The first revolution began in the second half of the EIGHTEENTH century in Great Britain. The world he came from a rural economy based on manual labor and the use of animal traction. In this case the technological innovation was the steam machine, which allowed for an increase spectacular production and changes in the social classes: the birth of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

The second industrial revolution started in the mid 1800's and lasted until the beginning of the First World War, in 1914. New sources of energy such as gas, oil or electricity allowed to transform the industry and the society in general. It is the birth of lfor series production, the division of the production work, use of electric power systems, chemical industry, electrical and automotive industries. Appears monopoly capitalism that determine the conditions of sale, setting the prices and earning higher profits. It is of course the time of Karl Marx and his theories of class struggle and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, first, that of the proletariat after, and then finally communism.

The third revolution is that the more we know because it is the one that we live in. Starts at the end of the Second World War and is characterized by introducción of silicon, which revolutionized the microelectronics, renewable energies and new media, mainly television, fax or Internet. It decentralizes the industry, and improve working conditions, specialize the work, develops the economy of services, and it appears the economic globalization.

Until here's what we know. This third revolution is our comfort zone current, the many small and medium-sized enterprises. We spent the windows of banks with gentlemen with sleeves to the atm open 24 hours a day, to distribute a paper catalog to hang it on the corporate website, the books of accounts to manage finances with an ERP. Little by little, all the companies were adapting and investing in technology to not be left behind. Today all businesses are computerizedto a greater or lesser degree, and with a presence in the networks, either with a web or with a simple profile in Google.

And when all seemed quiet, they arrive a few visionaries announcing the fourth revolution, industry 4.0. This term refers to the digitization of industrial processes to make them more adaptive and flexible. We do not talk of automation but scanning. The Digital Transformation is not just a technological change but also a change in the business models, in the entire value chain of a company. The technology is not the change itself, but that it is essential for this to take place. The so-called Internet of things (IOT), Big Data, cloud, or cybersecurity are the trends that are currently on the table of any company in our country.

However, the changes necessary to meet the new revolution are doing big business. Amazon, HP, Zara, Procter&Gamble, to give some examples, are moving forward and investing in this strategic line, and this will make your trading account yielding increasingly better results. More customers, more sales, less costs. All this in contrast to the medium-sized and small companies who do not dare to take the step of changing its business model. Know that you should be digitized, you should take advantage of the competitive advantages of the technology, but few initiate the process of change because of the doubts you have about the benefits and the return on investment.

But what do we mean when we talk about adapting the value chain or change the business model? I am going to put an example that Carles Solé presented at a seminar of IOT which I attended a few months ago: Quality Espresso it is a Barcelona company, whose business is the design, manufacture and marketing of coffee for the restaurant industry. Their coffee makers are smart and connected. That is to say, sent data relating to its operation in real time, with a 3G SIM card which you carry in your interior. This makes the service of maintenance of the machine can be predictive and, obviously, to give a better service to the customer. But these data can also be used to generate more business. For example, you may be interested in the coffee distributor that it has signed an exclusive contract with the bar or restaurant. If we can know in real time the number of coffees the machine does, you can perform shipments of coffee to provision to the client before you run out of raw material. But we can also know if, based on monthly usage, the client is being unfaithful and purchase of coffee to another provider. If the machine makes more coffees that possible with the supply that we have sent to you, we can deduce that possibly uses coffee competition that is cheaper than ours. From this information we can make corrections in the relationship with the customer or even of our pricing policy.

To change the business model of the coffee supply we need for the manufacturer to build the connected machines have a system of analysis of the data that you send us the 500, 1,000 or 10,000 machines that we have spread our clients, change the logistics of order preparation and delivery, develop reports and dashboards that we alert the deviations, etc... it Is clear that, from all this we may improve our business, our turnover will increase and costs will decrease, so it seems that all of coffee companies should make this change. But why not all of them do it? Because it is a change complex business, operations, processes, department of IT, even of workers and their tasks. As we said before, it is a change of the whole value chain, and not all smes are prepared or dare to take this step.

Another example are the shoes completely customizable by the buyer. Started a few brands such as Nike, and now the vast majority are already offering this service. Enter the web from your preferred brand and you design your own shoes (colors, texts, logos). Their chain of production, has the flexibility to adapt to these requirements. ¡¡The taste of a single consumer!!.  What would Henry Ford, when he claimed, in the height of the second industrial revolution, that their customers could have your car in the color you wanted as long as it was black? Today it would probably be one of the greatest defenders of the Industry 4.0. The great men of business have always been characterized by a broad vision and ability to undertake in the midst of the changes. Henry Ford needed 3 business projects to bring to market its model T in 1908.

Improvements in quality control, knowledge of the process of manufacturing, predictive maintenance, knowledge of the client, traceability of the entire sales cycle, are innovation opportunities for any company that wants to initiate change. A change cross that is affecting all sectors and, as with any evolution, you will have followers that will grow and generate more profit and detractors, who will be left behind, anchored in their comfort zone and seeing as a result of your trading account is going to get worse year after year.

And not just companies must evolve. The labour market will also change. The emergence of new professions that we do not yet know, and others will be revalued, as the data analysts. It's already happening with advertising companies and marketing are hiring teams of mathematicians to be able to analyze the large amount of data generated by social networks. It is necessary to generate algorithms that extract relevant information from the vast amount of data generated by Internet. And let's not forget the machine learning (Machine Learning), where sophisticated software algorithms allow computers to learn by themselves to perform tasks quickly and efficiently in fields such as medical diagnosis, speech recognition, or of the written language, the classification of DNA sequences or the detection of credit card fraud. A whole new range of professions that are also education will have to adapt.

The fourth industrial revolution will generate a new world where the status quo it's not going to be able to stay. Natural selection was presented by Darwin in 1859. In the TWENTY-first century, businesses evolve and adapt to the new environment will have a chance to survive. The rest, sooner or later ended up dying out.

Sources for further information:

http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-37631834
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revoluci%C3%B3n_Industrial#Consecuencias
https://elpais.com/elpais/2014/10/17/media/1413577081_550723.html
http://www.economia.ws/tercera-revolucion-industrial.php

Photos:

Looms Chilangwa Cement
European Southern Observatory