future

It would be a devastating mistake of executives to believe that their organizations are well prepared for what’s coming; that the shift of their current management thinking is just another phase of a cycle of looking outward and inward, or a natural evolution of industries. 

Business in the digital age has become a seemingly never-ending series of “next big things.” Whether it’s e-commerce, search engine optimization, social media, big data or something else, the pattern of firms struggling to adapt is as predictable as Gartner’s hype cycle.

It’s easy to get depressed about the world these days. Watch the news for five minutes or more and you’re bound to see signs of the apocalypse. War, poverty, climate change, a new pandemic, there always seems to be new trouble arising somewhere that threatens our health and security.

In the Innovator's Solution, Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen argued that, during the early stages of an industry, firms with wholly proprietary products have the advantage. New technology is always glitchy, so engineering the entire architecture is the best way to ensure quality.

These days, the future comes at us faster than ever before. We live in an age of accelerating returns, in which technological advancement moves at an exponential rate. In ten years, no industry will look like it does now. In twenty years many, if not most, of today’s jobs will be completely obsolete.

Last spring, the Clayton Christensen, one of the world’s top management thinkers, suggested that, despite being awash in cash, corporations are “failing to invest in innovations that might foster growth.”He considers this trend so insidious and pervasive that he called it the capitalist’s dilemma in Harvard Business Review.

If you work in customer strategy, sales, service or marketing, there is a high probability that you stay up to date on the latest developments in your field of expertise. You read articles like this. You visit conferences. You talk to colleagues in other companies to exchanges hints, tips and practices. 

The US mobile industry has been in a clear state of duopoly with Verizon and AT&T occupying about 70-75% of both consumer and enterprise market. T-Mobile is attempting to disrupt the current status but the impact will not be sustainable, although its Uncarrier attack effort is causing a lot of noise. 

As we enter the year 2015, it seems like the headlines have never been worse. A conflict in Ukraine has sparked a new Cold War between Russia and the west. Deadly terrorist groups like ISIL and Boko Haram threaten entire states. The Ebola outbreak threatened to become a global pandemic.