The End of the Binary Mindset

We are brought up to believe in the need to make difficult choices at times. Remember when our parents even our managers said we couldn’t have it all. We cant have our cake and eat it. In politics it is left of right. In business boom or bust. In life heads or tails. We have been trained to believe in either or. One thing or the other.

Meanwhile we face a quantum threat – a virus we cannot see has the power to grow exponentially. As the virus takes one life after another it doesn’t understand “either or.” It only understands “and”.

Meanwhile, we face a crippling choice. Do we put the economy first or human lives?

The real problems is that binary systems are inadequate to deal with quantum threats.

Businesses are realizing this. Faced with an urgent re-evaluation of priorities, new alliances are forming. Supply chains are diversifying, ecosystems emerging. We are finally beginning to imagine a world in which many states exist simultaneously.

Quantum systems are emerging to address quantum threats. In simpler terms, “and” is replacing “either or”.

After a run at populism, globalism is back on the agenda as we plead for partnering to face a common threat. Many nations working together can achieve more than individual nations working separately.

Industries are merging and collaborating to meet new market opportunities and new human-centric priorities. Sustainability, wellbeing, mobility represent new markets transforming the way business is done. Thanks to technology, we no longer have to live and work in the same place. The concept of “office” and “factory” and working week is replaced by work anywhere with anyone at any time in a borderless world of virtual collaboration.

Urbanization may now reverse itself, as distance replaces density. We don’t have to be there to go there as streaming and immersive entertainment brings the world to our door.

In this context, the status quo is not slipping away, it’s running away. Even the nature of work is changing, from repetition to innovation; from competition to collaboration, from FTE to gig and from knowledge stocks to knowledge flows.

Remembering another catchphrase, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

As we rush to address the immediate threat of COVID-19 there are fundamental learnings we need to absorb – a quantum world needs quantum business systems that adapt, anticipate, and learn from quantum threats.

We all want to return to some form of normal. But we should also acknowledge the many aspects of our previous system that were broken. In particular the prevalence of binary systems and binary thinking that saw the world as either or rather than and.