The digital revolution's silent majority

A sustainable technological transformation requires widely shared benefits, which means that helping the laggards adapt to the changes is just as important as enabling the innovators to thrive. The voices of the disrupted must be heard.

Statistics can hold brutal truths. We are constantly told that innovation is occurring faster than ever, yet the data coming out of the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution suggest that it is anything but revolutionary. Among advanced economies, productivity growth is the slowest it has been in 50 years.

This "productivity paradox" is often attributed to measurement problems or lags following the adoption of disruptive technologies. But another possible explanation is that public debates on technological trends tend to be dominated by the companies and entrepreneurs that are shaping them. The voices of the vast majority of companies that are struggling to keep up with technological change (or actively resisting it) are going unheard.