Posts Tagged ‘Future’
3 Things To Watch for By 2013
In the next 3 -5 years there three major things that will force how we think and how we do business on the Internet. You need to prepare today in order to adopt new ways of doing business online in the future. To adopt new ways of thinking, a paradigm shift unlike you have ever had to endure in the past. Giving customers what they want is paramount, if you don’t, word of mouth will work against you at a faster rate than you can ever recover from. The future is filled with change, how you embrace change matters more than ever today. The next 5 years will test your ability to make changes.
Questions to consider: 1.) Does the Technology you use today help fill your sales funnel? 2.) Does your current technology improve productivity? 3.) Do you have easy ways for your customers to connect with you or talk to you? 4.) Does your current technology help build your brand? 5.) Does your current technology match your business objectives? 6.) Is your company web-native, is the web your primary way of doing business? 7.) Does your current technology make paying for your product or service easy and in a seamless way? 8.) How easy is it to do business with your company online?
3 Things to pay attention to:
1.) The 3 Billion yet to come
In the next 5 years we will see the arrival of 3 Billion people, that’s 3 Billion more people online than there is to date. This will create a sound boom, an avalanche of new content and a serious need for filtering the noise. Filtering content will be more important than creating it, and you will need to be tagged to be heard. If you do business online, getting attention and converting will be much more difficult if you don’t prepare today. These new consumers will want more control and will not be forced into paying for something they can find elsewhere. Hence the phrase, Proudly Found Elsewhere. Your Ecosystem will need to harness the power of an open economy to survive.
2.) Web-Centric
In the next few years 30% of all commerce will be done online, do you have the right systems in place to adopt that 30%? It is expected that that number will eventually hit 60%, are you ready to serve them? Do you have a team working on creative ways to adopt to the web in a primary way? Are you still treating the Internet as an add-on to your business?
3.) Mobile & Social
The Internet is shifting from computers to mobile devices, eventually these devices will be embedded into eyecare and possibly bionic lenses. More text messages are being sent than actual vioce calls are being made in the USA today. Is your business channeling to mobile devices? Are designing systems to adopt mobile devices that integrate social networks? Each day new mobile devices are being developed, and each day more and more business is being funnelled through mobile social networks, is your business leveraging new technologies that maximize presence and attention?
The world is getting faster and very mobile, the web is central to everything being developed today, are you there, will you be ready? The world is coming like a tidal wave, will you ride it or be hit by it? It’s an exciting time, embrace the open economy and the open & free business model, adopt this new way of serving others and generate more revenue than the past.
Make Your Content Free – The Money Will Follow
This has been the topic of discussion for a very long time, the argument of making people pay for content over giving it away. The landscape is changing rapidly, the world is and will not tolerate being forced to buy content whether it be music, files or the written word, you can’t enforce control when you need trust! It used to be that he who had control made the money, today, the good news is, that is changing, he who has less control makes more money. The bottom-line is the bottom-line, we will always try to monetize anything and everything. It seems we are very short-sighted though, we are still trying to make people do things they don’t want to do. Trying to control what people can access is not the way to go about building trust, in fact, it puts the guard up and raises questions as to motive.
One of the bigger challenges I see with making money online is, it’s not seamless enough yet, people still have to jump through far too many hoops. You would think with all the advancement in technology this would have been solved long ago. As mobile technology improves, the more and more we become mobile, the more transactions and advertising will be come seamless, it has to because we won’t tolerate what is cumbersome. Mobile advertising is where you should be developing your content, convert your free content into an app for iPad, iTunes or mobile phones and what have you. Advertising (At-vertising) is now Appvertising. The world will almost be 100% mobile in the next 5 – 7 years, focus your distribution through Appvertising. Feed your Blog content through an app, distribution is not the problem anymore, the Internet solved that for us years ago.
The easier you make it for your audience to come in, the greater return on your investment. Attention is the new currency, and in that currency there is an underlying trust osmosis component. The equation of tomorrow is:
EXPOSURE -> DISCOVERY -> COMMUNITY -> REVENUE
We are moving from selling products & services, to selling our attention, Google is doing it all the time.
The power of the future is in sharing, sharing music, sharing content, and sharing means doing it freely, not being forced to pay for that sharing. The problem is we are in the midst of a copyright gridlock (coined by Gerd Leonhard), there is much to be figured out here. Making the money happens around all that sharing, your primary content is distributed freely, this paradigm shift of Free & Open will change behaviour. The revenue change will come after the behaviour, habit & culture changes first.
Being connected scares companies and business owners, because we are going through a fundamental shift, from Closed to Open. The fear of loss is far greater than the desire for gain in this shift. It means not controlling how the money is made, the open & free marketplace means you & I are in control, we get to decide, big business doesn’t want that. So think of ideas that will allow you to maximize the Open & Free Business Model, that will allow you to attract the right kind of attention.
We have to change our beliefs in how the world really is. Today only 25.6% of the world is here online, what will the world look like in the next 3 – 5 years when that number is over 60%? What would 5 Billion people online change in your online presence and brand? Think about that for just a moment, should you be doing things differently?
We have a Global Trust Crisis, Copyright Gridlock where the value of money needs to be re-determined, and there is so much to unlearn, but that’s what makes all this fun, the future is perfect because we haven’t screwed it up yet!
Give your audience access first before paying, Collaborate instead of Dominate, Coordinate & Cultivate instead of Command & Control, Control is Dead. We are becoming a broadband culture, we click to get before we ever pay. Access first, pay later.
I would love to hear your thoughts, my goal is to make you think, nothing more nothing less.
What do you think?
The Future of I.T. Strategic Planning
We will have to unlearn much of what we understand about I.T. Strategic Planning, the landscape is a never ending body of movement, change and definition, static rules are no longer useful. Much of what we know is in the control model, we build closed systems to protect data and deflect those who wish see it. In the future much of this data will not be behind walls, much of it will be readily available for consumption. Data that is not for consumption by the world will still need to be kept safe, but for the most part, it will be available.
Depending on how your organization is structured, bricks & mortar, I.T. Teams already in place, you will still have to adopt to the new Open & Free Business Model and wireless connectivity. Content normally consumned will conitinue, some content that was not available will find it’s way out into the open.
If you ask CIO’s today what the landscape will look like in the 5 – 10 years they probably can’t tell you. Why? If the exponential growth of technology is to continue we will have to learn or find a way to think exponentially, not continue in our linear fashion. Information Technology is going 2,4,8,16 and 30 steps later you are at a billion. The growth rate is impossible to keep up, let alone predict what we will or won’t be able to do in the next 10,20,30, to 50 years. Many of us might not be here to witness the true Matrix like living, but Virtual Reality will seem more real than the reality you live today. How do we plan for Virtual Reality?
I.T. Strategic Planning in the future will have to embrace more open business models and develop for everything mobile, infact, you should be doing that today! Simple things like the need for tech support will be gone, you won’t need to budget for personal, you will only need to budget for nanotechnology that will seemlessly fix problems, because we will all be connected. Remote access won’t exsist as we know it, it will just happen, and authentication won’t be necassary because clearance will be built in. The current framework won’t work for your organization 5 years from now. CIO’s will have to view everything with bionic contact lenses, where everything technology is about being mobile, embedded into eye care, and handheld devices. In the far future we will all become wireless devices and be seemlessly connected to the data we need.
The I.T. Strategic Planning steps I have made available here on my Blog, work for todays business models, but in the next 3 – 5 years they will fail because the plans won’t scale. There are 1.7 Billion on the Internet today, over the next 5 years that number will grow to 5 Billion, has your current I.T. Strategic Plan factored in this large growth already? What does that kind of growth mean to your organization, and how does it impact your I.T. Strategic Planning?
You may understand what your organization needs today, but are you looking out far enough, do you have enough information to show executives what is coming, I’m not convinced most CIO’s are looking. The future of I.T. Strategic Planning will no longer start will the 1st building block, we are way past that now, we will be building ontop of what we have already.
Remember, you don’t know what you don’t know, we can’t see the details of what’s coming but we know something far bigger is coming, and it’s not a small home network. I spend a great deal of time looking at the future and I work backwards to present day, that’s where helping you figure things out gets interesting. Creative ideas on how to adapt new technologies, how to use them and how they will improve revenues is where you should invest your time.
I.T. Strategic Planning is morphing, changing shape, are you fighting it or going with it? I would love to hear your thoughts on the future of I.T. Strategic Planning.
Two Key Factors To Your Social Media Success
Technology is growing at an exponential rate; we truly have no way of keeping up via traditional means when it comes to tracking. Organizations struggle to stay focused, struggle to maintain, and struggle to provide systems and services that meet their business objectives. The shift in how business gets done is making it more and more difficult to maintain profit margins and business lifestyles that most are accustom to.
Today’s I.T. Strategic Planning is shedding its skin and taking on a new look and meaning. Ramping up I.T. staff is no longer the norm; reducing I.T. Teams and virtualization is; it allows organizations to be more financially responsible. CIO’s have a tougher time justifying their existence, the role is becoming more and more extinct, and is easily handled without the large investment in overhead. As much as it pains me to say that, I have to accept the new landscape of how Information Technology is implemented and managed. There’s still a need for CIO’s in large organizations but new companies are building streamlined teams, technology allows for startups to have fewer management roles. This new model allows for higher profits and less management of people.
Customer service is making a huge shift in what it means, Customer Service or Support is NOT fixing or adding a new feature, it is about Communication and Solving problems. This gap is hurting far too many businesses, they need to pay attention and listen to what their customers are saying about them, what they want from them.
Small businesses are literally taking a fetal position when it comes to understanding the change taking place, that the Internet is empowering the individual rather than the large organization. The power of the person has been lifted to a level no one saw coming, all because of the Internet. The Internet is the game changer; the Internet was and is clearly misunderstood by the smaller Mom & Pop businesses. The Internet solved the problem of digital distribution, this is an Access Based Economy where we click to get. The transition for small business can be easy to most difficult, undertsanding technology or how technology will help them is the key.
If there ever was a need in your local marketplace it’s helping those small business understand that they won’t be able to continue as they have and enjoy the life they hoped to build when they opened the doors. More importantly, those business owners need to learn about humility, be willing to say they don’t understand and do indeed need help with the Internet. Most small business owners had an Entrepreneurial Seizure, they thought because they knew how to do the work they knew how to run a business. I recommend reading Michael Gerber’s book, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It
Today a couple of things scream for attention in my humble opinion:
1. Listening – Listen to what is being said about your brand and or business.
2. Filtering Content is more important than creating it.
Listening & Filtering Content are two key factors to your Social Media success, small & big businesses at large still haven’t grasped these two concepts with any kind of clarity.
We are in an Extreme Reputation Economy, popularity is becoming a Social Capital, and it will be as valuable as real money in the coming months if it hasn’t happened already. How you present yourself, your product, and your business will generate a reputation, take the time to craft your reputation.
What do you think?
Scoble's Web 2010 – Owen's Web 2012
I truly enjoy Robert’s perspective on Technology and Social Media, not too mention he is fun to follow on FriendFeed & Twitter too. Robert is very helpful if you approach him the right way, I find him to be respectful, approachable, a solid resource and entertaining. 🙂 In May of this year (2009) Robert Scoble posted an article on his Blog called Exploring The 2010 Web, he covers a number of points on what the 2010 Web is and or is going to be.
Here are the Attributes he listed for us,
Web 2010
1.) It’s Real-Time
2.) It’s Mobile
3.) It’s decentralized
4.) Pages now built out of pre-made blocks.
5.) It’s Social
6.) It’s Smart
7.) Hybrid Infrastructure
I linked to his article above so you can read his definitions in more detail.
Now I agree with Robert’s list for the most part with some additions, I know he knows what I’m adding is coming and he probably will be one of the first (early adopter’s) to play with the new toys. This is not an exhaustive list but you’ll get the picture of our where we are headed.
Here are my additions and I like to call,
Web 2012
1.) In 2012 you will be able to buy off the shelf a computer (device) that can compute faster than the human brain.
2.) Virtual Reality is where we will spend our leisure time
3.) We will not use keyboards, voice recognition will be our method of instructing our device’s what to do
4.) Tower’s will cease production
5.) Laptop production will be vastly reduced
6.) Wireless devices will be integrated into eye care (Glasses and Contact Lenses)
7.) iPHONE’S & BlackBerry type devices will also be greatly reduced in size
When it’s all said and done, you merge these two lists and you have considerable change ahead of us. We are entering an era where Nanotechnology and Virtual Reality will make exponential strides in development and growth, unlike anything we have ever seen. How we communicate will continue to change, communities will continue to grow as we the people take back big business.
I wonder what else might take place in the next 2 – 5 years?