A colloquium on the topic ‘Innovation and Technology Driving to Enterprise 4. 0’ was held at School of Business, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore, on December 8, 2017. The session was handled by Mr. Ajay Vinze, Dean & Professor, Robert J. Trulaske, Sr. College of Business, University of Missouri (Columbia).
The speaker started the colloquium by giving a brief introduction about himself and his interests in different fields of education.
Mr. Ajay Vinze points out that education is a never ending process and that in today’s world, getting educated has become easier and cost less. If a student wants, he/she can get educated by the very best professors in the world free of cost through online knowledge sharing. He then raises the question, “How do companies globalize in the online setting?”. He moves on to answering that question saying that organizations are changing, the first phase of this change was in terms of demographics and the second in terms of globalization. He points out the changes that has taken place from enterprise 1.0 to enterprise 3.0 in terms of systems, intelligence, processes, management and leadership. And now it is slowly giving way to enterprise 4.0.
Mr. Vinze then raises the question, “How exactly is the technology moving towards enterprise 4.0.?”. he says, technology is moving towards enterprise4.0. through the exponential growth of computing power. This will be more evident over the years, and by the year 2025, computing power will be more than the population of this world. We are changing the environment and the way businesses are done. He points out some changes that has been taking place, like the beginning of IOT in the year 2003, the changes in fin-tech and also the increased role of big data in predicting the future, which is exactly what enterprise 4.0. is all about. When we let technology become intelligent, we get a lot of information in advance. Airlines have already started using the technology to a large extend, which can be seen as part of moving towards enterprise 4.0. When companies do not keep pace with the improved technology, they are pushed out of business. Some companies who use enterprise 2.0. and 3.0. are already out of business. Mr. Ajay Vinze concluded his talk by urging us to think enterprise 4.0. and said that thinking Enterprise 4.0. contributes to economic well-being of the society.
Finally, Mr. Ajay Vinze answered some of the questions raised by the students like, “ What kind of companies look forward to enterprise 4.0.?”, ”How can we prepare ourselves for this change?”, “what is the morality or the cost of one’s security? “, etc. He then ended the interactive session by saying that business and individuals should be outward looking and should be open to accommodate changes for the good.
