Lessons from the Nordic countries

If SA could switch from crisis response to future challenges, we could truly embrace the fourth industrial revolution

SA — especially Eskom and the SABC — could learn a lot from Finland. I was in Helsinki last week, speaking at a conference about the Internet of Things (IOT), and several talks resonated with the problems we have in SA. IOT hasn’t really hit the public consciousness yet but it holds enormous potential for the automated new world of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR).

Cameras, sensors and autonomous cars and robots will increasingly be put to work for business. Connecting them and understanding the data they supply will be a huge growth industry.

Of particular interest to Eskom was an example of an Israeli power utility which has IOT sensors that can tell if a turbine will break down. But it only gives a 30-minute warning, said Colin Shearer, the UK chief strategy officer of Houston Analytics. Combined with data analytics from artificial intelligence (AI), this warning can be increased to 30 hours. Imagine how helpful that could be to Eskom.

There are also sensors that provide useful data on printer toners, which most people think have only 10% left when they replace them. “Actually, it’s the upper 20%,” said Shearer. “Imagine the savings to be made from what seems like a trivial example.”

Imagine the difference of working with real data instead of hunches — one of the underpinnings of the 4IR way of working. Apply AI to this abundance of data, and businesses — especially Eskom — can make more informed decisions. Instead of reacting

to unforeseen crises, it could focus on dealing with issues before problems occur.

Shearer’s example from Israel Electric Corp, he told me, is 10 years old. They are working on other, bigger, problems, while Eskom doesn’t know when its tubes will leak until they do.

Two executives of Finland’s national broadcaster, Yle, described how it is dealing with the fact that young people don’t consume media the way their parents did.

What! A public broadcaster that invests in its youth market instead of fighting off demands for more ANC election coverage and threats to make it a “state broadcaster”!

Antti Hirvonen, head of youth media at Yle, said: “The youth are not listening to the radio any more.” His task is work out how to get a new and young audience to use Yle content.

Chief innovation officer Anssi Komulainen said people have multiple connected devices and want to adjust the content and experience accordingly. Yle mines usage data, like Netlfix does, to offer similar choices. If a consumer is taking a 24-minute bus ride, it wants to suggest content that lasts just less than that.

In future, he said, the broadcaster will be part of a larger ecosystem where “the platform will be owned by someone else” — clearly mobile operators — but it is trying to stay relevant. “We want to understand all of this, especially the context of the content.”

SA could learn a lot from these approaches.

Imagine an SABC that invests in its youth market instead of fighting off ANC election demands