51. Preface: Intelligent & Autonomous Enterprise

The era of digitalization, that is already present, will significantly influence and change the today’s enterprise in various ways. The way humans interact with their environment, the services that customers expect, the increasing speed of new competitive products and technologies that will emerge, or the changing product portfolio a customer perceives as comfortable are just some examples that illustrate the influence of digitalization. Customers will expect connected services combined with the existing tangible products to increase the perceived convenience. The expectations from the environment towards existing businesses will continuously change faster than ever before that forces companies for rapid actions, continuous adaptations and fast new product releases to remain competitive. The fundamental consequence is, that the business environment, the service industries in particular, must strive towards intelligent and autonomous enterprises in order to fulfill these requirements. New technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robotics, quantum computing or autonomous agents, will be the distinguishing features to survive in the future. A business that is most affected by this disruptive change is the automotive industry. This preface will illustrate the current situation for the automotive industry, the business areas that are most affected by digitalization, the new technologies that are required, the new orientation of the traditional business units and the benefits that will result from this disruptive change.