Over the past 3 decades business related information technology has experienced three key era’s of growth. While the first two era’s are somewhat related, in that they both focused on productivity gains, the third era is quite a bit different.
Below are what I consider the 5 key differentiator’s between the era of “the collaborative enterprise”, and the eras of “the productive employee” and “the productive enterprise”:
- Focus on B2C vs. B2B: Social and mobile have an impact on both B2B and B2C, however arguably the greater impact is on how organizations engage with external constituents (i.e., customers or citizens) vs. internal constituents (i.e., partners or employees).
- The agile enterprise: Build. Measure. Learn. When you are building a product for the consumer, its best to build lean and iterate vs. to build bulky and pray.
- Centrality of UX: If you cannot impress a consumer in the first 30-60 seconds of interaction with a new mobile app, then you might have lost them forever. In this new world, UX is king.
- Decentralized creativity: Ideas for new and interesting products and services, and suggestions for improvement, can come from internal or external constituents, not just top level management.
- Driving top line growth: The primary focus of enhancing personal or organization productivity is cost minimization. While effective customer engagement can no doubt reduce cost, its biggest pull lies in driving new revenue.
Each of the above differences warrants a deeper look, and we will do so in future blog posts, but the bottom line is this – the productivity-related eras are giving way to a much more collaborative era.
Second Act 