The development of electronics, telecommunications, and computing during the 20th century is one of the fastest and most transformative revolutions in human history. Compared to the successive revolutions in society’s progress since prehistoric history, it creates a new paradigm of progress that continues to be difficult to assimilate. The times between scientific findings, their realization in products or services, and their understanding by society, are becoming shorter and more demanding. Understanding how innovation, not only technological but also global, translates into a real transformation of society, its processes and how people approach it, requires the coordination of all social actors to achieve equitable and sustainable economic and social progress.

This article contextualizes and explores the keys to the relationship between innovation – understood as a complex process –, transformation – which is now digital –, and the transfer of knowledge necessary for the former to really become a transformative element of society.

This article analyses the concept of industrial revolution, from its origins at the end of the 19th century up to the current excitement surrounding a supposed Fourth Industrial Revolution. Despite being an idea that is firmly embedded in the Western cultural imagination and in the field of academics, numerous historiographic, economic and sociological studies carried out in recent decades have deeply questioned it. In this article we will explore, on the one hand, its most widely-known deficiencies – which for many make it a spurious concept, loaded with erroneous suppositions and an obsolete vision of technological development - and, on the other, some of the ideological and political effects of its use.

The changes in the 21st Century are constant and, within the framework of VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) that we face, digitization in all the areas of organizations has an increasingly mainstream dimension, which also has an impact on people management. In this article, we review the key elements that must be considered in relation to people management and digitization, as well as the current state of the art in terms of the implementation of tools for improving our functions in the field of personal development.