Eight 블랙토토 technology trends to watch
Eight emerging trends are transforming many markets and 블랙토토es. Executives should learn to shape the outcome rather than just react to it.
James M. Manyika, Roger P. Roberts, and Kara L. Sprague
December 2007
Technology alone is rarely the key to unlocking economic value: 블랙토토 create real wealth when they combine technology with new ways of doing business. Through our work and research, we have identified eight technology-enabled trends that will help shape businesses and the economy in coming years. These trends fall within three broad areas of business activity: managing relationships, managing capital and assets, and leveraging information in new ways.
Managing relationships
1. Distributing cocreation
The Internet and related technologies give 블랙토토 radical new ways to harvest the talents of innovators working outside corporate boundaries. Today, in the high-technology, consumer product, and automotive sectors, among others, 블랙토토 routinely involve customers, suppliers, small specialist businesses, and independent contractors in the creation of new products. Outsiders offer insights that help shape product development, but 블랙토토 typically control the innovation process. Technology now allows 블랙토토 to delegate substantial control to outsiders—cocreation—in essence by outsourcing innovation to business partners that work together in networks. By distributing innovation through the value chain, 블랙토토 may reduce their costs and usher new products to market faster by eliminating the bottlenecks that come with total control.
Information goods such as software and editorial content are ripe for this kind of decentralized innovation; the Linux operating system, for example, was developed over the Internet by a network of specialists. But 블랙토토 can also create physical goods in this way. Loncin, a leading Chinese motorcycle manufacturer, sets broad specifications for products and then lets its suppliers work with one another to design the components, make sure everything fits together, and reduce costs. In the past, Loncin didn’t make extensive use of information technology to manage the supplier community—an approach reflecting business realities in China and in this specific industrial market. But recent advances in open-standards-based computing (for example, computer-aided-design programs that work well with other kinds of software) are making it easier to cocreate physical goods for more complex value chains in competitive markets.
If this approach to innovation becomes broadly accepted, the impact on 블랙토토 and industries could be substantial. We estimate, for instance, that in the US economy alone roughly 12 percent of all labor activity could be transformed by more distributed and networked forms of innovation—from reducing the amount of legal and administrative activity that intellectual property involves to restructuring or eliminating some traditional R&D work.
블랙토토 pursuing this trend will have less control over innovation and the intellectual property that goes with it, however. They will also have to compete for the attention and time of the best and most capable contributors.
Further reading:
Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, Cambridge, MA: Yale University Press, 2006.
Henry Chesbrough, Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from 블랙토토, Boston: Harvard 블랙토토 School Press, 2003.
James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes 블랙토토, Economies, Societies and Nations, 블랙토토 York: Doubleday, 2004.
Eric von Hippel, Democratizing 블랙토토, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005.
2. Using consumers as innovators
Consumers also cocreate with 블랙토토; the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, for instance, could be viewed as a service or product created by its distributed customers. But the differences between the way 블랙토토 cocreate with partners, on the one hand, and with customers, on the other, are so marked that the consumer side is really a separate trend. These differences include the nature and range of the interactions, the economics of making them work, and the management challenges associated with them.
As the Internet has evolved—an evolution prompted in part by new Web 2.0 technologies—it has become a more widespread platform for interaction, communication, and activism. Consumers increasingly want to engage online with one another and with organizations of all kinds. 블랙토토 can tap this new mood of customer engagement for their economic benefit.
Ohmy블랙토토s, for instance, is a popular South Korean online 블랙토토spaper written by upwards of 60,000 contributing “citizen reporters.” It has quickly become one of South Korea’s most influential media outlets, with around 700,000 site visits a day. Another company that goes out of its way to engage customers, the online clothing store Threadless, asks people to submit 블랙토토 designs for T-shirts. Each week, hundreds of participants propose ideas and the community at large votes for its favorites. The top four to six designs are printed on shirts and sold in the store; the winners receive a combination of cash prizes and store credit. In September 2007 Threadless opened its first physical retail operation, in Chicago.
블랙토토 that involve customers in design, testing, marketing (such as viral marketing), and the after-sales process get better insights into customer needs and behavior and may be able to cut the cost of acquiring customers, engender greater loyalty, and speed up development cycles. But a company open to allowing customers to help it innovate must ensure that it isn’t unduly influenced by information gleaned from a vocal minority. It must also be wary of focusing on the immediate rather than longer-range needs of customers and be careful to avoid raising and then failing to meet their expectations.
Further reading:
C. K. Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy, The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value with 블랙토토, Boston: Harvard 블랙토토 School Press, 2004.
Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, 블랙토토 York: Portfolio Hardcover, 2006.
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