Superpower Speed

Speed is in an interesting concept. We all admire Usain Bolt, the fastest sprinter on earth. Most of us love fast cars, formula 1 racing, and speed boats. Ultra-sonic planes, breaking the speed of sound, fascinate most of us. We love fast-paced and vibrant cities. Why is that? Is it about engineering? Is it about reaching higher, better, faster? There is something special about speed.

On the other hand, we all love to relax, chill, calm down, hang out, and have a sip of tea or coffee, enjoy some calm music and good vibes, in a cosy environment, smelling well, minimalist decoration, and having an intellectual conversation, in a very peaceful way. There are even slow cities and slow food movements.

Isn’t there a contradiction? Always faster and faster and faster. But sometimes slower and slower and slower. Actually, there is not. For us to be able to calm down, everything around us must speed up. Services, systems, deliveries, access, basically anything. And it already happens. Look at connectivity and its bandwidth, from 1G to 5G and still improving, and yet not sufficient.

For companies it’s about providing the best possible experiences to customers, suppliers, business partners, and employees alike. The faster the screens, applications, and analytics work, the higher is the satisfaction. The faster issues are resolved, orders are processed and delivered, claims are reimbursed, and transactions are completed, the better for all participants.

The faster and better the systems and processes become, the more quality time remains for humans. This statement is true for all scientific, technological, and managerial inventions and advancements in human history. There might be a few exceptions, but most innovations have resulted in the betterment of the human condition. And we still continue to do so. These days artificial intelligence and robots are mostly mentioned and mostly invested in categories, promising even more automation and intelligence.

Can you stop time?

I can’t. Can you? I guess not. But there is a workaround. It’s imaginary, but let’s have this mind game. Assume for a moment you could actually slow down time or even stop it. What would you do? Have you ever thought about this?

There are a few spectacular scenes of legendary movies which I would like to remind you.

The first one is from the first Matrix movie. Neo is on the rooftop and is confronted with Agent Smith. Do you remember? Watch this short scene.

Neo is able to escape the bullets, almost, by sheer focus and concentration and believing that it’s all the matrix anyway. For a short period of time, he thinks and moves faster than time can behave in the moment, even see bullets flying by very slowly.

Another fascinating scene is from the X-Men movie. Quicksilver is the guy who can run very fast, truly very fast. The X-Men team is in a trap and about to be shot down. Now it’s Quicksilver’s turn. And he delivers on promise. X-Men Silver – Time-lapse Scene

He runs faster than time and the speed of bullets, almost hitting the X-men. But he can change the trajectory of the bullets and saves his friends. You slowly get the point. Imagine your customer is in your shop or on your e-commerce website. You need to know what to do next. Imagine your warehouse. You need to decide what to pack in that delivery on that truck. Can you hold the time? Are you fast enough?

December 2021 was the month when the new Matrix movie was released. I was able to watch it in February 2022. One scene struck my attention. Again, there was a shooting scene. Neo has aged. He is not as fast as he used to be. “The Analyst” controls the scene. He is much faster than Neo. The bullets almost stand still. Suddenly Agent Smith appears. He is even faster. You have to watch to understand. Matrix Resurrection – Agent Smith saves Neo Scene

Now, how fast are you? How fast can you become? Data processing is light speed. Data packets travel literally at the speed of light on fibreoptic cables. Microprocessors, GPU’s are clocked at Giga Hertz level, means billions of cycles per second, billions of instructions per second. By combining these capabilities, mankind achieves supercomputing processing powers which helps us solve grand challenges.

Let’s imagine you can stop time.

Imagine you could do all necessary computing to save lives in hospitals. Imagine you could understand all parameters of a patient and apply the best possible treatment and heal everybody, all the time. Isn’t this worthwhile pursuing? Yes, it is.

Imagine you could avoid accidents by following the trajectories of vehicles, driver behaviour, weather conditions, traffic situations, and other parameters. Wouldn’t it be worthwhile to save lives, time, material, all the other deficiencies and losses? Yes, totally.

Imagine your end-to-end value chain with all its participants. Imagine all your materials, services, goods, and financials moving back and forth on this value chain. Imagine you could trace them in real-time, online, see them virtually on a digital twin, manage the flows, control the conditions, forecast the demand, plan the supply, automated with digital technologies, and augmented with artificial intelligence. Wouldn’t you like to be in control and in the known? I’m sure you would.

How can you get faster?

There are endless opportunities. This requires a new thinking. You must understand that digital is and can be at lightspeed. Are you benefiting from this capability? Yet? Enough? Look at individual processes, and think about ways, how to speed them up. Look at individual experiences, and identify opportunities, how to make them smoother and faster.

During our Digital Maturity Index service, we look at your various digital superpowers. These are connectivity, intelligence, and integration. The combination of all these makes an unbeatable mixture, which will result in super performance. Give it a try, you will love it.