Brian Armstrong is Chair of Digital Business at Wits Business School and lectures a Master’s Degree in Digital Transformation. He previously held leadership roles at Telkom, British Telecom and AST Networks.

Arthur Goldstuck, a foremost voice in digital trends, spoke to him about the new edition of  Digital Business (Silk Route Press), which Armstrong co-authored with Greg Lee. In this 2022 edition, they set out to define a business landscape that has been utterly transformed and guide executives and management through it.

Arthur Goldstuck (AG): ‘You describe a very wide range of stakeholders in terms of the likely audience for your book. How do you address such different audiences?’

Brian Armstrong (BA): ‘Digital Business is first and foremost a repository of thinking about managing in this time of profound technological change for anybody who needs to lead an organisation in this era. My aim was to help top and senior leaders as well as middle and junior managers to navigate some of their managerial challenges across a wide range of topics.’

‘It is intended to empower non-technological specialists with enough understanding and insight into the fundamental technologies that make up the digital era, like artificial intelligence and blockchain, so that they can participate in meaningful conversations.’

The importance of digital ethics in an ESG strategy

AG: ‘Let's look at the evolution between the first edition of Digital Business and this one.’

BA: ‘In the context of an elevated focus on ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance), the digital part of ESG is becoming really important. So we added a chapter on digital ethics.

‘What digital ethics is would depend on your perspective. If you come at it, for example, from an engineering perspective, it will be about making sure that your designs of products and services are ethical. If you come at it from a more sociologically oriented perspective, it means ensuring that your interpretation of ethical applications is the same as your greater society’s. If you come at it from the legal compliance perspective, it is about risk management.’

‘What digital ethics is would depend on your perspective (simple italics).’

AG: ‘My argument for some years now has been that new technology has a fundamental flaw – no-one has built ethics into the design. Trust is the missing factor in technology today, and we see it play out across numerous landscapes, from the metaverse through to social media and the like. What is your perspective?’

BA: ‘We see a weird dichotomy. On the one hand, there is a huge trust deficit in terms of the transparency of the algorithms in the apps we use, but also a huge trust deficit in the motives and intentions of those who develop or deploy the technology.

‘There are two possible ways you can look at it. A widely held position is that there are rapacious capitalist corporate animals that will deploy or develop whatever is necessary and say whatever is necessary for financial gain. An equivalent but different position is that it has to do with Big Brother deploying or developing these technologies because, ultimately, it is about control – knowing you and controlling you.

‘We all have had experiences where we said something and the next minute there is an advert on one of our platforms. So what is actually happening in terms of voice recognition in our devices? What's happening in terms of location tracking of our devices? Who is given access to this data? And yet, when WhatsApp wants to change their terms and conditions to actually share our data with other parts of Facebook or Meta, I'm going to carry on using it. It’s a weird dynamic that is at play. I don't know if it's because people are so invested in the use of that particular service or platform that they feel they don't have a choice.

‘The question for businesses is what do they do about it? It is very possible that at some point the trust deficit will catch up with them. We are already seeing it manifest in more assertive regulatory regimes.’

‘The question for businesses is what do they do about it? It is very possible that at some point the trust deficit will catch up with them.’

AG: ‘You talk about the intersection of business and organisational strategy, and digital transformation, but it’s really the intersection of far more than just those three. Those are three among a multitude of elements for which you have to find the intersection, which must increase the complexity of the book dramatically?’

BA: ‘The way we use these terms embraces a lot of that diversity. Strategy, in our view, is rooted in a clear understanding of the purpose and the vision of a firm. Why do you exist and what do you want to achieve within the constraints of your values?

‘Strategy is really the means by which the organisation achieves its organisational purpose. In that sense, it includes everything that follows. Technological change is one of the most profound forces on businesses over the course of human history, and organisations have to respond to this change. The sum total of all their responses is what we call the digital transformation.’

The Fourth Industrial Revolution and what drives it

AG: ‘In one of the chapters you discuss the virtuous triangle of big data, the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence. I'd like to add, if I may, cloud computing as the general platform on which most of those elements will be executed. What is your perspective, both academically and operationally, of the virtuous triangle or quadrangle, and the impact it is going to have on digital business in the coming decade?’

BA: ‘It's one thing to find the evidence that technology has changed the world, but a more interesting question is: what are the mechanisms and factors that drive this change? Probably the best model was developed by Chris Freeman, with Carlota Perez, which is the theory of techno-economic paradigms.

‘They say you get huge surges of socio-economic development, but they are rooted in three things that are necessary at the same time. The first is clusters of interconnected technological innovation. That is when micro-electronics intersects with global telecommunications which intersects with the media. Then you get the so-called information age. Now we are seeing the intersection of a number of mutually reinforcing technologies, like artificial intelligence, data science, the Internet of Things, blockchain and cloud computing, which will mutually reinforce and stimulate one another.

‘The second requirement is new ways of organising. We’re seeing the rise of platform businesses and of the virtual organisation, which is a new way of organising on a more flexible, dynamic basis – a new way of connecting supply and demand.

‘The third necessary condition for the creation of the technological revolution is new infrastructures. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is about the internet and global digital telecommunications. The Fifth will be about the cloud, pervasive connectivity wherever you are and universal transaction networks. All of those will come together to drive the techno-economic paradigm.’

AG: ‘Finally, I first met you 40 years ago when you were playing in a punk rock band, and people see you having completely reinvented yourself since then. But in reality, there’s a trajectory. What is the link between playing rock music in front of live audiences and talking about digital business in front of live audiences?’

BA: ‘I don't want to overstate the linkages but we were first punk rockers and then we learnt to play instruments. Then we became an alternative rock band. That reflects a few things that are important to me. It was a case of pushing the boundaries. It was a case of not accepting the status quo. Let’s be a little bit provocative. That’s always been with me in business. As an engineer, it was finding new ways to solve problems. In business, it was about finding new ways to turn businesses around or grow them. In academia, it's finding new ways to explain what we're seeing. Things I learnt in a punk rock group have been very applicable in a R40 billion-a-year business boardroom.’

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