Business Transformation: Moving at the Speed of the Consumer

Glenn in, in prep for this. YouTube videos and presentations. And things and my. Biggest challenge, today is going to keep you like. On. The question I was like when I did the Gangnam, style first of all first of all our start already they said you come out that door you came out that door first I was told is talking about bathroom. Always stays left yeah. You. Were left of me that's for sure a. Break. Front. Row a student. Frank Jules right there - front row. Ok. So you heard my shortlist Glen of what's. Driving, change, connectivity. Security. Data. And television I call on my Apple watch that I would decline. It please that's, ok knows right now. If. You think about the implications, of. Security. Connectivity. Kind of technology. In its evolution how do you think about that ok so a couple things one is that I'm. Gonna go. A little bit broader than that because, you, and I know this and I think the audience knows it but it's worth pausing on which is I've, been around this investing, game for 35 years now, and. I've never seen, a bigger opportunity, for investors, which means it's also bigger opportunity, to the enterprise. Something, you should tell your kids about make sure they know about then. Mobility. It's. The single biggest investment opportunity. In the world in my. Lifetime, for. A couple of reasons one is that it's. I've. Never had a market, to, invest in where. There were more customers. And there are people in the world right. Right. Now they're more. Handsets. Out then there are then there are a world's, population, that's. What that's I mean, talking, about unlimited upside, secondly. The. Data traffic is. Projected. To increase 40, 50 percent per year over the next several years the. Opportunities, for that are enormous all through our company but everybody's companies out here and third. We're, on the cusp of some major innovations, which we'll talk about that will enable huge, amount of opportunity I think, perhaps, the most important, of these is 5g. Which. You're going to boy when over what time period. 2018. 2018, yes, starting, next year and deploy, to the next couple years 1,500 times the speed of currently. Wireless standards roughly about the same speed as you'd get wired in your home or office think about that this is gonna be extraordinary that, will be by the way in my view the. Platform. For the new global economy and if. You don't have that that'll be table, stakes in the game for building the next next, economy the. United States will be the leader in the world of that AT&T little bit leader in United States on that big big deal that's, kind of I think big thing number one then. What. Will go along with that is changes, in the way we compute how.

We Compute, and what we compute, and, I thought we can go into these a little bit later on but let's just talk about the way, the. Way we compute is gonna has, moved already in the cloud everybody in this up in this room. Knows that but. Then the interaction, of the cloud with, machine learning and artificial intelligence, is gonna. Fundamentally. Change, the way we compute in the future that's kind of we can talk about that later on how, we compute, is fundamentally. Changing in that remember. When you, and I were coming up you. Had all that colon. Backslash. You. Know dot dot dot whatever was to enter something and then we got graphical, user interfaces, and it fundamentally changed how people interacted with their computers that. Was a big, thing for a while and now we move have moved to touch computing, again changed it changed it once again we're, very soon and right now we've. Already begun the era of voice recognition kind. Of fundamentally, way we change, the way we interact with our computers, yeah this you might think that ILECs is a toy but it's now starting to have all sorts of other very, important applications, and aluminium and natural, language processing voice. Recognition will, move into all sorts of enterprise applications, for the business I by. The way you know I've had this conversation I think we'll find a path to to, gesture, recognition, that's, the technology hasn't worked yet but I think it's going to be out there you can actually move. You're. Interacting, with technology through, your gestures and then, of course, AR. And VR so the way that we compute, how, we interact, with our technologies, I watch your hands move I'm worried, that you might get an autonomous, car and start doing that, the. Best part about the autonomous, car is that it'll. Drive for me so I have to worry about it anymore that's why my wife won't let me drive the car in our neighborhood because think. About too many other things and, then, finally. What. Death what those computers, do and, that's. The part we're gonna talk about later but that's when you really get into the computers, doing. Tasks. Today that we think human beings naturally. Do yeah, and that becoming more and more part of, what. Technology does worse is substitute, for human tasks, well the the hallmark, of your investment, over the last couple of decades at, least what I've looked at you. Tend to build a thesis and then jump all in and, it's, always a, two, or three part story it's never I think this thing is going to take the next step so you have, a tendency to put two or three things together and and obviously, you, mentioned 5g, is the platform for the next big economy, what are some of the other things you're excited about it, as, far as technologies. Go, you know blockchain. Bitcoin, so, let me come to that part in a minute let, me give you something in front of that first which i think is really which interest me. Which. Is that the. Marc. Andreessen famously, coined a phrase software, is eating the world. You, have built out what does he mean by that you've, built out at AT&T, the, first software-defined. Network. You. Can also tell us a little about this later on but you've also put a open-source.

Standard Out there for networks around the world top, Raekwon, that's. A by the way a whole departure, for 18 T but if you think about the. What. We used to think about as a network, now being a piece of software we. Just think is a big building with all that gear inside all the wiring running around all the trucks coming and going from and all that kind of stuff now, is a piece of software what. You can do with that and that's happening across, businesses. So. I just bought a business. That's. The world's largest, market. Maker for securities. Imagine. It's what used to have on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. It, uses, something called high-frequency trading, technology. Which buys and, sells stocks. In my, seconds, that's a millionth, of a second. At. A profit, of a penny or less and does. It millions and millions and millions and millions of times a day and ends up making a lot of money and become. The world's largest market maker so now that. Is taking a whole, swath of what used to happen on Wall Street and having. Making happen inside computers, via software and that's. Going to work its way through every, major, business. All across the world and investing, ahead of that, is. If you take all these things I talked about you know. Artificial. Intelligence. Changing. The way in which we interact with our computers, moving, aggressively to cloud computing thinking. About the substitution of art of these, substitutes of these stuff for human, tasks, that's. How one way to think about that's kind of one - is. This. The. Second. I said, mentioned, how mobility, was the biggest opportunity seen in my lifetime and that's in the context, of this, big trend called the internet that I've been playing since, the early 90s. There's. An something, else happening right now that in, my mind has an opportunity to be at the scale of the, Internet, as. A trend. For, the future and that's, in the world of digital economies, of digital. Currencies, partly it, goes under the heading, of block, of Bitcoin. And. It's. But it's not about the Bitcoin as the currency unit the. Bitcoin. Coin. Itself it's. Not about the blockchain which is the the Oldsmobile you. Know your uncle's Oldsmobile, version of Bitcoin investing, which is thing that very conventional people can understand, and.

It Doesn't, hit they don't have to not that they can understand but they don't have to think, about their entire business being disrupted, because they can just put a blockchain in and think they're cool. But. The real thing, is the Bitcoin protocol. Which. Is the standard by which which, can be a standard by which we exchange, anything, of value. Anywhere. In the world at the, speed of light at no cost. That. Is just, as we took information and, turned. It into something that could be transmitted, around the world at, the speed of light at no cost and then. Added voice on to that, and the, internet and then, added, video now on to that the next, thing to be added will be value, and the. Means by which we're going to do that is what goes, in the rubric of digital currencies, and if, we get there that's hugely, transformative. And. I think potentially the most interesting, big, trend after mobility. Out, there today let's. Switch to the economy if you don't mind yeah I mentioned earlier there's there's headwinds, for business in in. Technologists. When you look in this room most everybody, in here has gotten, less budget to work with been asked to move faster, do more make, these architectural, changes, and it's, a it's a challenging, environment and I always, view you as a, you. Have a hunters mentality. To you you're always an optimist, you always. See. Opportunity, in their how do you think about managing. And face of change right now well how do you view technology. In the face of this backdrop. In the economy. So. The the. Trends. Which I've described. Create. Huge. Winners, and losers. You. Get on the right side of these trends you, can. Be, very successful you get the wrong side of trends you'll wither and go away so, the company, that I've just on I just bought, has. This technology, we used it to buy we threw it we bought a company that didn't deploy technology. Well and. With a very short period of time I've funnily transformed, the cost base of the company we bought by putting my my advanced, technology, into it we're the winner they're the loser, that's. Happening all across every, sector of the economy so, if you think about it from the point of view I've talked about it's, a very straightforward analysis. To say. This. Company wins this company loses I bet here I compete with the companies that I compete, with the companies that are going to lose so for example if there's a the Nasdaq has an index out there of. Companies, that have aggressively, adopted, cloud technology. Versus companies that haven't and the. Companies that have not adopted, the companies that have adopted cloud technology, have stock. Price has. Grown roughly. Three times the rate of the companies that have it over, the last five years Wow, so that giving I can show to you later but that can give you an example up there it's. That hard, to. See, from this and sometimes hard to do inside the companies so, one of the reasons, why I've enjoyed very much me on the board of AT&T is we, are in the midst of one. Of the biggest, transformations. In, American, business history all across everything we do and which, you you know I'm not telling you this and on the audience this thing everybody's aware of this you know you helped me going. From analog to digital going, from wireline, to Wireless going from hardware to software going, from connectivity, to content and services, very.

Few Companies have the. Courage. Commitment and balance, sheet to do that I think. We're gonna affect one of the most profound business, transformations, in the modern American history every decade of the, technology, business there's been one company. That reinvented, itself. Intel. In the 80s IBM in the 90s, Apple, in the year 2000. And it's, probably gonna be AT&T. And perhaps Microsoft, in this decade. Very, few businesses do that and it's much easier as an investor to, identify, the business that can't do that and then deploy the technology and the in the winners to compete against them pretty straightforward, exercise but one. Of the things that in, that if, I talk, about that specific, example where winners, and losers your. Labor efficiency, of the winner is far greater than than. Those who don't adopt the technology you, roll that up into society, now and say how, do things look on the horizon from. A jobs perspective. When we have AI machine, learning so, many things get into automation, that used to be manually. Accomplished, how do you think about the redeployment, of the workforce. Anybody. Who tells you. They. Know the, answer to that question is not. Only fooling, you but they're probably also fooling, themselves. Right. So I have no idea and that's just that's a prognostication. So let me answer it from two points, of view, one. Is, that. There. Is a. Reason. To be optimistic, which. Is you as you as you suggest is probably my reflex default, position, right but a. Very good article by the way in the modern New Yorker magazine about this. Which. I recommend everybody read but, there are two kind of points that we can think about on the optimistic, point of view one is, that. And this is onion realizes there it's a zero-sum game out there but let's look at it from the American perspective the. Companies, that are coming back to the United States, from. China, and. Mexico that are, deploying, advanced manufacturing techniques. Known. As robots but robotics, but more advanced than that are actually increasing, manufacturing. Employment the United States last year was the first year in 25, or 30 years the, manufacturing. Employment increase in the United States almost. Entirely because of this phenomenon, reshoring, now, there are many many fewer people in those factories and you know the factories went let's say classically. From the United States to China now coming back again each step along the way labor, has been cheaper but the return here, actually increases employment in this country which. Is actually quite a quite an interesting phenomenon, because when, you, don't need the cheap labor the location, becomes more. Important and about things like time to market then. About the. Cost you know the cost per hour of your labor so, that's one thing that's causative, for this country in a place where we've lost unemployment, look, by the way in the last thirty years the United States we've increased, the value-add of our manufacturing. By. 2.5, times we. Manufacture. 2.5. Times more in this country than we did 30 years ago very few people understand that the. Problem is we we employ only 2/3 of the people to do that then. We did 30 years ago because. We've made a very substantial, move to higher value-added more efficient manufacturing, in some, sense that's now turning around an increasing, employment that's one thing to remember the, second is we've all read about the. Transition, of jobs if you think about Amazon, changing. Retailing, you've. The. The. Jobs in the Amazon's factories, and warehouses pardon. Me that. Are. Technologically. Assisted, or, actually better high-paying, jobs and the ones they're replacing, its retailer. And. So we're just shifting where some of this labor happens and moving it into places higher value add and. You know the so there's a vignette. In this New Yorker piece about one of these a worker in one of these factories, saying if it. Wasn't for the robots I wouldn't. Be able to do this physical labor anymore the robots picking the thing up I used to have to pick up I could do that when I was in my 20s all day I can't do that when I'm in my 50s I actually still have a job here because, assisted, by the machine so, there's some positives, to it that's I think to think about but, the but the downside. Is. That it, is entirely possible there'll, be large parts of the population particularly. People are older, pick. That. And. Had done manual labor that will not be able to make a transition, and will have real, very serious.

Employment. Prospects and if, you look at the, research. On that that usually translates, into, diminished, employment, prospects, for their children and onwards. So, it's it's a mold can be a multi-generational, problem. That, suggests. That we need to thank very very hard and it's very important for the business community to understand this then, we need to think very very hard about changing, the nature of our social contract, to. Send a message to those folks who risk, being obsolete and are in great fear of that that, they will be able to have things like health care in our lifetimes, retire, with dignity and not. Be. Subject. To you, know the. Perils of being out of work for a lengthy, period of time and a society gun Kim a safety net I think, that's in our vital economic, self-interest if we're gonna be the people riding on top of this wave as. You. As you and I have been fortunate to do so. Staying, on the theme of, you. Being an optimist, I. It's. Been very intriguing to me to watch that you have a brain. That operates, as close to a computer, as but. A biological. System can probably operate, and. Yet you you, have, this, relentless. Enthusiasm. And I've read, somewhere that you. Describe, your life as an adventure and, not a commercial, enterprise kind. Of a. Strange. Statement coming from a business person who's had your kind of success. Talk. A little bit about that, if you don't mind whoa how, do you view this, as an adventure. So. People ask me, people. Ask me kind of what. Are you doing these days and I say precisely what I want to do. And. So. I had a young person come to me and. Asked. For some advice I love talking to young folks they really if you want to be optimistic about the future spend a lot of time with, people these, days and, what. I said to him was, you. Know he said what should I do this show do the other thing and I said you know and he had one sub-team want to talk about as well and I said look you love this because when you talk about this thing this one subject you. Love it, that's. What you should do, you. Want to have a work that you do where you get up every morning and. Do. Precisely, what you want to do because you love what you're doing learn. Me some good days and some bad days but still that's where you want to be and so, that's how I thought about it which is. Get. Up every day and just go think about it as life's. Adventure. Just, pursue what you love wholesale. And. At the end of that day at the end of that month at the end of that year at the end of that lifetime it will have been a great adventure, and, you will have found success, and I. Look I've been involved largely, not entirely my life and in a field where success is denominated, financially. And commercially, I've many many friends where success is denominated in to something else what. They've done for their society what they've done for their community books they've written you. Know paintings, they've created if, they're doing what they're loved and, they're. Good at what they do they. Will have they, will be able to whistle while they work all their life yeah and that's what we want that's awesome, so going. Back to the business front one of the things that you've you spent a lot of time traveling I think you just got back from the Middle East you mentioned, backstage. A, lot. Of the. Push. For business now is globalization. And certainly we've invested, a lot. Outside. The u.s. to make sure that people could have, uniformity. Of service, and expectations. Throughout. The globe what's. Your view right now on some. Other areas the globe South America, Asia Europe how. Do you view the economies, there. Give. Us a little background on how you think those things are shaping up yes we've come out of a period, in. Which let's. Say they're almost 10 years now it'll. Be 10 years, 2018. Where. The primary. Issue facing, us as a country. Was, the. Aftermath, of the Great Recession. Aftermath. Of financial crisis in the Great Recession it was about sort of economics. Loss, of household wealth loss. Of jobs, rebuilding. Loss, of homes. Loss. Of savings and, rebuilding. From that and so, that is, largely. Behind. Us now the the, economic. Sort of corpus has, been healed and. It's amazing to see because you go right now a lot, of us had written off Europe, and. Europe is beginning to sort of grow, very.

In A very healthy way kind, of as well so. As you travel the world you don't see look there's, some. Real problems in China, the. State-owned enterprises. Being. Propped up by the banks. The. Bubble. In real estate speculation, the. Continuing. Investment. By some, of the cities in on economic, real estate projects. To keep that thing going. That's what there's a little bit of things like that out, there you got a wonder how long this stock market, continued, grow global stock market continued at this run but, those are kind of you know not fundamental, issues the way we had before the, fundamental, issues are out there right now our geopolitical. Right. You've got two, or three big, big problems, one. Of course is North Korea I guess. If you talk to people who were thinking about these things North, Korea's the is the, biggest problem, in the world it has a low probability of something catastrophic happening. The. Real conundrum out there right now is it's. Not clear how we can say to Iran, just. Kidding we're not going to keep our agreement, with you about nuclear weapons and then, say that North Korea well you can trust us on the deal we do with you concerning your nuclear weapons not, exactly sure how that. Fits in the one box but we can come, back to that later on secondly. I, just. Came back to Middle East it's, been a fair amount of time talking at. The end of the my trip to some, scholars in the Middle East and as you work your way through that. There's. Not one area, where you say there's, cause for hope. Right. I mean you go all the way through from north to south all the way through that region I mean one of the good things is on, the, top five problems in a region the israeli-palestinian. Thing doesn't, even compute. Get, on the list anymore so maybe that's a little bit of an improvement but you look at what's happening in Syria complete. You know, humanitarian. And political disaster. The, role Russia is playing in there the, collapse. Of Iraq the rise of Iran to fill that vacuum the. Competition. Between Saudi, Arabia and Iran with Qatar on the side the war in Yemen I mean that whole region is just a powder keg that. Creates. A whole, host of sort of. Complicated. Issues for the entire world, and. I, could go on but those are two kind of things so but and you could then you could say about you know oh then the third thing is the. Rise of. Nationalist. Populist. Totalitarian. Sort. Of kinds of governments in different, kind of forms whether it's what's going on in Turkey. The. Brexit. In Europe in. In, the UK the. Rightest. Governments are rising, on the on. The southern periphery, dealing. With the refugee, crisis, coming out of the Middle East, all. That stuff the you know the Catalonian.

2017-12-06 02:34

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