Supertrends

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Supertrends
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Agenda

• IT Management In Context
• Supertrends
• Richness vs. Reach
• Age of Access
• Death of Distance
• Summing It up

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IT Management in Context

• A survey of trends and issues that affect how you
  manage, why you manage and who cares

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Topics

• Your Context
• How You Manage
• What You Need to Prepare Yourself with
• How Technology helps and hinders.

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Societal Influences and Trends
Effects of The Way You Manage
How You Manage
Personal Influences and Trends
Technical Influences and Trends
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How You Manage
The tools you use The techniques you employ The
attitudes you adopt The skills you develop The
knowledge you acquire
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Societal Influences and Trends
Social Roles of Individuals Economic
Situation Political Institutions Demographics Know
ledge Production Popular Culture

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Your skill profile Your demographic profile Your
relationship to your job Your goals in life and
job How you weather CHANGE
Personal Influences and Trends

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Information Technology Communication
Technology Work Environment Technology in
General Knowledge level of Society
Technical Influences and Trends

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Effects of The Way You Manage
What your employees do What your company
does What future expectations are What you get
from your job Whom you interact with Where you
work and how

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Technical trends that cut across
boundaries E-commerce Intranets ERP Process
Reengineering Outsourcing Communications
Effects of The Way You Manage
How You Manage
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Socio- Economic and Cultural trends that
cut across boundaries Transformation Privatizati
on Workplace legislation Globalization Urbanizatio
n
Effects of The Way You Manage
How You Manage

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Supertrends to Watch For

• Richness breaking free of Reach
• Access overcoming Ownership
• The Death of Distance

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Content, space, use, and time are being confounded

• Modern ICTs work in many ways to confuse things
  that used to be certain
• The content-space connection seemingly has been
  broken
• The space-use connection has definitely been
  broken
• In addition, a third trend is happening the
  use-time connection is being eroded
• Also, the time-meaning/value connection is
  challenged.

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The Good Ole Days

• In the past, these were certain
• There was a fixed relationship between content
  and where it could be distributed
• There was a fixed relationship between a physical
  object and where it could be used
• There was a fixed relationship between use and
  when use could take place
• There was a fixed relationship between when
  something could be used and what its use meant.
• Thus content meant something, and little else.

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Breaking These Bonds

• Now, content, space, use, time and meaning are
  all independent.
• Any content can be distributed anywhere
• Any content can be used by anyone
• Any content can be used any time
• Any content can be used in any way, for any
  reason.
• How does this anarchy affect YOU?

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Overcoming Space

• In the past, the amount of content has been
  limited by our geographical ability to distribute
  it. This is called the RICHNESS-REACH
  connection.
• This has now been broken.
• Almost limitless richness is available to
  distribute to everyone on earth (potentially,
  soon)

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The Richness-Reach Tradeoff-1
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The Richness-Reach Tradeoff-2
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The Richness-Reach Tradeoff-3
Attempting to increase richness incurs costs,
which lower the available distribution reach
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The Richness-Reach Tradeoff-4
The new media BREAK the relationship between
richness and reach. No reasonable move to
increase richness or reach will have any real
cost and hence no effect on the other
characteristic.

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Overcoming Use

• In the past, use of an item was restricted to
  owners, who only made use of things part of the
  time. This is called the USE-OWNERSHIP
  connection.
• Now the strict relationship between use and
  ownership has been broken everywhere replacing
  ownership with access
• Now everyone owns a piece of time of an object.

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Forms of Access-Ownership

• Leases
• Franchises
• Time-shares
• Licenses
• Membership
• Sectional Title

Tom, Harry
Me
Me
Bill
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The Age of Access-1
Jeremy Rifkins new book The Age of Access
examines what is happening to capitalism as it
shifts its essential emphasis from (private)
property and the working of assets to produce
gain to access and the working of intellectual
resources for gain. He discusses three major
ideas Networks are supplanting markets,
ownership is giving way to access, and ownership
is giving way to use. The implications are
enormous and it seems all to depend on
information (systems) phenomena
PROPERTY
ACCESS
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The Age of Access-2
First, there is the replacement of markets (which
replace hierarchies and their peculiar structural
implications) with networks. In networks, there
is no moment of exchange rather people stay
in touch. Instant organisations (Rifkin terms
this the Hollywood Organizational Model) is
changing the notion of organization perhaps
irrevocably.
NETWORKS
MARKETS
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The Age of Access-3
Next, organizations are divesting themselves of
assets and becoming weightless meaning they are
not burdened with the effort of owning things.
Real estate, assets, money, and savings are not
necessary as all can be borrowed. A primary
example is the trend towards franchising. A
franchisee doesnt actually own anything and may
have no real freedom in how the things apparently
controlled are used. The major asset in a
franchise is a brand
OWNERSHIP
BORROWING
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The Age of Access-4
It is the intangible assets that are adding
value intellectual property is replacing
property itself. Ideas are becoming commodities.
Even culture is becoming commoditized and sold
(eg, tourism). The culture business is the
biggest business on earth. There are numerous
implications to this in the legal, social and
economic arenas.
OWNERSHIP
BORROWING
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The Age of Access-5
Finally, goods are giving way to services there
will be, he says, no more sales, only service.
There is ample evidence of this through
licensing, giving away of software or items to
be replaced for income purposes with after sales
services. No longer do people buy things, they
are buying the services that go along with things.
GOODS
SERVICES
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The Age of Access -6
Rifkin doesnt specifically point to explanations
of these phenomena, but does interrelate them
(theory). However, it is clear that information
(about products, processes, people and
environments), networking, and increased computer
usage drives much of what is happening. These
phenomena at least make Rifkins ideas plausible.
Other possible explanations include
demographics, shift from wartime to peacetime
economies, and the death of communism.
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The Age of Access -7
People dont own anything, including information
about themselves People participate in fleeting
relationships through computer-mediated
connections including businesses, families,
etc. Information ABOUT objects motivates
services, franchising, leasing rather than
ownership.
Weightless economy, society Relationships based
on connections Information-enabled relationships
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The Age of Access -8
Its interesting to see that the supposed
causes can also be thought of as effects.
Technology doesnt exist independently of forces
in society, or does it? A theory of this sort
requires rather wide data. Another question is
the level of aggregation concerned firm,
industry, society, world? Rifkins ideas are
about capitalism rather than a geographical
entity and changes in such a complex mode of
behavior do not take place all at once. Is this
a stable phenomenon he is talking about? How is
it changing the way you manage or interact with
employees or your employer or clients?
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Age of AccessSummary
Changes in Capitalism

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Overcoming Space-2

• In the past, our ability to interact was limited
  by our physical and geographical strength
  speed, power, size.
• This relationship now been broken.
• Almost limitless reach is available to interact
  with almost everyone on earth

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Death of Distance
Distance puts a premium on precise communication,
coordination, and rules in order to combat noise,
delays and error. Rules and roles grow naturally
out of an attempt to bring order to an expensive
and threatening process. Conventions -- a sort
of least common denominator -- arise to favor
bigness and dedicated assets
Effects of Distance 1. Error / Slowness 2. Need
for Coordination 3. Reach/Richness Tradeoff 4.
Localization 5. Fixed Community 6. Fixed Roles 7.
Mass Production 8. Size 9. Fixed Asset
Investment 10. Fixed markets
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Death of Distance
Effects of Death of Distance 1. Frictionless
Markets 2. Democratic Connections 3.
Information Overload 4. Globalization 5.
Community of Practice 6. More Mobility of Role 7.
Mass customization 8. Irrelevance of Size 9.
Investment in Intellectual Assets 10. Instant
Niches
Effects of Distance 1. Error / Slowness 2. Need
for Coordination 3. Reach/Richness Tradeoff 4.
Localization 5. Fixed Community 6. Fixed Roles 7.
Mass Production 8. Size 9. Fixed Asset
Investment 10. Fixed markets
What if Distance is no longer a concern, no
longer dictates criteria for communication, but
instead represents reach, an asset rather than
a liability?
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Death of Distance
Effects of Death of Distance 1. Frictionless
Markets 2. Democratic Connections 3.
Information Overload 4. Globalization 5.
Community of Practice 6. More Mobility of Role 7.
Mass customization 8. Irrelevance of Size 9.
Investment in Intellectual Assets 10. Instant
Niches
?

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The New Cosmology
Business And Management
Value
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Question How Does This Affect You?

• Your Job
• Your Employees
• Your Clients
• Your Profession
• Yourself

Easier....Harder More Fun...Less
Fun Longer term.Shorter Term More
important.Less important More demanding.Less
demanding Nicer..Nastier
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Sources

• Rifkin, Jeremy. The Age of Access, 2000
• Wurster, Philip, and Thomas Evans. Blown to Bits.
  Harvard University Press, 1999.
• Cairncross, Frances. The Death of Distance 2.0.
  Harvard University Press, 2000