Tech + Humanity: Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

If today’s world were a science fiction novel, this would be the part where the robots, the artificial intelligence, and the slick new technologies rise up and take over the world. Or at the very least, take all of the jobs we know today. But this is not about science fiction. To be sure, machines and algorithms are more capable than ever. In some cases, yes, they will replace humans. But don’t count us out yet. Technology and humans, it turns out, are better together.

I know, that sounds like something a human would say, but hear me out. While there is a lot of focus, and concern, about technology replacing humans, the real focus—and excitement, not fear—should be directed on how technology can augment humans. This intersection of technology and people—or “Tech + Humanity,” as my colleagues and I like to frame the conversation—is one of the most critical, and too often overlooked, aspects of our increasingly digital, automated, algorithm-imbued world.

What makes Tech + Humanity so vital? To put it simply, technology is advancing rapidly but it can only go so far on its own. As remarkable as AI and analytics and all the advanced new technologies we're developing are, only people can zero in on the right problems to solve and the right paths to take. Only people can unleash that uniquely powerful—and uniquely human—quality: creative thinking. And only people can collaborate in ways that spark new ideas and innovation. So as we continually perfect technology, we need to continually perfect the human component, as well.

But what exactly does that mean? And just as important, how do we do it? These are questions my colleagues and I address on a daily basis. For us, Tech + Humanity centers around three key themes:

1. Augmenting humans. How can we leverage technology to make work more interesting and more rewarding for the people who do it—and thereby enable them to have a greater impact? For example, as AI and analytics automate repetitive tasks, people will need to focus time on the aspects of work where they add the most value, such as bringing creativity and divergent thinking to problem solving and adding empathy to situations. This is really about human-centred design and putting people at the core of how we think about digital transformation. It's also about changing the nature of the work that we do and how we use technology. This will require fundamentally new skills in many organisations and new approaches to traditional IT.
2. Building purpose, culture, and ethical approaches. Traditionally, businesses have been organized as an array of silos, with each function or area of expertise operating largely apart from the others. This model was developed during the industrial revolution and served companies in the past. In todays more digital age, there is an ever pressing need for cross-functional approaches, speed and agility. Agile methodologies have upended traditional paradigms by creating—and empowering—cross-functional teams. The result has been a giant leap forward in collaboration and the speed at which companies can deliver new technology. There’s still a lot of work to do here: applying agile to more organizations and processes and discovering ways to spark even greater collaboration. Meanwhile, as AI and analytics become more central, and more critical, to organizations, it’s important to develop agile methods around data and to build trust in how and where data is used. We will also need to increase our ‘data literacy’—treating data as an asset and understanding why, how, and where it is collected. Finally, we’ll need to develop our perspectives in the area of ethics. A big action step here will be addressing bias that exists in today’s algorithms and building governance and trust around appropriate use of data.
3. Framing the right problems. There is a lot of technology at our disposal. And there are a lot of problems for technology to solve. Technology alone does not really drive value. It’s important to get the matchmaking right; to focus on the highest-impact spaces to apply technology and the sources of real competitive advantage. Finding ways to point the right technology at the right question is something we need to get very good at—very fast.

Perhaps no industry highlights the importance of Tech + Humanity more than health care. It is easier than ever to collect, store, and analyse data—massive amounts of it. Nonetheless, it can take 10-plus years and more than $2 billion in R&D to get a potentially life-saving drug to market—and failure rates remain incredibly high. At the same time, there are real issues in sustaining the current cost of our health-care systems.

As AI and data analytics evolve, they will play an increasingly important role in health care. But the real innovation will be when we also change the way we work—how we approach the biggest questions in science and medicine and the skills that we apply to these questions. This means applying agile methodologies to help multi-disciplinary teams truly collaborate in scientific discovery and advancement in clinical practice. It means applying human-centered design to medicine, putting patients at the core of care pathways. It also means fundamentally changing the way we work to take advantage of technology. This is often the hardest part—not the technology or the algorithms.

The idea—not just in health care but in all industries—is to develop and leverage the distinctly human capability to sharpen and guide our use of technology. Today, technical advances are appearing at an unprecedented rate but how we use technology often lags well behind. By bringing technology and humanity closer together, we can drive innovation that brings unprecedented—and perhaps even unbounded—impact in business and society.