Future trends in Hardware for the Enterprise and the Consumer

When I wrote about the un-happenings for 2017 – technologies that will not live up to expectations, it triggered a chain of messages to create a list for hardware trends; many dig hardware, beautiful to look at, touch, feel, status symbol for some and necessity for many. Consumer hardware is evolving rapidly with quick replacements annually or at least every two years, a vicious cycle. On the enterprise front, the detachment from hardware has been slow and steady since the advent of Cloud Computing and literally Everything as a Service.

At the turn of the century what started as Application Service Providers (ASP) transformed and spawned multiple avatars: Infrastructure, Platform, Applications, and Storage as a Service followed by the Network. Not satisfied, then came Software Defined Storage, Network, Data Center and as a combo they became Software Defined Everything ! Enterprise Hardware has thus been disrupted time and again taking advantage of refresh cycles – a trend that started with desktop/laptop refresh with desktop virtualization, now creating an Infrastructure Identity crisis.

Every road warrior’s primary device has been shrinking from the laptop to the tablet to smartphone to phablets and now hybrid devices – the tablet and laptop rolled into one. The future may probably do away this need too with smartphones packing in increasing power rivalling mid-range portable computers; connect the phone to a large screen and keyboard/mouse combo via Bluetooth and you are ready to roll. Foldable keyboards have been around for a while, the advent of foldable screens will bring the next disruption.

Public WIFI services are expanding footprint globally almost to the extent of becoming ubiquitously present; security solutions are evolving to protect the nomads from being attacked as long as they follow some basic discipline. Virtual private networks across the public infrastructure and hotspots is not too far behind; some providers already offer the ability to create a segmented private secure network on their services. It is a matter of time that enterprises will no longer need to deploy WIFI solutions on campus.

Bigger trends can be seen in the immersive solutions with hardware in our lives enabled by startups and large enterprise offerings. VR is already getting embedded into smartphones, number of sensors increasing and making their presence felt on personal devices (apart from the phone the fitness band, shoes, clothing, personal accessories like rings and more to come) and surroundings – doors, restaurant tables, chairs, look around and you will find some more which are not top of the mind like air-conditioners.

Personal Digital Assistants are no longer quaint devices (remember Casio and HP ?), they are AI powered voice interactive devices and now taking the shape of Personal Robots. Notwithstanding they ordering the entire store for you based on your wishes or sending the data to the provider’s cloud, the good part is their use in healthcare to provide critical care to infants and the infirm. The combination of sensors, big data, and Artificial Intelligence is the next big wave that will bring new opportunities and threats.

From banned and restricted deployment on commercial scale, the drone has bounced back as a personal companion satiating narcissist behaviors with selfies to guarding cattle and services in open air restaurants. Use cases for enterprises are still sketchy with experiments to explore how they can be integrated into the mainstream. Can they evolve into transformer (like in the movies by the same name) like capabilities to improve upon industrial robots or replace policemen in sensitive areas for surveillance or defense ?

That 3D printing is changing manufacturing would be presumptuous at this time; the promise to change is definitely on the horizon. It is freeing up manufacturing capacity from small batches of spares or customized merchandise thus allowing for improved utilization of capacity. Automobile companies are already beginning to bring this technology to the workshop, the healthcare industry is experimenting aggressively with various appendages and parts with higher precision thus bringing better outcomes to patients.

To round it off, finally with or without physical data centers – owned or outsourced, every enterprise will require massive amounts of storage and compute power to leverage all the sensors, social media, and transactional data. Big data is getting bigger and so is the ability to process it with innovations in analytics, and this requires significantly higher scale in comparison to what enterprises have experienced; I believe that the Cloud will offer succor to the needy who recognize this and want to leverage this opportunity.

Visible or not, hardware will drive opportunity that will be leveraged using software to disrupt the conventional ! Be prepared.

Can Small & Medium Enterprise leverage Digital to achieve their full potential ?

The SME segment globally is the vehicle for growth contributing as high as 90% of GDP in some developing economies; they are also the largest employment generators for countries. Impact of any macro-economic activities are felt quickly by this segment especially when negative while they take some time to see an upside. Digitalization of the world and every industry has created opportunities in plenty for scale and disruption, the small and medium enterprises have mostly struggled to take advantage.

Most SMEs aspire to scale and become big enterprises; they are constrained by many factors – some within their control, some that they don’t and some that can be addressed with help. The recent brouhaha about Digital has resulted in consultants mushrooming with all kinds of services and offers. Owners shying away from the large names and mostly technology agnostic and ignorant, based on their understanding engage the consultants with mixed results; this is where good news now appears on the horizon.

Last week the CEO of a global IT superpower – Google – visited India; much covered by the media and debated on social media. Government functionaries welcomed the announcements on launches that help the majority of SMEs in their quest to derive benefits in the Digital world. The assumption is that technology availability to the masses will help reduce the gap between the technology haves – the big enterprise and the have nots – largely the SMEs; thus this step is seen as positive stimulus for the industry.

Interestingly the technology announcement also included a training program with certifications from Google, an institute and industry body. The workshops thus planned should trigger trials which will require support for sustaining the effort to keep the momentum going. SME business are typically Digital migrants and thus a big opportunity; trust deficit has been the constraint in their adoption of technology solutions and the fact that they do not have internal resources who can lead the way in their digital journey.

As an extension of the "Google My Business", the "Digital Unlocked" from Google is a big step forward. I believe that for this initiative to succeed, there needs to be a significant push towards publicizing the availability of the curriculum and benefits to the adopters especially the segment that is still not connected. Proliferation of the initiative through various channels will help the cause of democratizing the Digital India initiative. Future promise of tools should aid overcoming the starters block with simplicity and ease of use.

Current estimates that less than ten percent of SMEs are digitally enabled thus leaving a huge opportunity; the potential impact can be significant with increase in numbers and the ability to serve newer markets and customers. A report by KPMG predicts a direct correlation such that democratization of the digital platform will increase SME contribution to the GDP. They can definitely provide much needed stimulus to the economy in the currently constrained sentiment driven consumption post demonetization.

I believe that the entrepreneurial spirit will also see the rise of service providers who will master these tools and provide services to the SME sector. Over time this should have a multiplier effect on the services market with the cascading to B, C, and D class cities and towns. Availability of internet connections is slowly and steadily improving beyond the 2G speeds with the proliferation of new service providers as well as upgrades undertaken by the incumbents; we are at the cusp of a new world, let’s all become the catalyst !

Predictions for 2017 – technology trends that will not live up to expectations

Every New Year brings in predictions of all kinds for every industry and then there are some brave ones who also publish a score card of their predictions – how many came true or missed the mark. I followed this trend randomly with results of predictions over a decade back and also attempted to predict some softer aspects of work life as I foresaw them with reasonable accuracy if I may add. For this year I decided to look take an antithetical view and take a shot at non-events, i.e. what may not happen or live up to hype !

Hot trends and technologies on everyone’s list: Artificial Intelligence or Intelligence Augmentation, Internet of Things (Industrial and Consumer), Autonomous Cars/transportation, Smart Cities/Homes, Chatbots, Blockchain, and Augmented/Virtual Reality. I am not counting the all-time favorites like Mobility, Consumer Engagement, Cybersecurity, and Cloud, all of which have become boring. Then there are other new emerging technologies which may be of interest to many; this list is based on my assessment.

Participating in a hackathon around AI, I realized that majority did not make the grade to be even classified as AI based solutions. Use of a technology does not differentiate the solution from other conventional alternatives like BI; the ability to leverage AI was demonstrated by just a handful leaving a lot to be desired. AI and for that matter IA shall not make a difference to majority of enterprise customers; there will be just a handful of outliers. The rest will struggle to attract attention of buyers who will learn quickly.

Internet of Things will find use cases in the industry but with limited commercial deployments; Industry 4.0 or automated sensors across the assembly line will create large volumes of data thus distracting the solution with focus on Big Data rather than the efficiency that can be created based on feedback loops and intelligent mining of the mass of data. On the consumer end, wearables will dominate the discussion with all others being good for experimental use, unable to create and sustain scale of any merit.

Any deployment or increase in autonomous vehicles will frustrate human drivers and thus see a pushback despite higher success rates. Theoretically in a world populated only by driverless vehicles, there are no accidents, efficient use of infrastructure, lower pollution, reduced traffic jams, all of them leading to lower production of cars which auto companies will resist tooth and nail. Customers will shy away from potential security threats in automated cars and the loss of thrill that driving real automobiles brings to the individual.

Cities are getting smarter with better management of traffic, power, water, sewage, and a lot more; the aspiration is to connect citizens in a digital fabric to monitor, influence, and empower, all at the same time. While the digital highways are getting ready, citizens around the world are wary of the loss of privacy and traceability of their digital footprints by governments and the dark world, both undesirable by many. Smarter homes appear to be harmless with easing of chores and tasks, the ill effects as yet unknown.

Chatbots are the new excitement for anyone engaging with customers in their attempt to reduce the cost of interaction. They are getting quite efficient with semantic analysis and learning capabilities that mimic human behavior; some chatbots got better of themselves with inflammatory messages and parliamentary language ! The ability to corrupt the chatbots is getting difficult, but these will be the new targets for increasing reputation risk. Another couple of years before they go mainstream and live to promise.

Big IT is getting behind Blockchain, announcements appear with increasing frequency; Blockchain is also getting faster with improved processing speeds. Newer alternative currencies have attempted to displace Bitcoin (now the de facto currency of the dark net) unsuccessfully, the interest is growing with Governments and that will be the trigger that will legalize the use of this technology. Until then it will continue to create higher valuations for startups who insert the word Blockchain in their technology stack and pitches to investors.

We are bored of reality that it needs augmentation, we want to experience virtual reality as the world we live in imposes restrictions on physical being and presence. The world of fantasy and alter identities resurfaces after almost a decade, now more immersive and experiential. Engaging consumers with VR sounds good, probably will work for millennials to assist buying, for the baby boomers and others in between, the uses will probably scare the prudes ! A while before enterprises get excited or find real use cases.

That’s all for now, add your lists to this one … comments, critique welcome !

Technology changes the game, customers change the rules !

In the early 90s, the initial days of email it was fashionable to have a personal tag line at the end of the message over and above the signature; it used to be a famous quote or a witty one liner that represented the persona. Unaware of the profoundness of the statement as a youngster I had the following going for almost 5 years: “My interest is in the future, because I am going to spend the rest of my life there”. I don’t know the source from where I picked it up as it was before the advent of the browser, contemplating it now feels awkward !

The future is here and how ! We aren’t done with technology evolution, we keep anticipating new disruptions and welcome them. Technology disruption over the last century or more started with electricity and then continued with transportation and electric appliances which change the way we live and travel today. Today when we think of technology and its power of disruption we think about the last two decades and the impact they have had on us and business with disintermediation and customer engagement.

A famous venture capitalist and Angel investor once wrote about “Why software is eating the world” which outlines the technology led disruption to almost every industry. Old and even new economy companies have been threatened by software evolution and software led disruptions. The concept of software is applied in a broad sense with computers and related technologies being clubbed. That does not in any way reduce the impact technology has created across industries as captured by the author.

Mobile phones have been around for a while now and so have smartphones; but the newer devices are stretching the limits of compute in our hands thus providing enterprises new ways of engaging their customers. Be it services or products, every company wants to use the primary consumer device to push all kinds of notifications, track locations, access contacts, store cookies, at times to the extent of becoming a pain; today almost every service is available via an app and so is every fathomable product.

Multitude of channels bombard the customer from physical to digital to mobile assaulting the senses through the day and night. Every visit to a website, an app opened, store visited, mobile wallet used, credit card swiped, destination searched on maps, every action leaves indelible bread crumbs which are picked up. For the customer fatigue starts setting in when gamification offers freebies in return for action once again creating a short lived surge of activity while everyone catches up to the game with me too offerings.

Every person has a trigger point, some short where consumers don’t tolerate anything that is not aligned to their interests; they research options to shield themselves from the barrage and shut off all possible triggers they can and broadcast these to their circle to follow suit; activist behavior marks this segment of consumers who love to be served at their terms and are cautious of their privacy. They are opinion leaders and shapers who people listen to and take action because it feels right and good.

However, the majority tend to maintain status quo while being subjected to all kinds of incitement, and at times irrelevant messages; the effort to change appears high and thus inertia keeps them going until an incident – direct or hearsay – provokes them to take action. This segment is tolerant to being hounded ignoring small indiscretions thereby once again landing in the same state from where they started. They play the game with their brands of choice until they become tormentors and fall off grace only to be replaced by others.

A minor and growing segment plays the game becoming the protagonist to beat business at their own game. They know how to exploit the system, get best of deals, hack into models to find value and distribute to whosoever may be interested. Predominantly millennials who love the technology connect and take disruptions in their stride. At times they are the source of ideas that send shivers down established conventional business entities. They are inventors wanting to change the world and thus lead change in the rules of engagement !

It is unimportant to enumerate the list of disruptors and the disrupted across industries, the most talked about being the hospitality, transportation, photography, music and music distribution, gaming, media and advertisement, logistics, education, healthcare, the list goes on. Every new idea gets copied to death threatening the original and at times succeeding in uprooting the innovator. Customer expectations continue to change as they love the adulation of the wooers who compete for the same segment.

Keep innovating, stay hungry, stay connected !

Internet of Things is invading our lives in many more ways than we can imagine !

Industrial sensors have been around for a long time providing data streams to measure effectiveness and reduce breakdowns in assembly lines; these specialized solutions over the last six decades apart from automation helped faster, better, cheaper production. A score years later RFID created new possibilities with anti-theft in retail, toll payments, building management systems, supply chain track and trace, and identity management with smartcards amongst other use cases that has sustained interest in the technology.

Another two decades passed for the advent of what we know as IoT which in the initial days had imagination run wild on use cases and potential; auto-replenish refrigerators, trashcans and garbage bags posting to social media on what you consumed, it has been a wild ride for dreamers and thinkers. Two decades later, price and technology improvements have started shaping some of the whacky ideas into reality. The possibilities are exciting and scary at the same time with traceability resulting in loss of privacy for individuals and society.

Today almost all of us are being tracked by virtue of our presence on the internet and mobile phones we carry; almost all websites now what to send notifications across devices, track our movement, maps store data of directions we ask for and travel we complete; loyalty, credit and debit cards store transactions creating personas that would probably scare the hell out of us. Finally our fitness bands and smartwatches gather vital data that can influence our insurance premium, healthcare costs and medical profiles.

Current hype is all about transportation which has already seen aggregation and disintermediation on a large scale globally. Add autonomous to that and suddenly it starts impacting a large number of ancillary industries as the world moves to conveyance as a service. No more car loans or insurance, or scares with crude prices fluctuating, or breakdowns; no worries about parking slots at work or when out with friends or shopping; no traffic violations to worry about, toll payments, or upgrading the car ever so often.

The most beneficial aspects of Internet of Things come to life with Smart Cities where the number of use cases keeps increasing. Smart energy management, traffic monitoring, water management and leakage detection, waste disposal, and citizen services. Protection of energy grids or control of emissions and gases, and monitoring, surveillance of public infrastructure, law and order round up the IoT enabled services. Smart Cities also promise ubiquitous wireless connectivity to offer services and track tagged individuals.

Another benefit that the industries across have garnered is in temperature controlled logistics; food chain definitely benefits from IoT enabled trucks and vans, the bigger beneficiary has been the healthcare industry with medicines and pharma products retaining efficacy when transported and stored in defined controlled environments. The industry has boomed with the availability of efficient and reusable technologies that now dominate across use cases; though a decade after the world’s largest retailer mandated use, unit level tagging still to take off.

Irrespective of industry, IoT promises to provide new found opportunity to improve internal operational efficiencies or the way customers interact with the company. Industry wise use cases are plenty with Consultants willing to provide useful to harebrained ideas. Startups are also beginning to impact this space with innovative technologies and use cases that challenge conventional wisdom. The challenge to enterprises is to weave these into the exiting organization fabric without disrupting business as usual.

Symbiotically linked to mass adoption of IoT is the ability to analyze and mine insights from the vast pools of data that is flowing in with ever increasing speed. Our ability to store and analyze data has kept pace with the data streams that threaten to flood storage space if not managed effectively. The ability to separate the real stuff from the noise will differentiate the grades of success enjoyed by companies and their customers. Newer data sources and correlations make better actionable insights fueling the IoT wave.

It is contingent on business and technology teams to continuously explore new IoT technologies and use cases; the potential to disrupt is not always obvious at face value. Driverless cars will put out of earning more than a million people directly and many more indirectly. Smart energy sensors have already started slowing down the increase in energy consumption; IoT has also improved efficiency factors in linear production facilities and warehousing. Smarter, cheaper, and relevant is the way for IoT to keep everyone on their toes.

Don’t sit on the fence, start exploring, keep in touch, stay connected, IoT is all pervasive, use it !

Blockchain is here, where are you ?

Bitcoin has revolutionized the financial world with almost every bank, insurance provider and financial institution taking initiatives to understand the impact of the cryptocurrency and purported disintermediation of sovereign currencies as we know it today. Just a couple of years back, the big crash of the most sought after virtual currency led to the emergence of alternatives that have gained favor of cybercriminals and the likes. Today there are interesting startups leveraging the underlying technology for various use cases in the real world.

Skyrocketing valuations of these startups offering lending services threaten to take away the conventional business of banks who thrived on arbitrage between the borrowing and savings pools. It is forcing banks to review their centralized model of managing information, settlements and transfer of deeds. Other industries are being pushed by FUD factor to incorporate blockchain somewhere within their technology landscape; experiments thus far have not provided clear use cases on how they can benefit.

With limitations on physical scalability of any business, CIOs and CDOs are being pushed to create non-linear scalable architectures to support networked business models for the future. Disruptors in transportation and hospitality space have given impetus to other industries to get out of the box and engage in network centric thinking. It is moving away from infrequent sales or provision of services to an asset lite subscription based digitally enabled models co-created by customers, fueled by big data analytics.

Simplistically blockchain is a cryptographically secure tamperproof distributed set of blocks organized into a database or ledger offering non-repudiation and immutability for any transaction. Implementation is complex involving a network of nodes created by public or micro-consortium, which may be geographically distributed across political boundaries with limited jurisdiction by governments and enterprises. Thus cryptocurrencies are the first choice for anonymous transactions as no central authority tracks or has the ability to track ownership data.

Stock markets, smart contracts, authentication data on copyrighted material or physical goods tagged with data verifying its source by recording milestones of its journey are some of the innovative experiments using blockchain. Some global companies have started experimenting with the security features with protection of assets of national interest like power plants and distribution networks, clean water supply, and finally creating a digital trust network enhancing existing solutions like federated PKI.

Experts and Insiders have always dismissed disruptive opportunities, starting from the horse-carriage, Personal Computer, mobile telephony, Internet, and the smartphone ! This time around the rapid evolution and rise of blockchain’s most popular implementation Bitcoin in less than a decade including falls has brought this technology to everyone’s attention. Money is chasing opportunity and none dare conservative predictions on the potential future impact or ignore its disruptive nature driven by increasing global interest especially in Fintech.

Can retail industry embrace blockchain in the as yet evolving omni-channel world providing trust of authenticity and guarantees to the customer ? Is it possible for manufacturing to move away from low cost mass production to unit level customized products assured by blockchain delivered to consumers with flexible manufacturing and 3D printed products ? Can distributed information using blockchain change the way information is stored, consumed and protected, allowing only rightfully permissioned access ?

The question remains when blockchain will see the S-curve of that most technologies see after initial trials and tribulations. The charge needs to be led by technology leaders considering the not so simple nature of implementation; it was heartening to observe a group of CIOs who have already started dabbling in cryptocurrencies and how it could if at all impact their respective industries. Another group hit by ransomware was forced to figure out payments using bitcoins, one of the popular cryptocurrencies.

Beyond the Proof of Concepts, I believe that enterprises need to create cross-functional teams from compliance, risk and internal audit to assess impact on internal process and customers. Blockchain benefits accrue within groups or micro-consortiums participating together; however large groups can reduce collaboration effectiveness and decision making. Speed of execution still remains a challenge with blockchain; having said that technology is evolving rapidly to bridge the gap from current transactional technologies.

Reality is Blockchain will become mainstream sooner or later; where are you ?

Data, data everywhere but what do we do with it ?

“Can we do something with Machine Learning, Neural Networks, Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence, to be better than our competitors or disrupt the market ? We are growing faster than the average, but I constantly fear where the disruption will come from to our industry”. Thus spoke a technophile CEO of a mid-sized multinational company. They had grown inorganically acquiring brands, products, and small companies in growth markets to grow and increase their product portfolio to stay relevant to their customers.

It is an exciting time to be in the technology world with technology at the center of almost every disruptive thought and asset light digital business model. It is an exciting time to be a consumer with everyone bending over backwards wanting to provide offers and promotions on anything and everything. It is indeed an exciting time to be an entrepreneur with unimaginable ideas beginning to take root and come into the realm of possibilities with fast evolving technology allowing for rapid prototyping and success.

It is a mobile first world where everyone wants their App on your phone, send you notifications, read your address book, track your location, and gather petabytes of data to analyze to eternity. Data is everywhere, it always was, though not in a form that could be capture effectively, assimilated and explored. Technology has evolved allowing semblance of sense out of stray wisps of information in the large volume of data to form pictures and scenarios; newer insights, action items progressively improving outcomes.

Big data is getting bigger, analytical tools are evolving rapidly, compute is getting faster, storage and retrieval quicker, and business hungrier for data driven insights. Democratization of technology and availability of tools creates a perception of easy pickings which continues to add to shelf ware for the IT organization. CIOs are being pushed to create new centers of excellence or hire skills that will help make the business grow faster and more profitable; consultants are filling in the gaps across the value chain with limited value delivered.

Internal innovation and new ideas are nurtured in few enterprises, this was not one of those; the company had always rewarded subservient behavior with stray incidents of brightness escaping attention. With a cautious approach to every spend in the past, managers were unable to rise to the occasion fearing being snubbed. The technology organization had decent set of tools, they were well aligned to operational IT requirements, but limited expertise and ability to shift gears into a new level of thinking and execution.

The CEO threw the challenge to the management team to come up with a plan on how the company can break away from the normal. Two quarters later there had not made any significant progress or breakthroughs. The CEO thus hired a global top consulting company to help create the roadmap for digital disruption. After three months of Workshops, brainstorming sessions, offsite and many weeks spent in conference rooms, the exercise was declared complete and the management team invited to unveiling of the new strategy.

Sounds familiar ? This is the story of almost every enterprise where information is consumed in reports from traditional ERP systems or data dumps massaged in spreadsheets. Scores of reports with columns represented in different places or one additional data element make up the repository of analysis. Smattering of dashboards at Board Meetings, Investor Conferences, and external presentations represents the visual data creation and consumption. People love their prints but also want tablet computers !

A big hole in the pocket, they had a document with multiple streams and action items; teams were created and tasked to generate new customers, markets, and disrupt competition. The consultants stayed on to oversee execution and find faults; they churned dashboards, progress reports, control towers, to keep telling the management why they had still not achieved the desired results. A year later and a bigger hole in the dwindling treasury, breakthrough success continued to elude them as competition grew fiercer.

A new age company CEO reaffirmed the hypothesis that data is the future lode mine proclaiming they generated and consumed a petabyte of information daily. His business added new revenue streams every quarter, evolving with consumer demand while shaping the market. His company had redefined the industry becoming the benchmark, taking calculated risks and staying close to the ground through the journey. He did not scoff at the old, he just decided to create a new path giving his team freedom to explore.

Can old age companies emulate such examples ? There are a few examples, but still a few; survival is not threatened for most, relevance probably is !

What has better value for Enterprises ? Research or Experience

The group collectively had over 300 years of experience represented at the table; the middle-aged (no one wants to be called old) C-level executives across companies of various sizes, geographies and industries were locked into a debate; a debate on how their experience represented higher value in comparison to reports published by market, vertical or horizontal research companies. Their demeanor trivializing insights presented in reports even when backed by empirical data captured through interactions with leaders like themselves.

Triggered by a much publicized research report which the middle management had embraced, the team had got together to assess its relevance to their company and themselves. Pedigree of the organization behind the report could not be faulted; the industry had taken the paper in question with open arms, benchmarking themselves with the mean and take lessons which they could apply. There were also companies who smirked at the postulations and deemed the report irrelevant to themselves, unwilling to take heed.

None present had participated directly though their teams had contributed to the industry wide research report; distributed evenly were people who had read the report and those who had not. Those who read it wanted to defend their stance wherever it differed from the report; those who did not read believed that it did not matter since they have been the doyens of the industry for many decades now and their experience cannot be questioned if at all by any report irrespective of who wrote it or what others believed.

Thus the meeting of the unconverted and fence-sitters called upon the authors to discuss the artefacts and inferences wanting to assert their individual and collective experience. The group demanded and received reverence by virtue of their clout and influence; they were the beacons for the industry, they were the captains, they had built the industry in the early days, they had coached and mentored many in the industry; some in the group had now become a pain with many clearly depicting Jurassic behavior.

The Analyst of no less years behind him faced the eclectic group along with his team of enthusiastic, young and nervous faces overawed in their presence. He had no lesser persona which the group acknowledged as he reciprocated warmth and respect. Having presented the report to many industry forums and companies, advising them on specifics, the Analyst exuded confidence and conviction. He was ready to engage the group to address their alternative views. Quickly thereafter the weapons were out and the debate started.

The future belongs to a new way of engaging customers at their terms through interconnected channels seamlessly; disintermediation is not the end, it is the beginning. Products and Services are intertwined to create new offerings not possible earlier, keep embracing change, keep adapting, keep learning, and keep running to stay relevant. Conventional wisdom is not enough, you need to straddle the old and new; past performance and glory will not get you to the future, so said the Analyst and Consultant.

Fads don’t move mountains, it needs a lot more than that; we have built industries brick by brick, customer by customer, providing them products and services for generations. Products have evolved with technology and so has the customer with times; that does not mean that the old way of doing business will go away. The market will divide into distinct segments catering to different customer expectations with some overlap. We will adapt at our own pace aligned to our customer needs, countered the industry lobby.

Both have a point ! Technology led disruption had shaken foundations though most have survived the onslaught from new business models. CIOs became powerful and then many did not scale to expectations resulting in opportunity for consultants to fill the gap; for other CXOs it was no different. The disrupted, they adapted to the new paradigm grudgingly; it was a matter of time that the dust settled down with growth again back on the anvil while money-losers struggle to change business models for long-term survival.

Do companies have the luxury of time to choose their pace and path of change ? Can leaders afford to shun external insights while they live within their microcosm ? The world has moved from insular decision making to crowd-sourcing ideas and learning. The hyper-connected world offers new ways of doing business, competing with old and new players, and understanding customers; technology as a foundation shall determine the ability of enterprises and industries future until a new wave again creates disruption !

Be open to ideas even if they are not your own, your longevity may depend on it !