Last week I had a chance to have a long talk with my earlier startup colleague. We both love high-tech startups and share interest in following latest venture trends. While we were talking, I realized how much things have changed last time we worked together to launch our startup back in early 2000.
I remember watching Al Gore and George W. Bush presidential debate on webcast that was just getting popularized by Real Player. Content delivery network and increasing network bandwidth were hot topics. AOL and Time Warner merge was still fresh on everyone's mind. TV ads and movie posters were showing AOL keywords. Google was still a relatively obscure name in search space, and many players were competing for majority share, such as Yahoo, Alta Vista, HotBot, Lycos, etc.
Boy, times must have changed. Who would have thought that George W. Bush would go on to two terms, dot-com bubble would go bust, AOL and Time Warner merger was to be condemned as the worst business deal ever, and Google will dominate search market? I certainly did not.
But what's interesting is that there are also underlying trends that continued and even accelerated through time as well. Things like Moore's law, ever increasing network bandwidth, internet access becoming more and more ubiquitous and data that is available anytime anywhere are such examples. There are some fundamental trends that kept on going, and caused enormous disruptions to existing markets.
When I look at things that are happening today, I see the similar trends that are going to continue on and fundamentally change the way we think about computing. I want to name a few and hopefully share my views on them in upcoming blog posts.
1. Communication to collaboration
Who would have thought that killer application for personal computer would be email and web browsing? It's not using CPU power to crunch out spreadsheets or enjoy single-player game, but to use the computer as communication device. This computer as communication device has been so successful that now we don't think computer is not turned on unless it's connected to the internet (when was the last time you were using your computer off the internet?).
Now that paradigm is changing. No longer computer is simple communication device that connects one person to another. We are seeing computer acting as virtual place where people can meet and collaborate, thanks to ever increasing bandwidth and ubiquitous internet connectivity. With social networks educating the next generation of work force, we will fundamentally shift the way we collaborate with each other (I wrote an article about why I believe this is the case earlier).
2. Explosion of data
With more and more people collaborating on virtual places, there will be ever increasing data and analytics information available to number crunchers. We are beginning to see the glimpse of what this might look like from amount of traffic that we see from Twitter (there were 200 tweets per day as of June 2011). It will be important for individual users to quickly figure out whether a piece of information is important and relevant, but also these large volumes of data will become a goldmine for marketers.
3. Harnessing creativity and autonomy
As pace of innovation accelerates, it will be critically important to have creative workforce that can innovate autonomously. Funny thing about innovation is that it's not something that can be forced down from the top. Innovation starts from the bottom (from anywhere actually), and thrives in highly collaborative environment where workers have sense of autonomy. In future we are going to be limited by our own imagination and execution. The engine of innovation, creativity, must be tapped and the only way we can tap them is by creating the right environment.
More companies will be forced to innovate faster, and critical ingredients to that innovation is creative human capital. People will think more about how to tap this creative human potential. Gamification will be one of the pillars of unleashing this true human potential.
Can you think of any other trends that will survive the test of time?
 |
| I only wonder where we might be today if father of Internet were elected as President... |
Boy, times must have changed. Who would have thought that George W. Bush would go on to two terms, dot-com bubble would go bust, AOL and Time Warner merger was to be condemned as the worst business deal ever, and Google will dominate search market? I certainly did not.
But what's interesting is that there are also underlying trends that continued and even accelerated through time as well. Things like Moore's law, ever increasing network bandwidth, internet access becoming more and more ubiquitous and data that is available anytime anywhere are such examples. There are some fundamental trends that kept on going, and caused enormous disruptions to existing markets.
When I look at things that are happening today, I see the similar trends that are going to continue on and fundamentally change the way we think about computing. I want to name a few and hopefully share my views on them in upcoming blog posts.
1. Communication to collaboration
Who would have thought that killer application for personal computer would be email and web browsing? It's not using CPU power to crunch out spreadsheets or enjoy single-player game, but to use the computer as communication device. This computer as communication device has been so successful that now we don't think computer is not turned on unless it's connected to the internet (when was the last time you were using your computer off the internet?).
Now that paradigm is changing. No longer computer is simple communication device that connects one person to another. We are seeing computer acting as virtual place where people can meet and collaborate, thanks to ever increasing bandwidth and ubiquitous internet connectivity. With social networks educating the next generation of work force, we will fundamentally shift the way we collaborate with each other (I wrote an article about why I believe this is the case earlier).
2. Explosion of data
With more and more people collaborating on virtual places, there will be ever increasing data and analytics information available to number crunchers. We are beginning to see the glimpse of what this might look like from amount of traffic that we see from Twitter (there were 200 tweets per day as of June 2011). It will be important for individual users to quickly figure out whether a piece of information is important and relevant, but also these large volumes of data will become a goldmine for marketers.
3. Harnessing creativity and autonomy
As pace of innovation accelerates, it will be critically important to have creative workforce that can innovate autonomously. Funny thing about innovation is that it's not something that can be forced down from the top. Innovation starts from the bottom (from anywhere actually), and thrives in highly collaborative environment where workers have sense of autonomy. In future we are going to be limited by our own imagination and execution. The engine of innovation, creativity, must be tapped and the only way we can tap them is by creating the right environment.
More companies will be forced to innovate faster, and critical ingredients to that innovation is creative human capital. People will think more about how to tap this creative human potential. Gamification will be one of the pillars of unleashing this true human potential.
Can you think of any other trends that will survive the test of time?
No comments:
Post a Comment