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COMMENTARY
Innovation takes over our society in waves. Not the "improvement" type of innovation, when a cell phone gets a bigger screen or an extra camera, but the profound, all-encompassing "creative destruction" innovation, as economist Joseph Schumpeter called it back in 1942. The innovation that changes the way we live our lives.
The first wave of rapid innovation dates to the 1780s, when humanity greatly expanded its use of water power and developed mass production of textiles and stronger iron; that wave lasted about 60 years. Since then, every new wave has been shorter, more intense and more demanding of us. We are now in the sixth wave-the era of artificial intelligence, robots and drones, clean tech and data. Lots and lots of data.
I think I remember when that era started in the mid-2010s. Headlines from business and technology press were shouting: "Data will help change the world." Growth and success related to big data were promised in marketing, health care, shopping, travel, entertainment, gaming-all areas of life. Just as with previous waves, "creative destruction" was about to change the way we did things-automating processes, digitizing goods (When was the last time you've printed a stack of...