The world is changing faster than ever

Key trends are converging and critical thresholds are being achieved

The fundamentals of the economy are changing…

and new technologies and applications are emerging that will change everything.

The way we work…

and the way we play.

Our relationships and families…

and the way our societies and organisations operate.

As we reach for new solutions, digital technologies will be at their core.

It’s time to improve your digital acumen.

Do you have a plan for how you are going to adapt and prosper?

Contact us to find out more

Do You Remember The Moments Everything Changed?

Perhaps you feel like you do. Certainly, there are moments that are hard to predict when the natural world does something extreme. But something much deeper is happening: often these notable moments are the societal consequences of technological progress.

Technological progress is happening all the time: 8 billion people means 8 billion innovators, after all. Occasionally, technological progress reaches a major threshold of utility, and then a cascade of effects occurs that ripple out over time. Most often its effects are much more incremental.

To understand change means to understand the implications of technological progress – which requires you to recognise the pace of technological progress, key thresholds and the nature of technologies themselves.

And so much change is happening! Massive demographic changes, environmental uncertainty, economic instability, and political conditions are now speeding up new technology adoption at an extraordinary rate. This was last seen before the Industrial Revolution.

Now the most accelerated change, and one of the key drivers of all the other changes, is in digital technologies, with the cost of computing capabilities collapsing at a faster-than-exponential rate.

We are suddenly in the era of digital-first – an era of hyper-novelty – that requires a new type of decision-making skill. We call it Digital Acumen, and it is based on a process we developed called Technosocial Sensemaking.

Developing Digital Acumen

Developing Digital Acumen is about empowering your relationship with technology.

The 4 key questions it addresses:

Digital Acumen is a leadership development program that focuses on your relationship with technology and technological progress, and improving how you understand and reason about technologies and their impacts. It addresses four key questions:

Question I: What technology?

What technology is practical to implement now to improve efficiency or solve problems I have?

Question II: What captures value?

What is possible with leading-edge technology to capture value in a new venture, or with a new approach for your existing business?

Question III: What impacts?

How will advancements in technology impact you, and how should you respond, on both a business and personal level?

Question IV: How to lead?

What do you need to know to commission and lead initiatives to get the best out of advancing technologies?

Play the video to find out more.

Who Is Behind Digital Acumen?

These are some of the organisations that that we’ve worked with who have inspired and informed the development of Digital Acumen.

Mark Woodman is an award-winning educator and innovator, who has published over 100 articles, books, reports, and guides on such topics as programming, software tools, systems development, business-IT alignment, and quality management. With a bachelors degree in computer science and PhD in software engineering, he is an Emeritus (full) Professor of IT with over four decades in academia and consulting to international clients in the private and public sectors. He chaired the ISO working group which produced the international standard for Modula-2 and has served on many advisory committees. Mark has innovated with systems development research and practice to educate over 100,000 students and lead a team to win a BCS IT award.

Philip Greenwood is a technology strategist with extensive experience in the specification, implementation, and management of IT projects. He is also an expert in deep learning and blockchain systems. With a bachelors degree in engineering and a postgraduate diploma in design, manufacture and management, he has worked for major clients on complex problems in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the US, conceiving and delivering strategic transformations for companies such as Accenture, De Beers, Chevron, Dell, and EDF, primarily in supply chain management, operations, commercial, and finance functions.

Grounded and Inspired by Industry and Academia

These are some of the organisations that that we’ve worked with who have inspired and informed the development of Digital Acumen.

We are proud to be an industry partner of:

  • You have a leadership role in your organisation, community or family – or aspire to one.
  • You want to be better prepared for the coming changes in the world – for the future.
  • You advise on, initiate, sponsor, lead or manage change programmes that include or rely upon a technology component.
  • You can find a couple of hours weekly to keep yourself better informed.
  • You need prescriptive how-to content about specific technologies in order to be able to use or configure them.
  • You seek to learn to write software.
  • You are looking for easy answers to complex problems.
  • You are only comfortable with conventional points of view.
  • You are looking for a closed-ended learning experience with a formal achievement conclusion.
  • You are totally comfortable with the way that technology is being developed and deployed, and expect that the medium-term future will be more or less like today.

You’ll never see the world the same again!

Digital Acumen is a digitally delivered service. It has some common components and can include coaching, facilitation and mentoring services as required. We can configure it for individuals, groups or organisations.

Over A Few Weeks, Digital Acumen Gives You A Fast Start…

And the main goal is to help you establish a habit that you will continue throughout your life. Because technology keeps progressing and it keeps driving change. It includes our proprietary sensemaking videos and a broad range of other resources. Key modules are:

  • Developing Digital Acumen – the foundation module that introduces you to the tools you need to develop the Digital Acumen habit.
  • AI and Automation – a module that works as an example of Digital Acumen sensemaking, and also guides you through the vitally important topic of AI and Automation.
  • Blockchains, Crypto and Smart Contracts – a second example module that guides you through the key ideas behind this important novel technology and its applications.

Popular questions

Hopefully we can address your questions here – but if you’re perusing this section of the site, why not also send us a message to talk with us about your needs? We would be very pleased to talk with you!

Our courses are delivered online and you can start them at any time. When you choose to finish them is up to you. They are intentionally open-ended as we are trying to help you form a habit (that of technosocial sensmaking) and we don’t want to invoke any Zeigarnik effects.

Acumen refers to a person’s ability to make good judgments and take quick and decisive action. It is a combination of knowledge, experience, and intuition that allows a person to understand a situation quickly and make effective decisions. Acumen is often used to describe a person’s business or financial acumen, meaning their ability to make wise investments and manage resources effectively. However, the term can also be used more generally to describe a person’s ability to understand and navigate any complex situation. In our case, we combine business and financial acumen with insights into Digital technology. It can also be used to describe the ability of an organization or a group of people to make sound decisions collectively. Acumen is often considered an essential quality for leaders and managers, as well as for anyone who wants to succeed in a competitive environment.

Technosocial sensemaking is a term used to describe the process of making sense of the complex interactions between technology and society. It is an interdisciplinary approach that combines perspectives from sociology, philosophy, psychology, and other fields to understand how technology shapes human behavior, culture, and social systems, and how humans, in turn, shape technology. The goal of technosocial sensemaking is to understand the ways in which technology and society mutually construct one another and how this process shapes the human experience. It includes research on how people make sense of technology, how they interpret its meaning and implications, and how they use it to make sense of the world around them. It also encompasses the study of how technology shapes our social interactions, institutions, and culture.

The Zeigarnik effect is a phenomenon where people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed ones. The effect is named after Soviet psychologist Bluma Wulfovna Zeigarnik, who first described it in the 1920s. The theory is that the mind is motivated to resolve the open loops created by unfinished tasks and this motivation results in better recall of the incomplete task. In short: if you want to remember something, or keep doing it, avoid “closure”.

We can only offer accreditations when the Digital Acumen courses are used through an accrediting organisation, which will usually provide a certificate on completion of an assessment.

We are happy to provide a certificate of engagement from Ipsetia Labs if you can prove to us that you have engaged substantially with the programme.

Digital transformation is about changing processes and behaviours in an organisation to being computer-based, ideally using the best of today’s technologies. Digital acumen is more about the individual than the company. Developing digital acumen results from an individual committing to get up to speed with leading and emerging technologies and contextualising the ideas for their company role or for their personal development.

Contact Us

To find out more about Digital Acumen or get your questions answered, please send us a message using this form.