Home featured Cargo Crew’s Narelle Craig and Felicity Rodgers Business Tech Digital Emerging Tech Business Tech Brave new world: the risks of embracing and not embracing new technologies in business James Harkness May 1, 2017 Although change is not without its challenges, business leaders cannot afford to bury their heads in the sand as technology advances at an exponential rate – to do so means certain doom. This was the key takeaway message from Telstra’s recent Future of Business roundtable, which drew together leading futurist Ross Dawson as well past Telstra Business Award winners. The session was facilitated by Telstra Business’ Group Managing Director, Paul Tyler and Executive Director, Sales and Service Channels, Brendan Donohoe. First to speak was Dawson, who described the increasing divergence, in terms of performance, between organisations that leverage new technologies – including innovations that unleash the full potential of their people or result in a more personalised customer service – and organisations that don’t. In support of this, he pointed to ABS data indicating that higher rates productivity and growth are strongly correlated with self-reported innovation and expenditure on technology. Dawson stressed that innovation doesn’t necessarily have to be internally-driven for an organisation to excel: “One of the most important aspects of innovation today is this idea of open-innovation. You don’t have to come up with brilliant technologies internally, you can find what is relevant in the universe and bring that into your organisation –that’s also innovation. Any change – the making of the new