The
latest edition of Strategy + Business magazine has a subscriber-only
survey of the most durable current trends in business. They list 35
candidates, but I had no difficulty picking out the top 10. Here are my
choices, in order, with the reasons why I think they will become even
more important in the future than they are today:
| Trend | Importance, and What to Watch For | | 1. Open-Source Business | Open-Source Business isn't about software, or about reducing costs and prices to zero, it's about open partnerships
with those outside and inside the organization who can help the
business provide better products and services to customers. The Open
Source model (transparency of operations, collaboration with
customers and others to manage the business and set priorities, and
giving 'commodities' away free) can allow leading-edge businesses to
make the transition to tomorrow's Gift Economy
effectively and painlessly. Much more about Open Source Business (about
which very little has yet been written) in an article next week. | | 2. Disruptive Innovation | Clay Christensen's research shows
the total futility of trying to create barriers to protect your turf
from competitors, some of whom don't yet even exist. The history of
business shows that organizations that can find ways to serve the low
end of the market for any product, or ways to bring existing products
and services to entirely new customer groups, will eventually
cannibalize incumbents' markets from below or from without.
Entrepreneurs: use this as your roadmap to success. Incumbents: do it
to your own markets, or look out. | | 3. Complexity | Dave
Snowden is pioneering work that shows that existing business strategies
and processes are designed to deal with 'complicated systems', and that
a radically new approach
is needed to deal with 'complex systems'. Such an approach could
successfully address previously insuperable and intractable problems
and challenges in business, and in society. AHA! | | 4. Corporate Reform | Something
much bigger is lurking behind Enron and other disgraceful corporate
behaviour, and Sarbanes-Oxley and other feeble attempts to address the
problem. The corporation itself has become dysfunctional,
even pathological, and corporate laws and charters need a complete
overhaul. As consumers use exploding knowledge and connectivity to flex
their muscles in dealings with suppliers, and as more horrific
corporate abuses come to light, consumers will grow increasingly
intolerant of 'self-regulated' corporatism and demand drastic corporate
reform. | | 5. Innovation Incubation | Innovation
is risky, and incumbents dislike risk, which is why entrepreneurs (with
some notable exceptions) have always been at the vanguard of
innovation. But incumbents can, and must, get into the innovation game
as well, and the way to do that is through innovation incubators,
running as autonomous, separate divisions with a different kind of
people and a different success model from the ones that dictate
behaviour in the organizational mainstream. For many large
organizations, such incubators will be the difference between
sustainable success and stagnation. | | 6. Social Networking and Personal Productivity Improvement | It's
all about the people, stupid. Forget the hierarchy and the cult of
leadership. Forget about 'organizational knowledge' and 'organizational
learning'. Everyone in today's organization knows how to do their job
better than their 'leader'. The modern organization is the sum of the
capabilities and actions of its people, and modern management must be
about setting clear, prioritized, achievable goals, providing effective
processes and technologies, getting rid of organizational roadblocks,
and then staying out of the way. Drucker says it's the greatest
management challenge of our century. Social network technologies
(including weblogs and simple virtual presence), personalized productivity coaching, stories, and self-management processes like Open Space are the new tools of this trade. | | 7. Wisdom of Crowds | The customer is always right, but today that's usually only realized in hindsight. Recognizing the wisdom of crowds
can allow organizations to tap into the collective knowledge of
customers, employees, and society as a whole, and there's plenty of
evidence that doing so yields better business decisions at lower cost
than either overtaxed, overpriced executives or unfamiliar outside
consultants. | | 8. Channel Customization | One
size does not fit all. The future price of any manufactured commodity
(and renewable natural commodities as well) trends to zero. The
opportunity for profit, and the real 'value-added' is in customizing
offerings to the unique needs of every consumer. Instead of a broadcast
channel, delivering the same thing to everyone, the new model is
narrow-casting to audiences of one, and allowing the customer to take
ownership of the channel that brings your products and services to
them. How do you market in such a world? You don't -- you let your
customers tell the world how good you are, in their personal context,
powerfully and virally. | | 9. Customer Relationship Management | Most
businesses still think their purpose is to sell products or services to
a reluctant market. Smart businesses understand that their purpose is
to identify and respond uniquely to human needs. The key to this is relationship
-- trust, deep knowledge, lots of conversations, face-time, time spent
probing, listening, asking "what if". That's what real CRM is about,
not databases of historical information. | | 10. Execution | The
modern corporation is like a refinery for small, incremental,
insubstantial changes. For substantial changes it is a minefield. Most
ideas, including the best and the boldest, get blown up quickly.
Execution is about navigating a great idea through the organizational
minefield. It takes enormous skill, tact, patience, strong networks and
persuasion. Very few have what it takes. |
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MADE IN CANADA
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