You Say You Want a Revolution! PwC's Mohamed Kande discusses the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Mohamed Kande is Vice Chairman and Advisory Leader, PwC U.S. His expertise spans the areas of operational strategy, technology development, mergers and acquisitions, and operations management. Consulting caught up with Kande to discuss how the Fourth Industrial Revolution was going to redefine the future of business and what PwC's role will be as it guides clients through this brave, new world. Traditional will not be effective in the future, so organizations need to realign their roles and strategies to meet the goals of the business, he says. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is going to force companies to re-imagine how they do nearly everything if they want to be successful in the future.

Consulting: So, lots of people have been talking about the Fourth Industrial Revolution. How do you and PwC define it?

Kande: For me when I think the Fourth Industrial Revolution I think about how the wall of physical assets is colliding with the digital wall—the Internet, wireless communications, etc. The revolution is the result of two different sides of business coming together and creating a massive amount of value. In this new environment, everything changes—you can not run a manufacturing plant, you can not build new products today without understanding the applications of these new technologies and how they will impact your business; how they will impact your customer. You can't think about new products today without thinking about how you will sell products to new customers. It's this bringing together of the physical and the digital worlds—that's what we mean when we say the Fourth Industrial Revolution. There are also connections that are created from it; the number of connections you are going to get in the transition from the physical to the digital world is going to increase exponentially. There are massive amounts of data moving around and that is creating brand new business models related to how that data will be used.