HYPERAUTOMATION

A debut collection of essays about automation in the business world.

“If we concede reason to instinct, we forfeit the greatest survival mechanism of all, the ability to adapt,” writes chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in his foreword to this densely packed anthology. “This isn't a chess insight, or business strategy; it’s basic Darwinism.” The invocation of survival is apt, as today’s troubled economy hangs over the contents of Calkins’ book, which asserts the need for businesses to adapt quickly in the face of abruptly changing customer needs. Long before the Covid-19 pandemic, complicated software was becoming, as the author puts it, the spinal cord of business, and it’s become even more vital now, he says. “Companies today need to be ready at all times to write an application on which their business might depend,” he writes. “The new mandate is for agility in all applications, especially the most important ones.” Calkins, the CEO of enterprise technology company Appian, clarifies that the automation to which he’s referring is not the old conception of the replacement of humans with machines but rather the increasing combination of humans, artificial intelligence, and robotics in the workplace. In these pages, he assembles a collection of essays by CEOs and experts that weigh in on all aspects of this transformation. They range from analyzing the extent and direction of automation across a wide spectrum of business applications to assessing the value of “low-code” or “no-code” alternatives.

Most of the experts lined up here have long been passionate advocates of their specific specialties, and this makes them not only terrific explainers, but also invigoratingly direct writers. In “How To Turn Your Company Into a Master of Digital Transformation,” for instance, George Westerman of MIT’s Sloan School of Management clarifies the nature of the shift to automation: “You don’t become a Digital Master by just buying technology and plugging it in,” he writes. “There’s an awful lot of organizational change that has to happen first.” This point comes up repeatedly in these articles, with several writers pointing out not only the promise of greater automation, but also its dangers, such as overreliance on technological innovation or premature investment in the wrong strategies. And the fact that many innovative technologies aren’t developed by the people who use them can be problematic, as well, as technologist Chris Skinner points out: “Kids who can code are dramatically changing the financial markets, but they don’t understand the financial markets.” Hence the appeal of aforementioned “low-code” or “no-code” approaches, which put the tools of change in the hands of chief information officers themselves. Readers from the business world will find these chapters invaluable, particularly at present, with the seismic changes that Covid-19 has wrought in how businesses operate. But even readers who are unfamiliar with the nuances of automation will find these experts’ opinions to be compelling, with their sharp, insightful, real-time takes on one of the more dramatic societal shifts in the modern age.

An engaging book of expert business-survival advice for a troubled time.