Technology is changing our lifestyle. The conclusion of the concept paper published by EU Commission in 2017, "Digitisation, employability and inclusiveness – the role of Europe", is that digitisation creates economic growth and is not a choice but a necessity for European businesses.
It brings lot of opportunities, but also repercussions: some jobs will be replaced, new jobs will be created, and many jobs will be transformed. There are a lot of examples of enterprises that did not survive to this revolution, like Blockbuster and Kodak. Other companies, especially start up linked with the sharing economy, like FaceBook, Airbnb, BlaBlaCar or TripAdvisor are making a high profits and transforming our conceptions about economy and innovative growth. According to different EU Commission studies, the “Collaborative economy”, or sharing economy, that matches people who want to share assets and services online, is a fundamental issue for European Union and is growing rapidly. The new technology can bring high benefits but may also bring some costs and risks. Almost every sector is involved in this transformation: tourism, mobility, art, culture, finance, food, science and so on.
A simple example of the revolution we are living in, is the transformation of the work-place with the explosion of co-working spaces from idle places, where freelances and independent workers can collaborate in a total flexible way, saving money, reducing pollution, creating new ideas of business and limiting social isolation and depression. In order to be ready to embrace this revolution, the entrepreneur of the future should know how to communicate through social media, collaborate with other partners and use the various Information and Communications Technology instruments.
The importance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) is also growing day after day. These kind of tools are useful in the interest of modernize and internationalize the enterprises. In the last years, themes linked with green growth and sustainable development are also becoming very important. Nowadays, people are more aware about the risk of pollution and the importance of civil rights so they expect more attention on social issues, for example gender balance, and environmental issues, for example the impact of the companies in terms of carbon footprint reduction. Finally we can say that the entrepreneur of the future should have a multidisciplinary approach, should try to get a high level of AI, develop the IoT and use the ICT instruments in the enterprise in order to improve transparency, flexibility, collaboration between workers and limit the waste of time, spaces and resources.