The Future Is Here — Lital Marom | Keynote Speaker and Corporate Innovator

The last few months have seen the ground shift under all of us. No business has been exempt from disruption, and as we scramble to find our footing, one thing becomes more and more clear: There is no going back to yesterday. We’re on the doorstep of an entirely new world. The future is here.

The structures and models that used to govern the way we do business no longer serve us or create sustainable value. To be relevant in today’s world, we will need new systems, ones that align better with the people they serve.

Those companies that succeed in becoming people-centric and elevating the human experience will be the ones left standing in this new era. It’s not an easy switch, and it may require rethinking every assumption you bring into the way you do business, but the results will be worth it.

I’d like you to invite you to be a leader in ushering in this new future — a future that is built not only on technological ability but also on the very human values of collaboration, trust and innovation.

There are three building blocks that capture where we need to be to thrive in this new world that is unfolding. Think of them as market opportunity segments: areas that have the potential to lead to new discoveries and previously unexplored opportunities.

Consumer Participation: Shifting From Passive To Active

The first of these building blocks is a shift in participation in the digital economy from passive to active. It used to be that consumers were excited by tech — any tech. No interaction was expected, and the consumer was perfectly content to stand by the sidelines and consume. Think Netflix beaming from the cloud to your television, or Amazon or DoorDash delivering to your doorstep.

This paradigm might remain, but so long as you’re creating something new, users are going to want something more. Immersive technologies, in which the user is an active participant in what’s happening, is going to become mainstream. An example of this would be immersive gaming experiences, where a user interacts with their environment and chooses what happens next. On a smaller scale, we see this same trend in popular shopping platforms like Amazon, where users are given a host of customization options to personalize their experience.

Collaboration 2.0: Humans And Machines Working Together

Automation is old news now, and what’s coming in its place is hybrid collaboration. That’s human and machine working together to create something better than either of them could create alone.

For example, consider this incredible MIT project that involves using AI to help blind people operate self-driving cars.

Innovation DNA: Reinventing And Disrupting Yourself On The Fly

The third key to success in this new world is fostering your “innovation DNA,” which must be incorporated into the very backbone of any business that wants to stay relevant. Imagine your business as a self-healing and self-generating organism.

But you don’t necessarily need a separate department working on innovation. Especially if you are a small business, you might want to design a system that can be even more integrated into your everyday workflow: a feedback mechanism that allows you to improve and reimagine yourself and enable you to make changes in real time.

For example, Volvo’s rapidly evolving Polestar car leasing program is taking into account customer preferences for digitally-based car leases and servicing to become a rental agency like no other. Another example is Goldman Sachs’s Marquee, a platform that combines market data and research into a large data pool that AI algorithms can tap into for continual new insights.

The next few years won’t be easy, and your success will depend on how closely you’re paying attention right now. No one knows what the future will hold, but with strong collaboration, renewed trust and the willingness to embed innovation at the core of your business in a whole new way, you will be able to shape a better world for everyone. Together, we are building the world to come. As Winston Churchill once said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”

This is an extract of the original article published on Forbes.