optimise purposeful and authentic collaboration between artificial intelligence and human expertise, cognition and decision-making.

The most powerful instances of this today can be seen in platforms such as ClinicalTrials. gov, a US web-based resource that provides patients, health care professionals and researchers with access to information on clinical studies on a wide range of diseases and conditions. Using open networked intelligence is a way to scale domain-specific expertise rapidly across collaborative research communities, resulting in collective problem solving and solutions that no single organisation would be able to arrive at individually.

Technologies such as blockchain can now allow data, information, and knowledge to be shared in a transparent manner in which people trust, leading to higher quality collaborations between scientists, governments, environmentalists and local communities. CEOs can use both deep technologies and networked intelligence to engender higher public trust and confidence in their ESG initiatives, generating in turn higher levels of socially responsible and impact investment.

Deep tech is a movement which is transforming the way we understand technology and which is shaping our world in ways we have never seen before. Leaders of the future who will be successful in the design and application of deep tech will not just be those who focus on the technological dimension but understand it as a multi-dimensional concept, managing new forms of collaboration between artificial intelligencebased applications which operate at brain scale and human expertise, cognition and decisionmaking. We are now entering the most technologically important era since the industrial revolution.

By facilitating a systemic understanding of the mindsets, platform architectures, and conceptual definitions of digital transformation, leaders can amplify their impact by creating more agile, competitive and customer-centric organisations. This will be achieved through the emergence of amplified organisations—intentional regenerative businesses which are purposeful, engaged and hyper-connected, continually evolving themselves guided by their North Star of the New 4Ps.