Mind the Gap

Reading Tomi's last post prompted me to think out loud on some broader issues that have been brewing for some time.

That thought process relates to the idea of FRICTION - Friction is abrasion, agitation, attrition, chafing, erosion, grating, grinding, irritation, resistance, scraping, trituration, and wearing away. Amongst other things.

Tomi's post reminded me of the friction that SMLXL has encountered over the last few years as we have agitated, chafed, grated and ground ourselves against the the infrastructure of an industrial world.

Tomi's thoughts were and are far-sighted and it is why we decided to co-write together, as we shared a world view which today has become mainstream. The specific issue is with Tomi's view on mobile advertising. Because it directly challenges the fixed orthodoxies of the mass media world.

And though resistance prolongs the inevitable decline and evolution of our business and media worlds and indeed our culture and society - that evolution is inevitable.

New organisational practices and processes are required - new ways of recounting the audience and measuring ROI and accountability. The precision of the mobile/internet world, and these media will ultimately converge - means we will say goodbye to all that we knew to be analogue in philosophical as well as practical terms.

Yet what we see are companies thrashing around, thinking they have done a deep dive into what issues they are facing only to realise they have merely scratched the surface. But maybe that has always been the case.

But decisions that companies take today will affect whether they adapt to survive or whether the fat lady will sing.

Someone said to me recently of the traditional world of media, marketing and advertising that they were lazy whilst the likes of google, Apple and Microsoft are working their nuts off to make sense of this new world and therefore make possible revenue generation for the future.

And I could not agree more. My thoughts are these...

The change wrought by the networked information environment is structural. Manuel Castells emphasises the role of technology in the process of human transformation, particularly when considering the central technology of our time, communication technology, which relates to the heart of the specificity of the human species: conscious, meaningful communication.

If we accept that as a truth, then that truth changes; what we make, how we make it, who we make it with and how in fact we communicate with each other. This has significant effects on our society, culture and economics. Gartner says for example that our current banking system will look nothing like it is today within ten years, this also goes for all media, organisations and institutions. Price Waterhouse Coopers report that consumer conversations will fundamentally transform business.

It requires a new logic, a new language and a new philosophy.

Industries, organisations, the media in its many guises are trying to make sense of this epochal change, some do it better than others – but with these new technologies we have the ability to redefine the role of the media, brands and organizations and how they are going to play a meaningful role in peoples lives.

Comments

[Tomi Ahonen]

Very good point Alan

Yes, its a structural change. Like the industrial revolution. We had experts who made shoes before the industrial revolution. Experts who made barrels. Experts who made horse carriages, etc. But these were all hand-made, took forever to make, and cost a fortune. Then came the industrial revolution, and suddenly we had abundant power - first steam power, eventually electricity driven power - to do part of the manual labour. Then the jobs changed, the quantity of production could be increased - and often even the quality of products could be increased with mass production and increased automation.

But that was a structural change - to just about everything. Factories, now needed big warehouses of supplies because the production numbers grew. They needed mass transport to move mass quantities of shoes or radios or cans of fruit, etc. Then we needed a different way of marketing them (mass advertising) and of selling them (the supermarket). We had people massing near the factories for work - creating the industrial cities like Pittsburgh and Manchester etc. Then came mass transport to move the people to work and to their homes. A need for more efficient mass housing, the apartment buildings, etc.

Total structural change.

Now we are facing another total structural change. As the world goes digital, and everyone is permanently connected, the jobs will change. Production changes (digital content is typically more expensive to produce initially, and then has a near-zero duplication cost, and on digital distribution channels, near-zero distribution cost). The role of the consumer changes, ever more do-it-yourself kind of opportunities, etc.

And this structural change does require a total re-think of the business entity. A Google or a Microsoft as an example rather than a GE or Motorola. Look at Nokia, it has been pushing the theme for years now, that they are a software company, an internet company. That they must become nimble and quick and adaptable. And obviously Apple, seeing the gradual diminishing opportunity in desktop PCs, and a less-rosy opportunity in stand-alone PDAs, and even a less promising growth path in laptops, started to move into the media space (iPod) and the mobile space (iPhone) as well as the home entertainment arena.

Yes, its a fundamental structural change, I totally agree.

Tomi :-)