The 5th Industrial Revolution: An Interview with Mike Bechtel, Futurist at Deloitte
Mike Bechtel is the chief futurist at Deloitte Consulting LLP, and his job is to “help today’s leaders achieve the tomorrow they want, slightly ahead of schedule.”
Disclaimer: This is a free translation interview Mike Bechtel, a futurist from Deloittewhich he gave to the Big Think portal. The translation was prepared by the editorial staff of Technocracy. In order not to miss the announcement of new materials, subscribe to “Voice of Technocracy” — we regularly talk about news about AI, LLM and RAG, and also share useful mustreads and current events.
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His career began when he realized as a child how technology could help him become stronger while playing with his first Commodore 64. Since then, Mike Bechtel has gone from inventor, holding 12 patents, to investor, co-founding early-stage venture capital firm Ringleader Ventures in 2013.
Today, he works with various organizations to develop strategic approaches to new technologies. His approach is to look at the future from a broad perspective, as if looking through a wide-angle lens rather than a telescope.
Big Think had the pleasure of speaking with Bechtel about his views, insights, and predictions for the future. Read on to learn why companies today are realizing that GenAI is less about cutting costs and more about expanding ambition; what’s driving the growing interest in “tech health”; why AI is “working under the radar”; his six key investment areas; how technology is revealing a critical leadership gap today; and much more.
Big Think: What did you mean when you said that: “Futurists are secret historians.”
Bechtel: History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. From a practical standpoint, we’ve found that many “revolutions” in the history of technology, when viewed over long periods of time, are evolutionary steps toward surprisingly simple “end goals.” Take user interfaces. The history of human-computer interaction—from PhDs with punch cards, to schoolchildren learning BASIC, to me and my book Windows ’98 for Dummies—has been an evolution toward simplicity. So when I started hiring young people who preferred to type on their phones with their voices rather than on keyboards, I didn’t see it as unprofessional heresy, but as part of an inexorable march toward simplicity. When VR headsets look and feel like sleek designer glasses, we’ll see them move even further in this direction. Simplicity always wins.
Big Think: Marshall McLuhan once said, “I am very cautious and only predict what has already happened.” Can you say the same about your own methodology when looking to the future?
Bechtel: How about a quote on a quote? “The future is already here. It’s just not distributed very evenly.” William Gibson, 1984. I like this quote because it captures the idea that unprecedented, “new-to-the-world” innovations are relatively rare. The future tends to emerge from new combinations of the known. So the key to seeing the future is not a telescope, but rather a wide-angle lens. If you keep an eye on developments across geographies and sectors, you can piece together images of your tomorrow today.
Big Think: AI adoption appears to be very uneven: Should companies be more proactive in shaping their AI strategies, or be cautious and watch how things play out?
Bechtel: The genie is out of the bottle, and AI will drive everyone’s business strategy, whether they are actively involved or not. I remember back in 1997 or so, companies were debating how much they needed an internet strategy. We saw how that story ended: You were either a disruptor or you were disrupted. My advice to my clients is: Be needs-driven. Focus on the business problems worth solving, and then (and only then) turn to shiny new tools. Focusing on the AI tools themselves (or worse, blindly worshiping them) is supply-side thinking. It’s a hammer with no nails to hammer. Find the nails first.
Big Think: What do people misunderstand when they talk about AI for business?
Bechtel: People look at AI as a diet pill when they should look at it as rocket fuel for increased ambition. When clients look at AI as a cost-cutting strategy, they are missing the point. Efficiency is great, but as my former venture partner used to say, “In the long run, you can’t shortcut your way to success.” The real value comes from reallocating the time, talent, and money freed up by cost cutting to strategic outperformance.
Or to put it another way: It's not that you don't need Toby anymore, it's that you can finally rotate Toby onto that ambitious project you've been putting off. And if you don't, you'll find that some business that doesn't care about your business a) hires Toby and b) works to put your business out of business.
Big Think: Is GenAI just a new tool or a massive transformation?
Bechtel: We tend to think of GenAI as a technological evolution that manifests itself as a business revolution. If that sounds “two-pronged,” let me explain. From a technical perspective, large language models (LLMs) and media distribution models are not unprecedented. They are deeply precedented. I remember showing one of my clients early transformer models in 2019, demonstrating how they could convincingly imitate Shakespeare. He responded dryly, “Sorry, mate, we make hydraulics, not poetry.”
Then one company had the bright idea to add a chat interface to their LLM, and that same customer emailed me to say they thought this (the same underlying technology) would “significantly change the trajectory of their business for the better.” The takeaway, I guess: From a technical perspective, GenAI is just the next page in a book that programmers have been writing for 200 years. From a business perspective, this is the part of the book where our silicon-based colleagues finally join the white-collar workforce in droves. Spoiler alert: We’re not at the end of the book yet.
Big Think: Your approach to futurism has a very practical bent – “understanding what will allow us to move from probable to profitable.” Many executives are currently unsure how to implement AI at the enterprise level. How do you help clear that fog?
Bechtel: My colleague Laura Schakt and I have developed a model for measuring and monetizing AI that we call the “3 Es.” Think of it like an archery target. The largest circle, the bronze medal circle, is Efficiency. Doing today’s work faster and/or cheaper. The next circle up is Effectiveness. Doing today’s work better. That’s the silver medal strategy. The innermost circle? Exponential. Doing entirely new work that we couldn’t do without AI. All three options give points, but as we’ve seen in the market, the margins get bigger the closer you get to the bullseye.
Big Think: How do you see enterprise technology evolving over the next 12 months?
Bechtel: Here’s an attempt at a quick cheat sheet to answer what is undoubtedly a big question. Over 15 years of Deloitte Tech Trends research, we’ve identified six key investment areas that have been and are likely to remain constant: collaboration, information, computing, culture, cyber and trust, and core modernization. Our 2024 study highlighted organizations ahead of the curve, leveraging new technologies and approaches that will become the norm within 18 to 24 months. We’re now entering the major phase of adoption of these technologies:
Interaction layer: Spatial computing (AR/VR) is having a huge impact on industrial facilities: industrial metaverses enable digital twins, spatial modeling, augmented work instructions, and digital collaborative spaces that make factories and businesses safer and more efficient.
Information layer: Leaders increasingly recognize that generative AI, at its most strategic, is less about reducing costs and more about raising ambition.
Computing layer: Enterprises are using a heterogeneous mix of hybrid architectures, private and public clouds, hyperscale, niche and edge platforms to maximize existing investments.
Cultural layer: We are seeing an increased focus on empowering developers to improve the day-to-day productivity and satisfaction of software engineers in order to attract, retain, and engage the best technical talent.
Cyber layer: Leading organizations are responding to the spread of deepfakes driven by new AI tools with a suite of policies and technologies aimed at more proactively identifying malicious content and raising employee awareness of the risks involved.
Base layer: The increased focus on technology recovery is driven by the recognition that leading organizations need to move away from reactive and piecemeal approaches to solving technical debt and toward a more holistic approach.
In 2024, we noted that generative AI was the year’s big tech sensation, but we also warned that focusing too much on any one technology could lead to us missing the forest for the trees. In 2025, that narrative will change, and we’ll start to see AI moving “under the covers.” It’s becoming the story behind the corporate IT narrative.
Big Think: How is technology currently impacting C-level executives and the way they manage?
Bechtel: I think the number one thing I see in senior executives is an emerging imagination deficit. Here's the thing: generative AI is like a genie. It grants your every wish, but it's only magical if you make the wish. Quick story: I showed ten senior executives the image diffusion model. And I told them, “Ask for anything. ANYTHING. You are literally limited only by your imagination.” Awkward silence: It was obvious these gentlemen hadn't had to imagine anything in years. Finally, one of the guys cracked and asked to generate a sunset. The result of that (uninspiring) request was an uninspiring photo of a bleak sunset.
Then the executive's assistant, a woman about 20 years younger, jumped into the discussion and said, “I want to see potato chips fight pretzels. The chips get guns. The pretzels get nunchucks. And it all takes place on Mars.” The resulting image became a modern masterpiece, and the previously grumpy circle of executives now literally clapped with delight. But here's the key point: They should have applauded her. In the coming era, when we are increasingly limited only by our imaginations, lack of imagination may be our limiting factor.
Big Think: If we are now in the 4.0 stage of the industrial revolution, what will the next stage look like and how soon will it arrive?
Bechtel: Well, (shock!) let's start with a little history. The third industrial revolution was about digitalization. The fourth is the merging of information technology with areas like biotechnology, space technology, robotics, etc. The fifth, I suppose, could be called “Humanity Strikes Back.” It won't be a rejection of digitalization, but rather a focus on carbon-silicon symbiosis. That sounded terribly nerdy, so let's rephrase it: “Humans and machines, better together.” This symbiosis is already in its infancy thanks to wearable technology, but in the next ten years we will start to see significant progress from “technology on us” to “technology in us.” Brain-computer interfaces, biological agents, who knows what else.
