The blockchain revolution shakes the established order whereby institutions played the main role in disseminating trust in society. For the first time since the birth of institutions approximately 10,000 years ago, a technology allows to establish a system of trust that does not rely on a central authority but on all the members of the community that use it. Because we have been raised and educated in a centralized world, we feel insecure about decentralized systems. Nevertheless, it is very powerful operating mode. Given the current mistrust towards institutions, decentralized systems have a great opportunity to create a new world in which it is possible to think differently and where authority is not necessarily represented by a centralized human organization but by a combination algorithms/community. There will be great resistance, maybe even chaos, when shifting from one system to the other.

While serving as CEO of PepsiCo, John Sculley was recruited by Steve Jobs to become CEO of Apple in 1983. After a disagreement with Jobs over business strategy in which the Apple board sided with Sculley, Jobs left the company and Sculley continued at the helm of Apple until 1993. Since then, Sculley has co-founded or invested in technology-focused companies in many industries, including media marketing, financial services and health care. Knowledge@Wharton recently spoke with Sculley about working with Steve Jobs and his views on the emerging fields of artificial intelligence, cloud computing, data analytics, health care innovation and the industrial internet. An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

What does it mean for a company to work with artists? Art can be an activator of innovation, allowing to anticipate future uses in order to reflect on and invent new services, new products, new experiences.

Developer innovation has been at the very heart of the digital revolution since its beginnings and is still leading social and economical transformations induced by emerging technologies. Yet, developers as a class have largely been ignored by research in Human and Social Sciences. This disregard may be related to the fact that they cannot be classified using specific social or economical statuses without leaving out the underpinning dynamics making them special. To seize those dynamics, one has to acknowledge a fundamental distinction between “day job” and “side-project,” characterizing their modus operandi. This “double game” has implications in both the way we conceive action in general and the way technological potential is explored in the industrial field. In their movement, developers also create new forms of organization supporting their personal explorations, such as the Barcamps and the Hackathons.

Ongoing digitization has placed data at the center of economic and social life. We are producing a growing amount of data that are exchanged, secured and analyzed by increasingly sophisticated technologies. Data economics defines the value of these operations. Data policies are implemented both by governments and large corporations. An emerging business revolves around big data. But the precise nature of a datum remains unclear. A philosophical approach, as led by Luciano Floridi, can help us refine the definition.

Stephen Hawking, the famous British physicist, recently warned that the development of a full-fledge artificial intelligence could result in the end of the human race. Others, such as the engineer Raymond Kurzweil, offer a more optimistic outlook and believe that we will soon be able to download our consciousness onto machines. In his book titled “Le Mythe de la Singularité” (The Myth of Singularity, Seuil, 2017), researcher Jean-Gabriel Ganascia refutes the so-called “Technological Singularity,” a brutal rupture that will supposedly transform humanity. According to him, if there is cause for concern about artificial intelligence, it doesn’t stem from the dangers it allegedly poses to humanity but rather from its current applications in our societies.

The C-K theory encompasses methods widely implemented in the industrial world and that have achieved several notable successes. Ultimately, this theoretical breakthrough has revolutionized our approach to design.

The past 2016 saw the happening of the most eye-catching technology breakthrough: The AI robot Alpha Go beat the world champion Lee SeDol with the score of 4:1. This remarkable victory was reckoned as another milestone event of the artificial intelligence industry along its over 60 years of history. Together with the passion also came doubts and concerns: will robots replace human being? Will artificial intelligence ultimately abort the human race?

Emissions of air pollutants have plummeted in France since 1990. But progress is yet to be made, especially in urban areas, in industrial zones and paradoxically in the countryside: these pollutants, which have become less visible and more subtle, are carried by winds and across borders. In this area, rigorous scientific analysis is required to allow to devote our collective and individual resources to share the actually most effective actions for our well-being.

Since her departure from JP Morgan Chase to become CEO of Digital Asset Holdings, Blythe Masters, the renowned economist and market operator, initiated a speaking tour dedicated to blockchains. During the Exponential Finance Conference held...

In a world in which information, capital, and labor are no longer confined by time nor distance, nearly everything has an impact on practically everything else. As traditional barriers to entry crumble, organizations that once...

Culture is the essential catalyst of intelligence and an AI without the capability to interact culturally would be nothing more than an academic curiosity. However, culture can not be hand coded into a machine; it...

Agriculture and the food industry are quickly entering the era of platform economics. The rapid development of digital interfaces is not exclusively a matter of matching supply and demand. Collaborative platforms have emerged alongside marketplaces,...

As part of its Manufacturing Revolution initiative, the company is constantly looking for ways to reduce the amount of material and labor needed to make high-performance, customized footwear and speed the delivery of its products...

Read this story in Chinese On October 6, 2015, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics to Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald in recognition of “the discovery of...

There is a huge misallocation of resources in the benefit strategies we have structured today, which only look at 5 to 10 percent of the workplace population. Instead, employers should pay much more attention to...