The Fourth Industrial Revolution can compromise humanity's traditional sources of meaning - work, community, family, and identity - or it can lift humanity into a new collective and moral consciousness based on a sense of shared destiny. The choice is ours.

Corporate social responsibility is measured in terms of businesses improving conditions for their employees, shareholders, communities, and environment. But moral responsibility goes further, reflecting the need for corporations to address fundamental ethical issues such as inclusion, dignity, and equality.

I believe that, if managed well, the Fourth Industrial Revolution can bring a new cultural renaissance, which will make us feel part of something much larger than ourselves: a true global civilization. I believe the changes that will sweep through society can provide a more inclusive, sustainable and harmonious society. But it will not come easily.

The First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanize production. The Second used electric power to create mass production. The Third used electronics and information technology to automate production.

Technology is going to revolutionize almost every sector, leading to the demise of many traditional professions. Economic and political power will be determined less by a country's size than by its technological superiority.

As technology increasingly takes over knowledge-based work, the cognitive skills that are central to today's education systems will remain important; but behavioral and non-cognitive skills necessary for collaboration, innovation, and problem solving will become essential as well.

Of course, technology is not an exogenous force over which humans have no control. We are not constrained by a binary choice between acceptance and rejection. Rather, the decisions we make every day as citizens, consumers, and investors guide technological progress.

We must address, individually and collectively, moral and ethical issues raised by cutting-edge research in artificial intelligence and biotechnology, which will enable significant life extension, designer babies, and memory extraction.

It was a hallmark of Nelson Mandela's leadership that being open to change made him appear not weaker, but even stronger.

Profitability, growth, and safeguards against existential risks are crucial to strengthening a company's long-term prospects. But if these three factors constitute a company's 'hard power,' firms also need 'soft power': public trust and acceptance, won by fulfilling a company's social responsibility.

Of all the many leaders I have met in the course of my life, none made a deeper impression on me than Nelson Mandela. His courage, compassion, humility and wisdom were without parallel on the world stage, and he himself was an enduring source of inspiration.

Change can be frightening, and the temptation is often to resist it. But change almost always provides opportunities - to learn new things, to rethink tired processes, and to improve the way we work.

The trends that are shaping the twenty-first-century world embody both promise and peril. Globalization, for example, has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty while contributing to social fragmentation and a massive increase in inequality, not to mention serious environmental damage.

Environmental pollution, terrorism, and many other global threats do not stop at borders. We all bear global responsibility and thus need a global identity to enable us to cope with them. We must learn to integrate different levels of identity in ourselves. What matters is not either/or, but both/and.