David Reed, one of our Diamond Fellows and one of the people who invented the basic information protocols of the internet (TCP/IP), has got a new take on future of our technology ecosystem. His MIT thesis in the 1970s predicted that the dominant network structure would be a “dumb network” with “smart ends” – and that is what we have – a transport mechanism called the internet which has very smart ends – like computers and iPhones. At the time, both AT&T and IBM thought he was wrong, but his prescience outshined their “wisdom” so, I tend to sit up and pay attention when David opines about the future of technology in society.
He says that there are three clouds: the Infrastructure Cloud (e.g. the transport layer of the internet), a Resource Cloud (e.g. Salesforce.com, Google) and the Social Cloud (e.g. Twitter, Facebook). When you look at the world that way, you realize that these things that may seem fragile, and flighty (see Tom Davenport’s erroneous blog on this site that Twitter is a fad), are here to stay. Individual businesses may come and there will surely be both a Google-slayer, and a Facebook-dominator some time in the future, but these three clouds will remain and be a resource to global commerce and society – and due to that fact, all businesses should think through what they mean to their strategy.
So what? Well, these three clouds are the infrastructure that makes up every market – from the NYSE to the FX markets. Put another way, we are getting the lego-blocks of markets for everything and every service. We see more fluid movement of resources and demand. My prediction is that as we add the social layer and a more open resource layer, more and more things that used to be traded inside the organization begin to be traded in a market. Salesforce.com is another excellent example of this phenomenon.
These three clouds enhance the importance of three M’s: mobile, markets and mavens. Talking about Mavens, we already see this in the fact that organizations like Yelp! are to consumer products and services what Morningstar is to Mutual Funds – advice, and rating. In any market, Mavens wield influence. We have just begun to scratch the surface of mobile – and most people thought of consumers doing things while on the move – what people missed was that mobile is a two way street – pun intended. For example, Kogi, the Los Angeles based truck fleet has over 35,000 followers on Twitter, and with a combination of location based information from GPS the clients can move to the trucks and vice versa. If you are pressed for time, you can even easily coordinate someone else to wait in line for you!
In this we see the forces of mobile, markets, and mavens. So the question for your organization is are you thinking about how you can move your supply to your market? Are you influencing the mavens that matter? What is the edge of your organization and how fluid is it? Kraft Foods has a very popular iPhone $0.99 iFood phone application, which is dipping their toe in the water of mobile. Think about where the future is going. We will have stores that remind you of the scenes in Minority Report, where the displays are context sensitive – that is, the display will know who you are and what you want to know about. We already see the beginnings of “augmented reality” where people can look at their iPhone and see more information about their location, see if friends are around, and in development are applications that allow you to take a picture of your surroundings – let a database figure out what you are looking at, and then supply information to you – just as Shazam allows you to hold up your phone and get a sample of any song, and it will tell you who the artist is and allow you to order it immediately.
The combination of the three clouds are the infrastructure for mobile, markets, and the increased influence of mavens. Are you ready?
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