Liked the first digital revolution? You’ll love the second

From the beginning of the 21st century, historians will remember a profound change in the economy: the “digital revolution”, where the dominant economic players no longer come from the fields of Energy or Industry, but the famous GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) in Western countries and BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) in China. This revolution is of the same magnitude as the industrial revolutions of the nineteenth century, or the invention of printing at the beginning of the Renaissance — but over a much faster timeframe. And this is only the beginning. French version here.

By 2017, all major organizations have understood that this transition, and the transformation it requires, is a condition of their survival. Several studies show that the current dynamics will cause almost half of the world’s top 500 companies to disappear within the next 10 years, at least from this ranking — a Darwinism of astounding speed.

However, this development is not taking place at the same speed in all industries. Even Kodak had 10 years to see the approaching wave of the digital camera that ultimately engulfed them. And Kodak has also demonstrated that you can deliberately ignore an iceberg lying straight in your path.

In the nineteenth century, there was the first industrial revolution which created…