Everything is moving faster, and companies are being propelled toward “real time” as the world becomes more connected and more responsive through autonomous agents, says Christopher Meyer, vice president and director of Cap Gemini Ernst & Young’s Center for Business Innovation.

Moving to real time is a competitive necessity. The real-time enterprise is unavoidable and means that a company can sense and respond faster than changes in a relevant feature of the environment. The scarce resource is now time, not financial capital.