Towards a hybrid world - Future World
With the pandemic highlighting its potential and value, digital transformation is set to further impact our society
Digital transformation has been reshaping our lives since the late Nineties. Nonetheless, we are realizing its actual impact on most sectors of the economy and its potential for future economic growth only now - during the Covid19 pandemic. And it has given us a clear idea of the relevance of Digital Transformation to our lives in the future --which will increasingly be a combination of the physical and the digital.
Digital transformation is one of the key aspects of our society being impacted by megatrends, analyzed in the 'Future World' series produced by Bocconi University – along with those impacting the economy, climate change, demography and the European Union. Bocconi professors talk about the forces at play, the challenges and opportunities, and how we will need to transform and adapt, with added commentary from prominent guests.
With the EU’s Next Generation plan, Europe is taking the lead on digital transformation and we have a crucial platform to boost digital technology in our society and improve our future lives.
In this video Professor Gianmario Verona, Rector of Bocconi University and a scholar of digital transformation, helps us understand where digital technology is taking us and its impact on the economy and society. He talks us through how digital transformation, beginning with the World Wide Web, opened the door to a new ‘industrial revolution’ and how data is the new fuel moving the global economy. Before 2020 sectors like commerce, retail, media were being heavily disrupted by digital transformation and the pandemic only further pushed people and companies all over the world to dive deeper into it. We purchased more and more goods online, engaged massively in smart working, met family, colleagues and friends online and even in education had classes in remote. And although we’ve been speaking for some years about Open Innovation, the pandemic forced us to share life science data massively and to be able to reduce the production time of a brand new vaccine from 8 years to 10 months.
All this has opened up new scenarios for our future which will be even more a blend of the physical and the digital. The future in fact will be hybrid - with digital technologies complementing traditional analog technologies and with data driving organizations towards innovations that markets want.
There are three key pillars for digital transformation in Europe - creating a true European cloud, pursuing the Digital Compass 2030 and promoting and leveraging STEM skills and European human capital.
Globally, it was particularly the US and China that had taken advantage of this tremendous revolution, populated by digital giants, with the EU playing instead more in defense. But now the EU has reacted proactively, making Digital Transformation one of the two major pillars –along with sustainability - of the €800bn Next Generation EU Fund. A substantial financial tool that aims to support all member states to finalize, among other things, the digital transformation. Vittorio Colao, Minister of technological innovation and digital transition of the Italian government, explains to us here the scope and impact of this plan.
A multispeed post-pandemic economic recovery is underway. A look at the new growth patterns and dynamics that will impact the global economy
We have caused enough damage to the environment and it is time to break the cycle. A look at the opportunities and challenges of the mitigation effects we are putting, and can put, into effect
Demography shapes and is shaped by economic social, political and environmental change. What are the fast and slow population changes underway impacting society?
The pandemic has uncovered geopolitical, economic and social weaknesses in the EU. How can, and must, EU leaders tackle the major challenges?
