Google's chief economist, Hal Varian, "compares the current period to previous times of industrialization when new technologies combined to create ever more complex and valuable systems—and thus reshaped the economy." In a recent interview with McKinsey, he shares some of his insights.
Varian's ideas are organized in six main groups:
- Flexible innovation
- Corporations and work
- Free goods and value
- Workers and managers
- Computer monitoring and risks
- Reshaping industries
Varian discusses how networked digital technology should improve the way we work and increase productivity. In addition to personalization of data and better user interfaces, Varian emphasizes the importance of making sure that the data gets to all of the necessary players so that they can make timely and well-informed decisions. He also notes that since computers can monitor transactions, companies can make sure that transactions are carried out in the way intended.
At Evavi, we take this one step further with what we call "intelligent transactions." Rather than simply monitoring transactions and then correcting them, we seemlessly combine planning/decision support with execution/transactions so that supply chains operate optimally with transactions that are intelligently planned before they are executed. By eliminating the disconnect between planning and execution, the focus shifts from monitoring transactions to compressing the cadence of the supply chain with perfect orders.
You can view the interview here or read the transcript here.