Bryan O’Rourke shares his thoughts on technology, business, and consumer trends in health, fitness and more.
K.A. Wallace writes an eloquent analysis of the conflict emerging in academia: control of content isn't limited to commercial endeavors. The halls of "learning" are equally inundated with the dogma of control and old world paradigms of content ownership that have nothing to do with education.
Below is an excerpt and the entire work that Wallace composes is located here.
Professor Mitra's hole in the wall research demonstrates the realization of how the revolution will influence the increasingly irrelevant institutions of education. His research demonstrates that education can happen on its own with out oversight and through self organization, even among young children. The implications of his conclusions are profound and set forth great hope that the ubiquity of information systems and personal computers will do more for those who have been unable to be educated in the past. The notion of self organization is a core concept that will increasingly impact many challenges because relying on second and third wave institutional and organizational approaches simply do not work as well. See his video on TED below.
In the 1980 book, The Third Wave, futurologist Alvin Toffler coined the term "prosumer" when he predicted that the role of producers and consumers would begin to blur and merge; he even described the concept his 1970 book Future Shock . Toffler envisioned a highly saturated marketplace as mass production of standardized products began to satisfy basic consumer demands. To continue growing profit, businesses would initiate a process of mass customization, that is the mass production of highly customized products.
With the advent of technology Toffler's vision is increasingly becoming a reality. More recently, The Cluetrain Manifesto noted that "markets are conversations" with the new economy moving from passive consumers ... to active prosumers
Animoto is a very neat Amazon-powered application and exemplified the "prosumer" revolution as well as new cloud based business models.. Built on top of Amazon EC2, S3, and SQS, the site allows you to upload a series of images. It then generates a unique, attractive, and entertaining music video using your own music or something selected from the royalty-free library on the site.
Further to the revolution is the author Antoine van Agtmael who was quite accurate when he coined the phrase “emerging markets” several decades ago. This term, accurately replacing what was formerly labeled “Third World,” describes the mega-shifts in the global market. According to van Agtmael, these markets will have claimed fifty percent of the global economy within the next quarter century. Truly a man ahead of his time.
The Emerging Markets Century: How a New Breed of World-Class Companies Is Overtaking the World , by Antoine van Agtmael, was the gold medal winner of the Economics category. Visit the website here . The book describes how countries like Brazil, India, and China have scaled the economic ladder and how they will continue to do so. Drawing upon years of experience and knowledge, van Agtmael also informs readers of how understanding this growth is crucial to understanding globalization in the future as well as the fate of the Western influence.
Still, closing with tips on how to make money in emerging markets, his book cautions that “the real secret is that the secret is always changing.” Indeed, amid the hype about emerging markets, Mr. van Agtmael understands that some had a long history of fabulous wealth before 1800, so they are essentially re- emerging, like India and China. He also grasps that 80 of the top 100 companies in the original Emerging Markets Index he created 25 years ago have vanished. These organizational disappearances are likely more a result of overall impacts of the revolution, of which globalization is but one.
Revolutionary business formation and advancement has increasingly occurred in recent times. The dynamics behind these creative businesses is often misunderstood. However success in innovation exists In many industries where companies have created growth by following, either purposefully or accidentally, the patterns of disruptive innovation. In fact "disruptors" largely create growth by redefining performance. They either bring a simple, cheap solution to the low end of an established market or enable "non-consumers" to solve pressing problems. The term "disruption" was coined by author and Harvard Business School Professor Clayton M. Christensen, who is the co-founder of Innosight, an innovation consulting company. Christensen’s insightful thoughts address four key points that reflect disruptive innovation:
Technology improves faster than people's lives change
Companies innovate faster than people's lives change. This means that in the pursuit of attractive profits, established businesses almost always end up "overshooting" progressive market tiers. In essence, they provide products that pack in too much performance for the average person.
Think about your mobile phone. Odds are that you only use a fraction of the capability of the phone. Companies have to play this game. The sustaining innovations that move a company along an established improvement trajectory are the lifeblood of any firm. But companies that only sustain miss great growth opportunities sitting right under their noses creating circumstances that favor "disruptors".
Disruption is not just technology
The real disruptive power of innovation lies not in the technology itself but in the business model that surrounds that technology. Successful disruptors have the ability to make money at low price points or have low overheads that allow them to start small and adapt. They also tend to play in a very different value chain, with new partners, suppliers and channels to market. It is these business model differences, and not technological prowess, that so often throw incumbents off-balance. What successful company wants to introduce a product that its mainstream customers can't use if it promises to make them less money than other options the company is considering?
Disruption comes from playing the game differently
A successful disruptor masters the art of trade-offs. Their offering isn't better along traditional performance dimensions. In fact, it's typically just good enough along dimensions that historically mattered in a mainstream market. A disruptor redefines the notion of performance by pulling an overlooked innovation lever like, simplicity. convenience, accessibility or afford ability.
Disruption drives growth
Disruptive innovators have transformed numerous industries. For example, start-ups in the hard disk industry that followed a disruptive approach increased their odds of success six-fold. Moreover, more than half of U.S. companies that had the highest market value when they broke through a billion in revenue were founded on disruption.
Companies seeking to create new growth businesses should focus on disruptive innovation. Mastering the core concepts in disruption are not only vital tools in growth and innovation, but they help companies and managers spot and respond to disruptive attackers early.
Copyright © 2021, Bryan K. O'Rourke. All rights reserved.
