“The changes are so profound that, from the perspective of human history, there has never been a time of greater promise or potential peril.” — Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum

Every company in the world develops from within a particular context. Situated at a certain time, in a certain place, with problems on the horizon and ideas from the past, companies must possess an awareness of their circumstances in order to be effective and successful. As a testament to the nature of change and the constant evolution within the global economy, a recent article explains how in the coming ten years close to 50% of the current companies in the S&P 500 will be replaced.

Importantly, however, the changes that future analysts predict for both the global economy, and the broader social and political world itself are set to be more impactful and transformative than at almost any other point in history. The underlying label for this impending change, has been coined the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” What this is, and how Ambrosus is optimally positioned to take advantage of this monumental shift, is considered more in depth below.

What is an Industrial Revolution?

The term ‘Industrial Revolution’ was originally used to refer to the transition from agricultural to industrial society in the middle 18th century (roughly 1765–1830). During this time, revolutionary changes in society, the economy, and in politics transformed ‘life’ as it was understood. New manufacturing materials, new forms of energy, and a set of entirely original inventions jumpstarted industrial growth for a new era. Most known, and perhaps most effective, was the steam engine — a general purpose technology from which entirely new shipping, manufacturing, and transportation industries sprung from.

Since the original industrial revolution in the late 18th century, two other distinct ‘industrial revolutions’ have also taken place.

The Second Industrial Revolution (1870–1914): In the words of renowned economic historian, Joel Mokyr, “The Second Industrial Revolution turned the large technological system from an exception to a commonplace.” (Second Industrial Revolution, pg. 4) More precisely, a number of old and new inventions finally had the possibility to be implemented into the daily lives of the people. On a broader level, the second industrial revolution brought completely new organizational methods and technologies into the global economy. Most notably these included steel, chemical advancements, electricity, the implementation of large scale railroads, and the assembly line. Chemical revolutions allowed for advances in military warfare as well as innovation in oil extraction. A new generation of corporations and monopolies sprung up in the likes of Carnegie Steel, General Electric, and Dupont (SIR pg. 4). Most importantly, the average life of the daily citizen, was radically transformed through improvements in transportation, food storage, and medicine.

The Third Industrial Revolution (1960s — 2000s): A short 50 years later, a further paradigm shift occurred in the global economy, and the broader world at large. With the rise in nuclear energy and nuclear related technologies, a number of electronic innovations flourished as well: the transistor, the microprocessor, and semi-conductors to name a few. Advances in biotechnology set the stage for modern day bio-sensing, as well as concentrated advancements in relation to strands of DNA. Most importantly, through the 1980s and the 1990s, personal computing, the internet, and information technology bolstered efficiency, and provided a foundation for automatization and quantum computing; the commercialization of airplanes and cars revolutionized the delivery of medicine and food, allowing for an increase in consumer choice. Clean energy, and the possibility of harnessing the power of nature became a reality. Altogether the third industrial revolution inaugurated the digital age; an era hitherto absent from human history began.

The 4th Industrial Revolution: The Best is Yet to Come

Unlike the previous three industrial revolutions, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has been described by Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, as incomparably more disruptive: “In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before.” (Source) Similar to how the first industrial revolution paved the way for a much more impactful second industrial revolution, the current revolution at hand has been amply prepared by advances in computer science and information technology developing from the 1960s.

More specifically, a number of digital technologies and organizational structures sit on the cusp of world-wide disruption:

· The Internet of Things (IoT) and the Internet of Everything (IoE): The Internet of Things (IoT) having advanced significantly in the past twenty years, is slowly poised to grow into the ‘Industrial Internet of Things’ (IIoT), or as others have put it, the Internet of Everything (IoE). Not only will physical devices be made ‘smart’ and capable of interacting intelligently with one another, but, these devices will soon be connected to optimal processing systems, configured to be artificially intelligent, and connected to secure and distributed networks.

· Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT): Distributed ledgers, and their most well-known manifestation — blockchain — are already becoming integrated into the fabric of modern finance, data storage and processing, and supply chain management. Distributed and smart information management possesses a number of further applications specifically pertaining to the validity of intellectual property, the ability to capture and monitor clean energy production, and the ability to share data among a number of parties who do not trust one another.

· Artificial Intelligence (AI): From household entertainment, to advanced supply chain management, artificial intelligence is being programmed into the core systems of the future. The intelligent and autonomous interaction between machines and other machines, and between machines and humans, ultimately will allow for quicker and more independent decision making, and eventually the automatization of entire economic processes. Machines slowly becoming capable of longer memories, and communicative capacities, will improve to become autonomous and self-sustainable.

· Big Data Analytics: By using ever larger data sets and more customizable algorithms, companies are beginning to possess the capability of uncovering hidden patterns and correlations in consumer behavior, business management practices, and even human health (source). From sports strategy, to military planning, big data analytics will be widely implemented across multiple industries of the global economy.

· Additive Manufacturing (3D Printing): Optimally secure 3D printed designs will be stored and selectively sourced only to interested parties. 3D printing materials, and the ease of access to 3D printing itself will become a consumer dominated industry, whereby easy and accessible tools can be designed and created quickly for personal use. Not only will additive manufacturing allow for better packaging and labelling of products, but it will also allow companies to source materials for their industrial operations in a cost-effective and efficient manner.

· Drone Technology: Similar to the consumer accessibility of 3D printed objects, drone technology, and more specifically drone services involving the delivery of products, will increase exponentially in the years to come. Drones will be easily designed, implemented for security purposes, and capable of a wide variety of functions. As a crucial transportation technology of the fourth industrial revolution, drones will function to significantly reduce the speed and time of moving products around the globe.

Beyond the digital realm, the fourth industrial revolution also possesses the ability to radically disrupt current biological and manufacturing practices. In the case of industrial manufacturing, advances in robotics and autonomous vehicles alongside the discovery of new materials such as graphene, thermoset plastics, and polyhexahydrotriazines (PHTs) promise to revolutionize how products are packaged, transported, and preserved (Schwab, 21).

Biologically speaking, genetic editing, synthetic biology, and the 3D printing of organs has already begun. In combination with big data analytics, biological advancements promise to interact with the human body, sources of nutrition, and the natural world, on a microscopic level (Schwab, 26). The ability to zoom in on specific cells, body deficiencies, and strands of DNA will inevitably result in an increasingly customizable and personalized world where individual preferences will once again rise to the fore.

Ultimately, the fourth industrial revolution promises to be more disruptive, revolutionary, and applicable to the world than all three of the previous industrial revolutions. Beyond monumental advancements in manufacturing and synthetic biology, equally important changes in data processing, large scale data storage, quantum computing, and nanotechnology all indicate an explosion of growth and opportunity: new business models will arise, consumer preferences will fluctuate with every big innovation, and the speed and efficiency from which humans will be able to interact and communicate will grow exponentially.

Ambrosus and its Position in the 4th Industrial Revolution:

In order to optimally position Ambrosus at the forefront of the fourth industrial revolution, a considerable amount of strategy and planning is necessary. While supply chains are one area of the global economy directly poised for industrial disruption, they are not alone: health care, city management, agricultural practices, intellectual property, cybersecurity and any other related industry connected to the Internet of Everything (IoE) will be equally accessible for the Ambrosus Network, AMB-NET.

In this sense, the Ambrosus strategy is to not only revolutionize supply chains, but to also creatively and directly integrate with any industry or polity in need of secure data management and configuration — from the tracking of precious commodities, to the verification of medical test trials, to providing insurance to pharmaceutical supply chains, AMB-NET provides a flexible and dynamic solution to an indefinite number of use cases. Altogether, as the fourth industrial revolution dawns in the coming decade, Ambrosus will be uniquely prepared to allow enterprises, governments, and any other individual or organization to seamlessly and efficiently integrate into a new era.