Thriving with Information in the Digital Economy

We are witnessing the shepherding in of the digital age, one where machines and information can do things faster and more accurately than people for select tasks, particularly those that don't require ingenuity to innovate something that has never previously existed. It is up to those who run organizations to gain a quick appreciation as to which tasks benefit from the wisdom, empathy, and creativity of the human spirit and which ones are repetitive, with minor variations to a theme, and best orchestrated through software. It is exactly those organizations that put every task to the whim of a machine that will enjoy an uneasy competitive disadvantage because their finest moments will be those they can be performed by every other business with a machine at the helm for that decision. However, those decisions that are somewhat repetitive and can be taught through software to adjust for the nuances of a decision will be able to react to these activities faster and more accurately than those not benefitting from software, of course without human intuition, empathy, and ingenuity. A keen understanding of the processes of an organization, the information supporting that information, and how that information potentially makes a difference is at the heart of the discussion of thriving with information in the digital economy.There are many very timely, complex, fraught-with-error tasks that people cringe at performing or tasks that need to be performed at such a blistering pace in the digital age that if they were to wait for people to perform, they would either need to be verified carefully for errors or be too late to make a difference in the digital economy. The one thing that is consistent is that the lifeblood of the digital economy is information delivered at a blistering speed at all hours of the day.The purpose of this writing is to illuminate some of the changes caused by the digital economy as it pertains to information and help organizations devise a road map to their path from the current state to one more applicable for the digital economy.