Innovation & Technology
Let’s Develop the Code to Our Future BY PATRICK CALLAHAN
RECENTLY, the World Economic Forum declared a reskilling emergency as the world faces the reality that one billion jobs will likely be transformed by technology. The Forum explained this is due to the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power in production, the Second electric power, the Third employed electronics and information technology to automate processes, and now the Fourth builds on the Third, and “is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.” We in the Delaware region have had front row seats to all of these shifts, which started on the Brandywine River and now envelope our state.
The Change Emblematic of this dire need, over the past four months, I have had several conversations with leaders of data and technology businesses in our own backyard in Delaware, in our region, and on both coasts about both the need and competition for talent. It seems that prior to COVID-19, the unicorns of our space were already in high demand. 58
The pandemic added fuel to the fire as more companies began to not only understand the impact of data and technology on their organizations but also see it as the lifeblood of their business operations. It provides businesses insight into their customers and serves as an essential element into knowing how their employees are communicating, producing, and delivering essential products and services. Today, after nearly two years of our new normal, many companies in banking and consumer product sales would simply cease operations if it not for a reliance on new advances in data and technology.
The Development of Data and Technology There is a graph that hangs in my office that shows the progress of how people get their news since the early 1800s. At first, a measurement of a news organizations’ success could be represented by the number of people standing in the city square listening to the speaker on a soap box. When newspapers became the mainstream, subscription counts and very basic demographics were the measure. Broadcast radio and television brought in another level of complexity, but the world of collecting information changed dramatically in the 1990s when the internet took off. Novem b e r / Dec em b e r 2021 | DELAWARE BUSINESS
