The Promises and Pitfalls of the Data Imperative
This chapter charts the future developments of data-driven businesses and digitalization. The chapter first elaborates a vision of the artificially intelligent organizations that utilize AI technologies, such as natural language processing, to capture the skills and knowledge of their employees. This will allow corporations to automatically orchestrate expert tasks to increase productivity and, hopefully, meaningfulness of knowledge work. Looking at the potential risks of ongoing digitalization, the chapter examines ‘optimization traps’, a set of organizational myopias that may arise from increasing reliance on algorithmic processing and smart automation. The chapter concludes by examining the new skills and attitudes managers and professionals are likely to need to remain relevant in the digital workplace, arguing that current use of data to create ‘insights’ may soon be outdated.