Supertrends

1. Supertrends MIS 524

2. Agenda • IT Management In Context • Supertrends * • Richness vs. Reach * • Age of Access * • Death of Distance * • Summing It up * MIS 524

3. IT Management in Context A survey of trends and issues that affect how you manage, why you manage and who cares MIS 524

4. Topics • Your Context • How You Manage • What You Need to Prepare Yourself with • How Technology helps and hinders. MIS 524

5. Societal Influences and Trends Effects of The Way You Manage How You Manage Personal Influences and Trends Technical Influences and Trends MIS 524

6. How You Manage The tools you use The techniques you employ The attitudes you adopt The skills you develop The knowledge you acquire MIS 524

7. Societal Influences and Trends Social Roles of Individuals Economic Situation Political Institutions Demographics Knowledge Production Popular Culture = MIS 524

8. Your skill profile Your demographic profile Your relationship to your job Your goals in life and job How you weather CHANGE Personal Influences and Trends = MIS 524

9. Information Technology Communication Technology Work Environment Technology in General Knowledge level of Society Technical Influences and Trends = MIS 524

10. Effects of The Way You Manage What your employees do What your company does What future expectations are What you get from your job Whom you interact with Where you work and how = MIS 524

11. Technical trends that cut across boundaries E-commerce Intranets ERP Process Reengineering Outsourcing Communications Effects of The Way You Manage How You Manage MIS 524

12. Socio- Economic and Cultural trends that cut across boundaries Transformation Privatization Workplace legislation Globalization Urbanization Effects of The Way You Manage How You Manage * MIS 524

13. Supertrends to Watch For Richness breaking free of Reach Access overcoming Ownership & The Death of Distance * MIS 524

14. Content, space, use, and time are being confounded • Modern ICTs work in many ways to confuse things that used to be certain: • The content-space connection seemingly has been broken • The space-use connection has definitely been broken • In addition, a third trend is happening: the use-time connection is being eroded • Also, the time-meaning/value connection is challenged. MIS 524

15. The Good Ole Days In the past, these were certain: There was a fixed relationship between content and where it could be distributed; There was a fixed relationship between a physical object and where it could be used; There was a fixed relationship between use and when use could take place There was a fixed relationship between when something could be used and what its use meant. Thus: content meant something, and little else. MIS 524

16. Breaking These Bonds • Now, content, space, use, time and meaning are all independent. • Any content can be distributed anywhere • Any content can be used by anyone • Any content can be used any time • Any content can be used in any way, for any reason. • How does this anarchy affect YOU? * MIS 524

17. Overcoming Space In the past, the amount of content has been limited by our geographical ability to distribute it. This is called the RICHNESS-REACH connection. This has now been broken. Almost limitless richness is available to distribute to everyone on earth (potentially, soon) MIS 524

18. In the past, the cost of communication limited the amount of information we could distribute over a given territory Today, via inter-, intra- and extranets, we can distribute almost limitless variety and amounts of information over a given range, even worldwide. Richness: Variety and Depth of Content Reach: Distribution Range The Richness-Reach Tradeoff-1 MIS 524

19. Each distribution channel has its own characteristic Richness-Reach tradeoff curve Attempting to increase distribution range incurs costs, which lower the available richness. Richness: Variety and Depth of Content Reach: Distribution Range The Richness-Reach Tradeoff-2 MIS 524

20. Richness: Variety and Depth of Content Reach: Distribution Range The Richness-Reach Tradeoff-3 Attempting to increase richness incurs costs, which lower the available distribution reach MIS 524

21. Richness: Variety and Depth of Content Reach: Distribution Range The Richness-Reach Tradeoff-4 The new media BREAK the relationship between richness and reach. No reasonable move to increase richness or reach will have any real cost and hence no effect on the other characteristic. * MIS 524

22. Overcoming Use In the past, use of an item was restricted to owners, who only made use of things part of the time. This is called the USE-OWNERSHIP connection. Now the strict relationship between use and ownership has been broken everywhere replacing ownership with “access” Now everyone owns a piece of time of an object. * MIS 524

23. Access Time Forms of Access-Ownership • Leases • Franchises • Time-shares • Licenses • Membership • Sectional Title Tom, Harry Me Me Bill MIS 524

24. The Age of Access-1 Jeremy Rifkin’s new book The Age of Access examines what is happening to capitalism as it shifts its essential emphasis from (private) property and the working of assets to produce gain to access and the working of intellectual resources for gain. He discusses three major ideas: Networks are supplanting markets, ownership is giving way to access, and ownership is giving way to use. The implications are enormous and it seems all to depend on information (systems) phenomena PROPERTY ACCESS MIS 524

25. The Age of Access-2 First, there is the replacement of markets (which replace hierarchies and their peculiar structural implications) with networks. In networks, there is no “moment of exchange”; rather people “stay in touch”. Instant organisations (Rifkin terms this the “Hollywood Organizational Model”) is changing the notion of “organization” perhaps irrevocably. NETWORKS MARKETS MIS 524

26. The Age of Access-3 Next, organizations are divesting themselves of assets and becoming “weightless” meaning they are not burdened with the effort of owning things. Real estate, assets, money, and savings are not necessary as all can be borrowed. A primary example is the trend towards franchising. A franchisee doesn’t actually own anything and may have no real freedom in how the things apparently controlled are used. The major “asset” in a franchise is a brand OWNERSHIP BORROWING MIS 524

27. The Age of Access-4 It is the intangible assets that are adding value; intellectual property is replacing property itself. Ideas are becoming commodities. Even culture is becoming commoditized and sold (eg, tourism). The culture business is the biggest business on earth. There are numerous implications to this in the legal, social and economic arenas. OWNERSHIP BORROWING MIS 524

28. The Age of Access-5 Finally, goods are giving way to services; there will be, he says, no more sales, only service. There is ample evidence of this through licensing, giving away of software or items to be replaced for income purposes with after sales services. No longer do people buy things, they are buying the services that go along with things. GOODS SERVICES MIS 524

29. Info The Age Of Access Networking Computer Usage The Age of Access -6 Rifkin doesn’t specifically point to explanations of these phenomena, but does interrelate them (theory). However, it is clear that information (about products, processes, people and environments), networking, and increased computer usage drives much of what is happening. These phenomena at least make Rifkin’s ideas plausible. Other possible explanations include demographics, shift from wartime to peacetime economies, and the “death” of communism. MIS 524

30. The Age of Access -7 People don’t own anything, including information about themselves People participate in fleeting relationships through computer-mediated connections including businesses, families, etc. Information ABOUT objects motivates services, franchising, leasing rather than ownership. Weightless economy, society Relationships based on connections Information-enabled relationships MIS 524

31. The Age of Access -8 It’s interesting to see that the supposed “causes” can also be thought of as “effects”. Technology doesn’t exist independently of forces in society, or does it? A theory of this sort requires rather wide data. Another question is the level of aggregation concerned: firm, industry, society, world? Rifkin’s ideas are about capitalism rather than a geographical entity and changes in such a complex mode of behavior do not take place all at once. Is this a stable phenomenon he is talking about? How is it changing the way you manage or interact with employees or your employer or clients? MIS 524

32. Ownership Access Ideas Commodities Products Services Markets Networks Age of Access:Summary Changes in Capitalism * MIS 524

33. Overcoming Space-2 In the past, our ability to interact was limited by our physical and geographical “strength”: speed, power, size. This relationship now been broken. Almost limitless reach is available to interact with almost everyone on earth * MIS 524

34. Death of Distance Distance puts a premium on precise communication, coordination, and rules in order to combat noise, delays and error. Rules and roles grow naturally out of an attempt to bring order to an expensive and threatening process. Conventions -- a sort of least common denominator -- arise to favor bigness and dedicated assets Effects of Distance 1. Error / Slowness 2. Need for Coordination 3. Reach/Richness Tradeoff 4. Localization 5. Fixed Community 6. Fixed Roles 7. Mass Production 8. Size 9. Fixed Asset Investment 10. Fixed markets MIS 524

35. Death of Distance Effects of Distance 1. Error / Slowness 2. Need for Coordination 3. Reach/Richness Tradeoff 4. Localization 5. Fixed Community 6. Fixed Roles 7. Mass Production 8. Size 9. Fixed Asset Investment 10. Fixed markets Effects of Death of Distance 1. Frictionless Markets 2. “Democratic” Connections 3. Information Overload 4. Globalization 5. Community of Practice 6. More Mobility of Role 7. Mass customization 8. Irrelevance of Size 9. Investment in Intellectual Assets 10. Instant Niches What if Distance is no longer a concern, no longer dictates criteria for communication, but instead represents “reach”, an asset rather than a liability? MIS 524

36. Death of Distance Effects of Death of Distance 1. Frictionless Markets 2. “Democratic” Connections 3. Information Overload 4. Globalization 5. Community of Practice 6. More Mobility of Role 7. Mass customization 8. Irrelevance of Size 9. Investment in Intellectual Assets 10. Instant Niches ? * MIS 524

37. Content ICT Space Use Time The New Cosmology Business And Management Value MIS 524

38. Question: How Does This Affect You? • Your Job • Your Employees • Your Clients • Your Profession • Yourself Easier…………..………..Harder More Fun………..…….Less Fun Longer term…….…Shorter Term More important….Less important More demanding.Less demanding Nicer……………………..Nastier MIS 524

39. Sources • Rifkin, Jeremy. The Age of Access, 2000 • Wurster, Philip, and Thomas Evans. Blown to Bits. Harvard University Press, 1999. • Cairncross, Frances. The Death of Distance 2.0. Harvard University Press, 2000 * MIS 524