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July 24, 2017

Tech disruption keeping UK CEOs awake at night

Will the widening tech skills gap eventually cause the rapid rate of innovation to run out of fuel?

By Tom Ball

A report focussed on CEOs has recorded a great deal of concern regarding their organisation’s abilities to keep up with the speed of tech advances.

At the same time as this, CEOs are remaining positive about the potential opportunities that the arrival of new technologies may provide.

The report behind these findings is KPMG’s CEO Outlook 2017, revealing that 37 percent of UK CEO’s are concerned by their organisation’s difficulty in keeping up with the rate of tech development.

A further 40 percent of the CEOs are expecting major disruption over the next three years, caused by technology innovation.

The respondents expressed other concerns pertaining to bringing in crucial strategic talent, a widespread issue due to the current tech skills gap, and also the process of piloting the host of emerging technologies available to businesses.

Tech Disruption keeping UK CEOs awake at night

Tudor Aw, UK head of technology sector at KPMG, commented: “With technology increasingly core to every kind of business, from retailers to healthcare providers, it is disrupting everyone. It is encouraging to see that UK CEOs view this disruption as more of an opportunity than a threat.  It is essential that UK companies continue to be quick to adopt and exploit the power of disruptive technologies, in products, marketing, manufacturing and operations.

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Another key concern extracted by the report is the pressing need to enhance and build data collection capabilities.

“New, disruptive technological innovations are emerging at a rapid pace. Today’s hot tech breakthrough could soon be yesterday’s news. With so many options to choose from, it’s extremely hard to methodically scan, assess, pilot, and deploy new technologies – but it’s essential that UK Boards ensure the effect of emerging technology on business models is a regular Board room topic.  This may also require new roles or personnel at Board levels,” said Aw.

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