How business leaders can reduce income inequality

PEOPLE are losing faith in the future, believing that their children will be worse off than they are today. They are asking whether new technology is the road to a better future for all or only for the few who are orchestrating the reshaping of our world.

We don't have to look very far to see the transformational and disruptive changes brought by the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the fusion of technologies blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres. Everyone and everything on our planet is becoming connected, spawning massive tributary flows of digital information on a scale unthinkable a decade ago.

By 2020, more people will be equipped with mobile phones than have electricity or running water in their homes or villages. Facebook today has a larger population than China or India. And advances in artificial intelligence (IA) and robotics are breaking down man-machine barriers and augmenting human potential.