 Hello, I'm Gerd Leonhard, Futurist and CEO of the Futurist Agency. Today having a discussion with my colleague and friend, Yuri van Geest. Yuri is very well known for his latest book, The Exponential Organization, that he co-wrote with Salim Ismail. And he's also the Singularity University Ambassador for Holland. And the topic of our conversation today is, of course, his book, Exponential Organization. But also the question is about how companies can perform what we have come to call the digital transformation. That's kind of a funny term like social media. So I first want to ask you, Yuri, when people talk about digital transformation, is this just another big data social media mobilization meme? Or what does it actually mean? For example, we're going to talk about telecom in the first session, right? For a telecom company or a mobile operator, what is digital transformation? Yeah, so basically digital transformation is all about, how can you digitize all the different departments in your own company? Not only marketing, sales and servers, via online marketing, mobile and social. But also how can you digitize production? How can you digitize the supply side of your business? Meaning, how can you digitize creativity and innovation itself? Are we talking about also digitizing automation, for example, which is a big topic for telecoms, right? For example, if you're looking at network operations, are they going to be able to use artificial intelligence in the cloud to automate what 200,000 people are now doing using software? Will that be automated? Yes, that's part of it. Basically what you can say is that you can digitize all business functions or departments by using AI or sensors or other exponential technologies. And what will happen is that you need a lesser amount of people or employees to have a bigger impact in the marketplace. Okay, so you foresee a company like China Mobile that has, I don't know, 700 million users or Singapore telecom, so you foresee them to cut down 80% of their staff because they're being digitized and automated and virtualized and in the cloud, is that going to happen? I wouldn't say 80%, but the percentage will be large, mainly because of artificial intelligence and sensors. You will get self-aware hardware, networks and software increasingly that will self-repair and self-diagnose. So that's one. Two, there is also a big trend coming our way called distributed or decentralized autonomous organizations which are almost fully algorithmic corporations. So you don't need a lot of people to maintain a company. But will the customer, I mean this is a question I have discussing with various organizations, will the customer not feel like they're talking to a robot, for example, calling customer service, that's about, I don't know, probably 100 million or so people are working in call centers around the world. If I'm going to call a call center and this will be a machine, even a smart machine with a human voice, is that going to be satisfactory for people? There are many different ways to compete and to differentiate right as a company. Some companies will fully digitize for efficiency, lower costs and speed and agility. So they will disrupt their call center business by using AI, I mean Watson for example, to substitute. That's one. Some other companies will try to balance the human part with the technological part of their cooperation. That means they will keep human employees as a way to differentiate, to increase customer satisfaction, to increase the human touch of their business. But it will not be easy because if the more humans you will have employed, the higher the cost will be. So the question is what is the price sensitivity of the market going forward? Yeah, I mean it's already being squeezed towards being a commodity, right? But you know Ray Kurzweil said a couple of weeks ago that we're going to have more robots in, what did you say, 15 years, then we will have people. And this thought is kind of interesting for, if you're looking at telecoms and what they do, they're further communication, right? And they're communication companies. So what will be their business in the future if this will be abundant? What's going to happen with them? There's a good question sir, but you have the internal part of the business but also the external part. If you look at the external part, if you are telecom operated today, you have a few threats. One is Wi-Fi, it will eat your business increasingly because it will be everywhere over time. Two, you will be disrupted by Google and Facebook because they will offer, yeah, Over-the-top solution? Yes, over-the-top solution, Project Loon and Nano Satellite and Drones in the next 5 to 10 years. So they will offer internet access to 7 billion people over time slowly, starting next year. And you also might feel the competition of mass networking over time. Well, we talked about the NOAA Summit for the ITU that we did together, right? And so there's quite significant trend towards reinventing what telcos do as a platform, rather than just the communication thing. So I think this is our key message in this conversation. Yes. Become a platform, use technology, but I always add to that also find a way to humanize technology so that you can actually have customers in the future, because we're going to have in 2020, we're going to have 5.5 billion people connected to the internet. And that should be a fantastic business if you're in the business of connecting people. But my view is, and I think we discussed at length, becoming a platform is crucial. So what do you see for the European operators which are not going to be allowed to be platforms most likely because of regulation? What do you foresee for those guys, like Vodafone, T-Mobile? They will be in a tough situation, as you said, which I agree upon. They also have to become a platform to compete. They have a lot of data. How can you anonymize and aggregate the data points to offer additional innovation and services using different third-party vendors and the ecosystem of stakeholders to innovate, to insource innovation in your platform as a telco? That's going to be critical. I mean, insource healthcare applications towards your platform in terms of healthcare, education, logistics, mobility, the whole thing. So if you don't ramp up that as the first mover as a telco in Europe, you will be in deeper trouble over time because your core business will become marginalized in terms of force, messaging, the whole thing, data. Well, interesting. We're going to have more information about this available on the Internet. You can also look on Twitter a hashtag called telemedia, which I came up with a few years ago to talk about these discussions. If you go to our website, especially in my channel, gertube.com on YouTube, Yuri is actually on some of those videos where we're going to talk about the future of telecom and media. So thanks very much, Yuri van Geest. And we can find out more at thefuturesagency.com. Thanks for tuning in.