Gartner’s Lewis Farran Explains Technology Trends And Managing For The Future

Jorge

6 years ago

Technology Trends And Managing For The Future Lewis Farran

In the future you’re either a digital business or a dead business; and it’s up to you to decide whether that happens or not. This was Lewis Farran’s message from a recent presentation he gave at a conference in Tijuana focused on Gartner’s top 10 strategic technology trends list, which include: AI foundations, intelligent apps, intelligent things, digital twins, cloud to the edge, conversational platform, immersive experience, blockchain, event-driven and continuous adaptive risk and trust.

This is an important and relevant topic because most companies are technology challenged:

And it’s not just companies, but industries too:

And of course, there are the ever present internal obstacles CIO’s have to overcome to help transform their organization into a digital business:

I invited Lewis Farran of Gartner, who is Business Development Director for the entire North of México, to discuss these trends and how companies should approach technology to integrate it into their business.

Lewis currently resides in Monterrey, Nuevo León. In his role he works with senior business leaders on their journey to utilize technology as a strategic asset instead of a cost center. Lewis spent the last three years with Gartner in his home country, United Kingdom, working exclusively with technology start-ups (software and service providers), helping the CEOs to grow and scale through effective product and go-to-market strategy. Professionally, Lewis collaborates with Gartner’s subject matter experts across a wide spectrum of areas (from ERP to augmented reality). His own areas of personal interest are artificial intelligence, machine learning and quantum computation. Lewis studied in the University Of Nottingham, U.K.

Below are some questions I asked Lewis during our chat:

Talk to me about yourself, what is your role at Gartner and how did you get interested in technology?
Gartner recently released the top 10 strategic technology trends for 2018 (summarize)
Of all these trends, which is the most disruptive and why?
Why do companies have a hard time adopting new technologies and how can they remedy it?
Have you noticed a difference in how business leaders adopt technology in Europe versus Mexico?
From my perspective, Mexico is laggard in terms of technology adoption; from small biz to enterprise. What are the main barriers to adoption inside enterprises and how do they remedy it?
How can enterprises keep pace with technology?
What are they key skills companies need to develop to compete in the future?
What is your advice to business leaders who are looking to take advantage of opportunities in creating new business models that are powered by an emerging technology?

Follow Lewis on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.

Watch our chat in the video below: