Summary: <p>This podcast interview focuses on how competitive advantage is shifting in an age of automation. My guest is Josh Entsminger, Senior Fellow at Ecole des Ponts Business School in Paris.</p><br><p>He’s an applied researcher in international affairs and the fourth industrial revolution, working on the global governance of technology.</p><br><p>Josh serves as a fellow at the Public Tech Lab at IE's School of Global and Public Affairs, working on next generation public services. He also recently served as a research contributor to the Future of Production Initiative at the World Economic Forum.</p><br><p>His work as a senior fellow at Ecole Des Ponts Business School connects him to the Center for Policy and Competitiveness, a think tank affiliated with the Microeconomics of Competitiveness network of Professor Michael E. Porter at Harvard Business School.</p><br><p>His work there focuses on the shifting nature of competitive advantage in a world where AI and other 4th industrial Revolution technologies make their inroads. </p><br><p>This triggered me, hence I invited Josh to my podcast. We discuss the how these technologies rapidly erode the position of advantage many companies used to have. We also discuss how AI is becoming a platform race, and how having access to the right data is rather than the right algorithms, is becoming the critical factor to create a position of advantage.</p><br><p>Here are some of his quotes:</p><p><em>I'm particularly focused on the governance of technology in the politics of technology.</em></p><p><em>My background is heavily on government and policy and moving into the commercialization and understanding of what makes a company successful: what are the trends that are driving the viability of competitive advantage</em></p><p><em>It's becoming increasingly hard for me to distinguish what's a technology company and what's not a technology company,</em></p><p><em>The biggest issue I see is something that I'm calling competitive democratization. </em></p><p><em>This is a drive from some of the big companies to open up access for AI solutions through AI as a service.</em></p><p><em>The thing that worries me is that the means of accessing these technologies is increasingly being controlled or dominated by a few cloud service providers.</em></p><br><p><br></p><br><p>During this interview, you will learn three things:</p><ol> <li>That defensible differentiation is growing with your ability to create data dominance around a particular area</li> <li>Why the battle of business software will be won by those that will master scale over scope </li> <li>That the opportunity is exponential for those software companies that can anticipate how we’ll restructure our understanding of what is a firm, what is a career, and what is a job.</li> </ol><p><br></p><br><hr><p style="color:grey;font-size:0.75em;"> See <a style="color:grey;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://acast.com/privacy">acast.com/privacy</a> for privacy and opt-out information.</p>
