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Many of the world’s most powerful CEOs agree: future global economic and social health rests on the private sector’s ability to capture the opportunities — and meet the challenges — of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. According to Salesforce Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff, “In the coming decades, the technologies driving the Fourth Industrial Revolution will fundamentally transform the entire structure of the world economy, our communities, and our human identities.”
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, CEOs from major global corporations — Mary Barra of General Motors and Paul Polman of Unilever — joined Marc Benioff to discuss the unique leadership challenges of this turbulent age. “I cannot think of a single industry that is not being transformed by technology,” said Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors. “As we see that transformation, we also have to be smart enough to know where the disruptions are going to occur and instead of making them disruptions, make them migrations.”
The opportunities presented by the Fourth Industrial Revolution — for both businesses and customers — are unprecedented. As smartphones approach ubiquity and the Internet of Things becomes part of the basic fabric of everyday life, hyperconnectivity and the resulting data trail of every customer are reinventing how our most basic needs are met.
While GM and the cars it sells have always stood for freedom, for example, how GM leaders deliver on that promise is changing dramatically. They are now asking questions such as: “How can we make our customers’ lives better? How can we make their time more efficient? How can we get them there quickly?” As with many companies across many industries, the scope of GM’s business has broadened dramatically. Cars are no longer boxes that move people from point A to point B. “They are connectivity platforms,” said Barra. “We right now at General Motors have over 12 million vehicles around the globe connected.”
These changes, promising so many benefits, are also tied to new challenges for business and society. Today’s customers expect more from their interactions with companies, and have more power than those of previous generations. This is a good thing for business — but it hamstrings those companies who don’t have the right tools to listen, respond, and stay in close proximity to their customers. Meanwhile, dissatisfied customers have a multitude of online options to broadcast their complaints.
Customers vote with their wallets: The market is continuously providing newer, tech-enhanced options for everything from lodging to dining, and transportation to healthcare. No “established” company is safe. As Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever, noted, “When I was born in 1956, the average lifetime of a publicly traded company in the U.S. was 67 years. Here we sit today in 2017, it has dropped down to 17 years.”
But the challenges of this technological revolution run far deeper than how to satisfy customers. Every rapid advance creates ripples of disruption in a world already challenged by global environmental and political issues such as climate change, civil war, wealth inequality, and disease. Technology, with all its power to improve quality of life and strengthen the connective tissue between individuals and communities, has the darker potential of driving existing social divides deeper and further apart.
Paul Polman, the CEO of Unilever, called out the private sector for being slow to react to the challenges of our era. “What we really now need to do is use the next five or 10 years to really put a responsible business model out there where business really starts to put itself to the service of society instead of the service of the shareholders.”
Polman argues that business needs to commit to a new social contract. “What we really now need to do is use the next five or 10 years to really put a responsible business model out there where business really starts to put itself to the service of society instead of the service of the shareholders,” he said. At Davos, Polman referenced issues such as climate change, corruption, compliance, and labor rights. He emphasized that shareholders, too, would benefit from this pro-social shift — and in fact, stood to become losers without it, falling prey to the dramatically shortening lifecycle of the American corporation.
Customers will increasingly choose companies that demonstrate a real commitment to the values that they share — one of few forms of differentiation that can’t be outmoded by technology.
“We can decide how 2030 is going to look,” said Polman. “But we really have to start now.”
For more from the Unilever and GM panel at Davos, check out the full panel video here.
