This week’s coverage of Palantir’s rise to the top tier of US tech companies is a striking illustration of how AI, metaverse, and cloud technologies are transforming business. These innovations have fuelled a new wave of applications across multiple environments, accelerating the launch of market-disrupting products, enabling cost efficiencies, and expanding organisational capacity. For every breakthrough, new technologies are also rendering existing business models, even whole industries, rapidly obsolete.
Powerful new oligarchies have emerged in the tech sector, where success in innovation brings disproportionate influence and value creation. The accelerating advance of artificial intelligence and the coming wave of quantum computing are creating a perfect storm of technological change, overturning assumptions about how work gets done and redefining the types of people and skills organisations need to stay at the forefront.
Big Data continues to add incremental value across industries. Intuition and opinion are giving way to ‘data-driven’ decisions. Robotics and digital automation have revolutionised manufacturing and logistics. Cybersecurity, too, has become a major growth area as the creativity of criminal enterprise pushes organisations to stay one step ahead.
What does it mean for organisations and talent?
In this shifting environment, the most prized assets in businesses are able leaders who can harness the power of brilliant engineers and designers capable of creating the next wave of disruption. It’s a strategic reality shaping the future of global business.
On the talent front, cognitive agility has become a defining requirement, the ability to reimagine and re-engineer business models, improve internal productivity, and build external competitiveness. Technological literacy and fluency in data are already core leadership capabilities, not optional extras.
By 2030, most of the skills employers’ rate as critical will be cognitive, centred on analytical, systems, and strategic thinking. Digital fluency, including AI and cybersecurity awareness, will be non-negotiable for executives in any sector. The leaders who thrive will be those committed to continuous learning, capable of engaging deeply with technology while maintaining the adaptability to lead through rapid change and uncertainty.
TQ is replacing EQ?
Empathy, active listening, and self-awareness still matter but the balance is shifting. The World Economic Forum’s 2030 skills outlook suggests that while human-centred capabilities remain essential, they now sit alongside a growing emphasis on technological proficiency and data literacy.
It would be wrong to conclude that technology has eclipsed the human dimension. In fact, the more advanced our tools become, the more critical it is to understand people – how they think, collaborate, and adapt. Disruptive, market-transforming change doesn’t come from algorithms alone; it comes from leaders who can integrate human insight with technical innovation. Finding, developing, and rewarding these individuals is the defining challenge for organisations that want to lead rather than follow.
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