I will be excerpting roughly 10% of my next book, The New Technology Elite. The text is going through the publisher’s edits and subject to change. Here are some excerpts from Chapter 1.
The (CES) show has traditionally been a harbinger of technology – and societal – trends with the products that are launched there. 1981 saw the introduction of the camcorder, 1991 the Interactive CD, 2001 the Microsoft Xbox – and each year in between there have been other spectacular announcements.
2011 was no different. It will likely go down as the “Year of the Tablet”. Over a 100 options from Motorola, Dell, Samsung, Toshiba and others competed for attention at CES. They were all hoping to match the phenomenal launch of the Apple iPad a few months prior. If the 7,000 journalists, bloggers and analysts at the show were not exhausted from analyzing the varied tablet form/factors and new features Google and Microsoft were enabling many of these devices with their own version of underlying mobile software, they were chasing down rumors at the show whether Apple was about to launch a Verizon version of the iPhone. (The rumor was later confirmed as Apple provided an option to the AT&T network it previously had an exclusive with in the US market.)
Lost in the excitement about iPad killers and iPhone rumors at the show was an even more significant nugget - the list of exhibitors at the 2011 show included companies from just about every non-technology vertical industry.
There was Walgreens – yes the pharmacy chain – showing off its Refill application which allows you to scan the bar code from a previous prescription using a mobile phone, transmit it and get a text message from your nearest store to go pick it up. And at many of its stores, you could use drive through lanes and related technologies.
Whirlpool showcased its Duet washer/dryers with LCD screens and various laundry apps which are designed to give users advice on stain removal and other common laundry questions.
Nike introduced a GPS enabled Sportwatch developed in collaboration with the navigation vendor Tom Tom.
Ingersoll Rand showed off tech innovations around its Schlage home security and Trane thermostats products.
Ford chose to unveil its all-electric Focus at the CES show rather than at the traditional car launch showplace – the Detroit Auto Show - which was only a week later.
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What’s going on here? These companies live far from Silicon Valley and are known as retailers and auto companies and for Post-It. Why are they competing for booth space and geek attention with technology vendors?
What’s going is what Malcolm Frank describes as the “Sunday Night versus Monday Morning” phenomenon. Frank, SVP of Strategy and Marketing at Cognizant is regaling an audience of CIOs at a customer conference in Orlando. The slide shows a picture of “Rumors” - the Fleetwood Mac 1977 album. His audience is in titters as his voiceover tells the cynicism of his young sons as they happened upon his record collection and he tried to justify why we bought complete albums back then, not just individual MP3 tunes. The reaction of his sons only accentuates what he is seeing at work.
At Cognizant and in other outsourcing firms he has worked at before, Frank has always been surrounded by young workers – a theme common in technology services. And he sees their Monday morning reaction – No Facebook listing of colleagues? No iPads? No thumb drives allowed? This is pretty striking after Sunday night at home with HD TV, Flip video cameras, Microsoft Kinects, Bose audio gear and Apple retina displays.
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BYOT is an acronym increasingly heard in corporate IT circles. It is the recognition that with so much consumer technology, enterprises could be leveraging it, not fighting it.
Unisys ran a poll which asked "What percentage of the cost of your job’s IT tools would you be willing to fund if you had freedom to choose what you could use?" Nearly one-third (32 percent) of the respondents said that they would be willing to pick up the full cost. Twenty-one percent said that they would pay up to half of the cost, and another 21 percent said that they would fund up to 30 percent of the cost.
Savvy CEOs have been walking into their CIOs and asking “where’s my iPad?” And no, not offering to pay 30% of the cost!
But the lightbulb has gone on in even savvier CEOs. “If the consumer lives in the world of iPads and Kindles, can our own product be rethought to be more appealing to this tech-savvy consumer?”
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Welcome to the new Monday morning quarterback. This consumer is willing to try new technology enabled form/factors in just about everything.
There is the “smart” pen and pad from LiveScribe. The Echo records everything you doodle on its special dot paper pad and then allows you to plug into your computer and see the exact replica in digital format. It also has a voice recorder so you could be recording that interview or conversation while you are taking notes.
There is the smart shirt for athletes from Under Armour. Wired Magazine describes the UA E39 as “It weighs less than 4.5 oz and is made from the same material as the rest of the company’s line of compression-based apparel. Yet just below the sternum, the shirt also contains a removable sensor pack called a “bug” that holds a triaxial accelerometer, a processor and 2 gigabytes of storage. The information collected can be broadcast via Bluetooth to smartphones, iPads and laptops so that scouts and trainers can view the power and efficiency of each athlete’s movements. Heart-rate and breathing-rate monitors are placed on both sides of the sensor pack, helping to gather even more intel from the body’s core.”
There is the smart version of bifocal or progressive eyeglasses from PixelOptics. It alters the focal power of the lens when you tilt your head or tap the frame.
There is the smart hotel room courtesy of the Plaza in New York. The iPad in each room allows you to order room service, make restaurant reservations, book wake up calls, print of boarding passes, control the rooms lighting, air-conditioning and much more.
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So back to the CEO and the CIO conversation. Why are our products not similarly Smart?
So, you meet the proverbial Genie and he grants you your wish. Your product is Smart now. But as the story goes – you sure you want that wish granted? Are you ready for your new world? You are now a Technology Vendor and that means:
Getting used to technology product half-lives. A sign of the times: Best Buy which sells plenty of extended warranties with mobile devices and TVs and digital cameras has introduced its version of ‘shortened” warranties via its Buy Back program. As customers lust after newer versions of everything, that program promises (for an upfront fee) to buy back anytime within 2 years of an electronics purchase date (4 years for TVs), giving you a gift card with a scheduled value to use toward another purchase.
Getting used to Moore’s Law driven steep price declines common in technology markets. Not every industry adjusts to that easily. Take auto dealers. Initial versions of DVD players, navigation systems, and Bluetooth speakers all cost thousands of dollars. Dealers continue to expect those prices even as handheld Garmin GPS units and BlueAnt speakerphones are available at a fraction of the cost. Importantly, these devices are portable, so customers can take them when they travel or switch from one family car to another. Indeed, there is a cottage industry of FM transmitters, power inverters, backup cameras, portable satellite radios, coolers, and other gadgets you can buy for your car, many for less than $20.
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If Siemens, a company founded in 1847, Toro, founded in 1914 and Moen, founded in 1937 can do it - certainly they are not startups by a long shot – so can anybody else.
And of course there is the nightmare scenario - if our products are not viewed as Smart, what about the risk from standing still - will our customers increasingly view them as Dumb?
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