Posts Tagged ‘Open & Free Business Model’
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.
Control Is Dead!
The old business model of a closed / control is failing us here online, we truly believe that if we are in control, put things behind walls, force people to pay first, we will create new money and all will be well. Not true. The new open & free model is somewhat the opposite of that model, your product & services are out in the open for people to try and use, then they will buy. Recently, media futurist Gerd Leonhard put his products out there for you to freely download and use, and announcing the payment model for his new iPhone & Android mobile apps: pay what you think it’s worth. Would you do this, you will in the future.
I can tell you first hand that most business owners are scared to death of this model, but what they don’t realize is, they will create more new money with this open & free business model than they believe they will. Now I am not saying there isn’t a need for controlled models, I am however saying, here online it can’t be maintained and have it survive. Gerd Leonhard stated in a presentation he made March 2nd, 2009, “Rights-holders / Content-Owners have the choice: Control + Declining Revenues or ‘Open’ and New Revenues “.
This is only one example of someone embracing the new open & free business model, he is trusting his marketplace, his following and current strategic business alignments to provide revenues. Social Currency (trust) is the key here, your brand must be trusted for this open & free business model to succeed. It’s not that simple, you must be open, transparent, and have integrity at all times. This sounds great but is a lot of work, maintaining this kind of model can’t be done with the current closed business model. The current model relies on control, fear and you not pushing back. We are moving to this model, it’s going to happen, why? You won’t tolerate the old control model, you want access first, you want to try before you buy, you will dictate how business is done. Eventually.
If you write a book or make a product and try to position yourself under the old model, you have to jump through all the control mechanism hoops. In the open & free business model you just make it available, you may not make money from the book immediately in terms of sales. You will however realize revenues by monetizing around the book, consulting, coaching, teaching and or maybe even get hired because of your insights and know how. Your book must be good of course, you must bring quality in order to get the attention you need to realize the levels of revenue you desire. Attention is another form of currency.
Chris Brogan is all about making business human again, he also knows you will help him drive that process. You may not know it, but you want business to be human, not a system making you a number. You want to feel human, be viewed as human, and most of all, you want to feel important. Chris knows we are all after the same thing really, he is helping you see it, we want to make a difference, and make the world a better place, we all want to feel important. The problem has never been the desire, it was the how do we do it. Social Media has opened the door for you to exercise what you didn’t know how to do, you now have a way to express yourself and make it happen. You will and are shaping the future of business, the open & free model even if you can’t see the bigger picture right now.
Eventually you will make it happen, Control Is Dead!
The World Is Coming – Will You Be Ready?
Back in 1994 the world was on fire for the World Wide Web, thinking then that we have finally found something that was going to change the way we worked and lived. Well, that’s partly true, we can do things we couldn’t do before, but it also didn’t save us time on a personal level. Technology merely allowed us to get more done in a day, we’re still working ridiculous hours each week. What happened, we didn’t see the crash that was coming. Today everyone is embracing Social Media as if it was 1994 all over again, bragging about those organizations that have embraced this environment and are having success. Many think that they have figured it out and will be the example for the rest of us. I believe we are wrong yet once again.
I’m 52 years old, allot has changed in my lifetime alone, Microsoft was birthed the year I graduated, 1975. I remember the introduction of Texas Instruments first handheld calculator, it was clunky and huge just like the first cell phones. Tape recording machines were as big as a suit case, 10 1/2 inch reels of tape spun forever. In the last 5 years, we have almost connected every person in North America via the Internet, 340 Million people use the Internet on this Continent. It’s amazing isn’t it, and yet we still don’t see what’s coming.
In the past 5 years Social Media has made it’s presence known, early adopters tried to tell us about it but we didn’t have time for it. Now we live on FaceBook and others like it, we can connect and talk with anyone who shows up. This phenomenon is also creating challenges for the Corporate world, we are moving away from a business model of control, that scares the daylights out of them. Control implies order, out of control means KAOS!
Today there are 1.7 Billion people on the Internet, that’s 25.6 % of the worlds population. Google is planning to send up 16 Satellites to provide free Internet access to parts of the world not connected today. Imagine if you will, if in the next 3 – 5 years, we were to have 5 Billion people connected on the Internet. How will the Internet look to you then, how are you using it now, will you change what you are doing, and how will we handle the problem of bandwidth? Imagine a day when Internet access is free, or covered in your property taxes. Have you spent time looking ahead, I do, and I can tell you, The world is coming, are you ready, will you be ready?
The Internet is moving away from computers as we know them, everything is going mobile, wireless handheld devices, and in the near future you will spend most of your time in Virtual Reality. The way we do business is changing yet once again, where a conversation is the sell, not the product or service. We are moving into a way of work where collaboration is required to build anything, we will coordinate and cultivate, we will change the way we organize our work. This broadband culture, click to get, access will come before ownership, the value of money will have to be re-determined and so on. We are slowly moving to an Open & Free Business Model, this will be a painful shift, it means the opposite of what we are doing now for the most part. Attention will be the new currency. Trust will be everything.
The World is Coming, Will You Be ready?