5G AND THE CONNECTED BUSINESS WORLD5G AND THE CONNECTED BUSINESS WORLD
5G networks, with its dramatic advances in transmission speed, latency, capacity, energy efficiency and connection densities, promises to bring about a smarter and more connected world that will drive massive changes across the global economy. However South Africa will only be part of this digital revolution when ubiquitous connectivity is readily available to all businesses irrespective of the area, i.e. remote or urban.

PLATFORM ECONOMY IN 4IR
The platform economy is transforming how national and global economies function. South African companies that understand how platforms work can use them to gain massive advantages. We tend to think of platforms and ecosystems as a result of the Fourth Industrial Revolution of the early 21st Century. But plenty of companies and industries have employed the power of platforms and ecosystems in the past, with some instructive lessons.Examples of the 20th Century platforms include a newspaper or magazine that brings advertisers and readers together, as well as a shopping mall that aggregates real-estate, facilities management, security and parking, and attracts foot traffic.

These examples have given way to digital platform companies such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, Alibaba and takealot.com. In 2018, five of the first 11 of the Forbes Global Top 100 Companies were digital platform companies, with a combined market cap of US$2,6 trillion.

This presentation explores the Platform economy in 4IR, and if it is suitable for a company to be an ecosystem partner or a platform provider, as both approaches can lead to huge success.

We float atop a tsunami of information, simultaneously informed and misinformed, as emotions are weaponised at the expense of common sense – and perhaps common humanity. How do we balance the ying and the yang, these inseparable 21st century contradictions? How do we liberate, not enslave, ourselves? Perhaps even more pertinently, how do we stay sane?