Technology futurist Scott Klososky urged the casino gaming industry to challenge itself in how it approaches technology, both by embracing the digital transformation and using new technology as both a tool and a weapon to win in the marketplace.
Drawing the comparison between Kodak and Instagram in the photography space, Klososky – speaking at G2E Thursday morning – emphasized that every industry must reach an inflection point of human and technological interaction that ultimately separates the winners from the losers – and gaming is no different.
Once a titan of the photography business with as many as 125,000 employees, Eastman Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2013. Instagram – with just 13 employees – was sold to Facebook for $1 billion in 2013.
In this form of “Digital Darwinism,” industry actors that fail to innovate fall into a death spiral, while those that are forward thinking thrive and prosper.
“Every industry is somewhere on the curve of hitting the inflection point when technology comes together to radically change an industry so that it’s never the same,” Klososky said.
“Where is the gaming space on this curve?” he asked. “I’d argue that you’re probably close to the inflection point but haven’t really hit it yet.”
The determining factor for whether an organization sinks or swims, Klososky explained, is the caliber of its leadership. While the pace of technology changes exponentially, changes in large, bureaucratic organizations – by nature – move slowly. Therefore, an organization needs a “transformational leader” who can cast a vision that looks beyond just the 12 month fiscal year.
“A good leader today understands how to close this gap. A bad leader moves too slow, doesn’t understand what’s coming, doesn’t invest their resources in the right ways,” he said, challenging the audience to think of who they would identify as a transformational leader in their company and in the gaming industry.
“If you’re really honest with yourself – can you name anybody?” Klososky asked. “Look into future. If you can’t look around your organization and see somebody who is a transformational leader, that’s dangerous.”
Emphasizing that humanity has officially moved beyond the Information Age, Klososky put forth his concept of Humalogy – which he deems the interactions of humans and technology – as the defining feature of our time.
“When we say digital transformation, we don’t mean you got a new iPhone,” he said. “Human beings and technology are integrating at a level that has never been seen.”
Klososky introduced a 10 point scale on which organizations and processes can grade themselves on their human dependence to technology dependence. An H-5 on the scale would be an activity that is nearly fully human-operated, like a poker game in a casino, while a T-5 would be a company that conducts its business nearly virtually without any human involvement, such as Amazon – which is uses online shopping, robots in its shipping warehouses and is experimenting with drone deliveries.
While there is nothing inherently wrong with being more dependent on human or technology, what is inevitable is that new and disruptive technologies like augmented and virtual reality, automation and artificial intelligence will continue to displace humans in certain types of work, even in an industry like gaming that remains relatively reliant on human labor.
The organizations that figure out how to harness these technologies to both cut costs and generate new revenues will be the ones who will thrive.
Klososky urged attendees to think long and hard about how technology will continue to transform their industry, adding that concepts that would be considered cheating today might become normal five years from now. For example, if a blackjack player sits down at a table wearing a pair of augmented reality glasses that feed him odds and card-counting information, he would likely be removed from the premises and banned from ever returning. In 2020, use of such AR glasses might be completely normative for table game play.
Klososky concluded with a call for gaming professionals not to rest on their laurels, but rather to consider how they can be a visionary and a leader in their organizations with regard to technology and innovation.
“You fight for tomorrow today. A lot of leaders don’t understand that,” he said. “You fight for your survival tomorrow by what you do today – what investments you make, the people you hire and the culture you build.”
