Eight business / technology trends from Mckinsey
Mckinsey has highlighted eight interesting business/technology trends to watch. (You may need to register). The abstracts are really short and give only a passing introduction to the subjects, although they do have some neat examples that I had not seen before. To their credit, however, they do provide pointers for further reading. The article got me thinking on how an IT organization could profit from them.
Distributing co-creation
Using consumers as innovators
Nothing new in these two. Usual story about Linux and user generated content. The ‘consumers as innovators’ cites the case of a T-shirt manufacturer leveraging user talent / creativity to create new designs. How would an IT org use this? User generated strategies? It is hard to see a distributed set of users designing a Loan Origination System, for example.
Tapping into the world of talent
This is interesting to me. More often than not, business and IT are at each other’s throats. Business claims that IT is not delivering enough value. IT says business people don’t know what they want and they keep changing their minds. Most of the time, the issue is simply a case of IT holding business hostage. Let me explain. In most organizations, the IT department is usually is the sole provider of IT services. Business does not have a second “service provider” to turn to. As classic economic theory predicts, with no competition, IT’s service quality declines. Businesses should be allowed/encouraged to engage several service providers.
Exacting more value from interactions
Expanding frontiers of automation
Unbundling production from delivery
I wouldn’t be surprised if Google or Microsoft start doing this in a big way. Amazon has led this field by letting companies tap into its big investments in IT. EMC has announced their own move into the “cloud”.
Putting more science into management
Make business from information
