Grigor McLelland

03 Jul 2024

Ismail Amla's Grigor McLelland Lecture addresses technology's impact on work, society, and inclusion, urging us to keep pace with rapid innovations.

Held in memory of the first Director of Manchester Business School - since renamed Alliance Manchester Business School - The Grigor McLelland Lecture was given this year by Ismail Amla, Senior Vice-President and Global Consulting Leader at Kyndryl, which designs and builds large-scale information systems.

He discussed how shifts in technology, demographic change, the advent of hybrid working and changing generational expectations, has created challenges around inclusion, while widening inequality and societal needs are not being met by traditional institutions. He noted: “We live in an incredible time where only our imagination holds back what we can do with technology. What we are seeing is changing the world we live in, the world we work in, and how we relate to one another, charged by all these disruptive technologies. This is all coming together to create this blending of the digital, physical and biological world. The question now is what do we need to be doing in parallel with what is going on in this world?

“The rate of change is pretty incredible. For instance if you look at how long it took a piece of technology to be adopted by 100 million users, the telephone took 75 years, WhatsApp three and a half years, ChatGPT five weeks, Threads five days. Are we even absorbing what is going on?”

Watch the lecture in full on youtube.