Posts Tagged ‘Future’
The Future Of Business – To The Cloud And Beyond!
We have to face the fact that the Cloud is where we will store our publicness, our legacy is going to live on forever, not through people, but through Kilobytes cached on servers all over the world. The Cloud is a fact of life, it is only going to grow up and be another reservoir of data, a deep well of information, unlike anything we’ve know to date. You think Wikipedia is awesome, wait till the Cloud matures. The Cloud is not connected computers in a closed network, they are outside, and can connect to any computing device.
Microsoft offers 25GB on Windows LIVE SkyDrive, Online Storage, Google allows you to run your entire business on their servers and with their services. I shared that this was going to happen in 2001 at a conference, I spoke to 500 I.T. Leaders, and they all said I was crazy, it will never happen. Businesses won’t stand for it, people won’t use it! As you can see they didn’t have the foresight an I.T. leader should have, they were closed minded executives, imagine that.
Everything is moving to the cloud for many, many reasons. Business is becoming more social and mobile, and the requires the cloud for that kind of environment to work properly. Location-based services are a perfect fit for the cloud, so going mobile means going to the cloud.
In a previous post I talked about the shift, we’re going from pages to streams, from PCs to the Cloud, Today to NOW, from Me to We, and Items to Data. Where everything will generate a stream everywhere. The cloud is full of storage, full of streams, and filled with the new oil, DATA!
The best way to take advantage of the cloud is to make everything in your business mobile, the cloud lets you access your data and the rest of the worlds data on the fly. Every business will become a platform to use, not unlike Google or Microsoft, people always come back to places they find useful. You can even build your own cloud, well sort of, you can connect an external drive to your router that is accessible from anywhere in the world. That in essence is a cloud, your external drive is where you store everything, so no matter where you are, you can reach your data, but the other options are better.
Almost all major technology corps are offering some form of cloud computing, even though the question of security is still on the table. Security is always going to be a problem, as long as there is humans on this planet, security will be paramount. Having said that, many are clamoring to put their data on the cloud, it just makes good sense for those who work from home / travel most of the time.
The jury is still out on who offers the best solution and I’m not sure it will matter if there is some kind of standard in this environment. Considering the security issue, will you put your data out there, Google has most if not all that you do on the NET anyway. The Cloud opens up new business models based on access, more so than today.
On a different perspective, when clicking the Like Button or Follow, to get access, the dollar value assigned to Likes & Follows will create a whole new metric to measure, one more thing to track, will all cloud environments or storage devices require engagement or just a Like or a Follow.
How will your business use the cloud?
The Future of Business – Don’t Sell, Just Engage
You’ve either heard me say it, or you have read it here many times, ” The Future of Business is not a skill set, it’s more about how we think”. For some reason business owners always end up at tactics, they come back to the ground level and try to do what they have always done. A great example is the Old Spice Campaign, they went out and created an amazing series of commercials, ran them and missed out on the most important part. Engaging with the audience! Instead they went right to tactics to get more views and more followers instead of actually talking to their audience. They really missed the boat here, they blew it big time. What happened, it became just another advertising campaign that was clever and amusing.
We are entering a huge crisis for business owners, it gets more urgent the longer you wait to educate yourself on how business really is today, and will be tomorrow. Part of the challenge is in the business owners head, they believe they know what is happening, and they don’t want to look foolish either, so they plod along not asking for help.
With everything going mobile and social, more and more to tiny screens, some on larger surfaces, we are moving away from what we have always done. We used to be people of the book, now we are people of the screen (a Kevin Kelly quote). In fact, Kevin wrote a bitty on 6 trends:
1.) Screening
2.) Interacting
3.) Sharing
4.) Accessing
5.) Flowing
6.) Generating
I’ll let Kevin Kelly fill you in on the details of these 6 trends, which he wrote about in 2008, I’m just going to touch on a couple.
Everything is flowing now, it’s endless rivers of content, endless streams. Business today is shifting and flowing from one thing to another. We are going from pages to streams, the PC to the cloud, from Today to NOW (real-time streams), from me to we, from items to data. Gerd Leonhard claims Data is the new Oil, how we harness that data can determine much of our success in the marketplaces. Today, everything generates a stream everywhere. Gary Vaynerchuk calls it our legacy, the trail of digital crumbs that we publish on the Internet is how people will remember us.
Ultimately, our business world online is shifting to a very uncomfortable place, we live in a world where everything is moving to free, or feels like free. Someday soon, like music, all books will eventually be $0.99, and will stay in long tail for many years, generating longer cash-flow. We have been moving to where the only things of value are things that can’t be copied. Business owners need to realize, where ever the attention flows, money will follow.
The psychology of tomorrows entrepreneurs is simple, they want lifestyle not work-style, they will look for ways to get attention, this attention will provide the lifestyle many of us have worked for 30 years to get. They will do it in months instead of years. These entrepreneurs don’t value ownership, ownership of home, ownership of car, they are for more willing to rent, the shift from ownership to rental, where access is better than ownership. The likes of Netflix and services of that nature are driving this new theology. It’s not skill set, it’s how we think, we need to pay attention, listen more, and we have to build things that can’t be copied, like Trust. How do you build trust, get to know your audience, interact and build relationships. Don’t sell, just engage.
The Future Of Business – Technology & Tourism
Seth Godin made the statement, While We Weren’t Paying Attention, The Industrial Age Just Ended. If that’s true, the masses of the world are in for change never experienced before. Although technology appears to be driving this change and new world of business, it’s more about how you and I think, to be more specific, how younger generations think.
In The Future Of Business series, I have been sharing insights on various industries, what we might expect to happen in the next 3 – 5 years. In this post I’m going to take a look at Tourism, this is an interesting topic because it is such a huge buisiness, somewhere around a 6 Billion dollar industry. But how will this shift from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age impact Tourism? It’s hard to tell at first glance but lets look at some obvious things that technology may introduce.
I can remember as a kid looking forward to summer, every summer my Mother & Father would take us someplace and it was always far enough away you couldn’t walk home. I could hear Mom & Dad discussing, planning and strategizing months in advance, we were going east or south, that meant Manitoba or the USA. My Dad would never stop either, if we were going from Calgary to Winnipeg (14 hours of driving) he was going to do it in a day, if we were lucky we might stop for potty breaks. The stops were never at a fancy restaurant or hotel, they were rest stops with smelly unclean outhouses. I know this sounds like abuse by todays standards, but that’s what it was like travelling with my family back in 60’s and early 70’s.
One of the saving grace’s on those trips were Tourism Offices, a place where we could pick up a map, a coffee or candy. More importantly, they had washrooms! Something I noticed in these kiosk like buildings was, you would find things there you couldn’t find anywhere else. Local artists would have paintings and or carvings, jewellery and what have you, interesting and talented people figured out it was a great place to sell their work.
Jumping ahead to today, and not much has changed in these groovy little Tourism Kiosks, why? Interestingly enough, the problems the Tourism Industry had back when I was a boy, they still have today. It’s always about funding and how these non-profit organizations have to conform to some very rigid groups and influencial people. I understand the problem all to well because, I used to be Vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce and Chairman of Tourism some 20 years ago. Tourism used ot be under the Chamber domain, today they are independant, out on they’re own.
Now the Canadian Tourism Commission (which is well funded) has culled some series data about where and why people come to visit Canada, it’s called Explorer Quotient, something to put in your toolbox. Here is the EQ presentation made by the CTC.
These groups have something we didn’t have 20 years ago, not even 15 years ago, we now have the Internet & Social Media. Tourism is struggling in this space because they don’t have the resources to create, invite or listen to what we all want. The opportunities are unlimited now for tourism and other non-profit organizations. I learned recently that the Green Bay Packers FootBall team is actually a non-profit organization!
There are a number of tools tourism could take advantage, they are already in place, like Foursquare and Gowalla, these are the low hanging fruit today, but in the next 5 years we will see some very interesting technologies that Tourism will leverage. In the future, we will be able to travel to far away places in the comfort of our own home via Virtual Reality. You may stop at a Tourism Rest Stop and sit down with a virtual reality headset and walk around the very community you are about to enter. You will be able to get key information on the top tourist stops while there, enjoy a cup of coffee at the same time. You will have the opportunity to get special deals you can’t get anywhere else in that town, only at the tourism office. You will have the opportunity to opt-in while touring the area digitally, yes the tourism will be able to track where you are via a smartphone, they will be able to forward information and real-time specials happening for a limited time.
Through your smartphone you could contact them on Twitter to make reservations at a restaurant or hotel. Most businesses will be on these social networks, they will over special deals and opportunities you find in the local paper. Maybe these businesses will accept FaceBook & Twitter Credits as payment. According to those two social networks credits will be offered July 1st, 2011. We’ll see how to roles out but it opens the door for local businesses and especially the tourism societies to partner with local or far away businesses for visitors in the tourism kiosks. We could help our local tourism by donating FaceBook & Twitter credits for them to use with local businesses, so many ideas can come from this topic alone. And these credits or points can be used anywhere in the world!
The sky is the limit here, if you can think it, you can probably do it. Technology is making it easier, what other ideas do you think Tourism could do to attract visitors?
Stuff From Under My Hat
We have a few problems on this planet, we will have a water shortage, we will even have a food shortage, Canada’s population is predicted to shrink, but why aren’t the masses paying attention to what’s coming? Many would claim we have an education problem, I beg to differ, we have a listening problem, not an education problem.
I have taught, spoken to, and even worked with many business people in different sectors, and I can tell you, listening is truely the challenge amung them. Now I don’t claim to know everything, infact, I don’t even predict the future, I do what’s called Foresight, I’m listening to what’s going on in the world. In a world that is moving from PC centric to a world completely mobile, it’s hard to keep up. We are regrouping on the fly, and regrouping people are impossible to control. That’s what big business is trying to figure out, don’t waste your time, you will never nail it down. Use your ears more than your mouth, let your ears keep your hat on.
The listening problem comes from an insecurity in my humble opinion, business owners don’t want to look stupid, or be seen as if they don’t know what’s happening in their business and or around them. I can only tell you this, it is impossible for any one person to know everything there is to know about everything, including your business. If you are a business owner, try to listen more, grow bigger ears, and then turn your business into a platform that people will find useful. People always return to what is useful. And become a likeable, lovable brand.
Tell your story and make it sound different, and mobilize everything. Just some thoughts and stuff from under my hat.
How are you listening to your customers?
City Hall Are You Paying Attention?
With the Global population rising to 9 Billion over the next 10 -15 years, some municipalities are still going to shrink, and many will increase beyond it’s ability to provide services. What will City Hall do with it’s collapsing tax basins. A disclaimer, I don’t for a minute claim to understand what it’s like to sit on a City Council. I wouldn’t want the job truth be told, so I’m not saying what they do is easy, anyone can point fingers and complain. We the people have really set City Hall up to fail, but that’s not my point. I am however, praying City hall is paying attention to a trend in our aging population, and business community.
Third world countries will have the most population growth over western countries, but we will eventually reach 9 Billion in the coming decade or so. The current challenge is not with the growth as much as it is with those wondering off to pasture, the baby boomers. The first of the baby boomers will turn 65 this year, but the real challenge is, the tail end of the baby boomers are turning 50 in 2014, and this generation is the largest portion of our population. That means the average age will be 40, the generations to come are unable to replace the boomers in the workforce, we will have to rely on immigration to fill the that gap. That is another topic for another time.
Imagine, today 50% of the population is over the age of 30, it won’t be long before 50% of the population is over 50. This trend will continue because we no linger birth children at the rate we used to, we could birth them fast enough to catchup and solve the problem of an aging world. The numbers alone don’t really show you the problem, it’s not the numbers as much as it is how the generations yet to come think. They won’t value what we value today. If you were to poll the under 20 generation today, they will tell you that ownership is not that important to them. The idea of owning a home, or a car for that matter, is not on the radar screen for most of them. They don’t value ownership the same way people do over the age of 40. What does that mean, less money filling the tax bucket in many municipalities. Is City Hall even looking at that problem?
The under 20 generation and the one’s to follow, will most likely buy into the co-op housing, or shoebox appartments long before owning a house on land. Why, They value lifestyle over workstyle. They are not willing to give up what many of us did to have the lifestyle we have, we traded our time for dollars, we worked to live. The younger generations don’t value work the same way, most people over the age of 40 have their identity wrapped up in what they do for work. Their work validates them, it is who they are, not what they do. Gen C and beyond do not have that conditioning to deal with, creating a different thought process on ownership of home and country.
City Hall also has to deal with another shift, 60% of all commerce is going online, that to may help shrink the tax basin. How? A local bricks & mortar business decides to sell it’s products and services online exclusively. Let’s say they have success. Before you know it, they have shutdown that bricks & mortar location, they discover they don’t even need an office, they’ve put everything out on the cloud, and then run their business by smartphone. How will that impact real estate, (read my thoughts on agents becoming obsolete here) let alone the tax revenues cities rely on. As you can see these shifts in thinking by the generations to come will rewite the rule book in every municipality. Is City Hall paying attention?
While all this is happening, we will have other issues to deal with, water shortages, possible food shortages and so on. We will enter into a society not unlike the one in the movie “The Book Of ELI”, in that movie, we kill (people) for things we throw away today. One man’s garbage is another mans treasure.
I don’t know how our City Hall’s will be able to change the way they think, but I hope they do, our communities depend on it. Protectionism and control are the current model of running a city, I fear that will be the undoing, because my kids kids won’t tolerate it.
This problem of an aging population belongs to all of us, we will have to work hard to maintain the economies and lifestyles we enjoy today here in the western front. What other challenges do you see?