Monthly Archives: February 2006
Download the complete White Paper: The Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services Continued from #5 Modularization. Full table of contents below. MegaTrend Six: Globalization Across the board, boundaries and borders are blurring almost into non-existence. It is no longer possible to ignore the fact that the economy is global. A pointed example is eLance, the world’s
Continue reading Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services – #6 Globalization
I’ve just had a very interesting conversation with my local newsagent, sparked off when I remarked on the launch of a new celebrity magazine, Famous, which he says has sold out its first issue. To touch on just a few of the most interesting things we chatted about… He says that newsagencies are a great
Download the complete White Paper: The Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services Continued from #4 Transparency. Full table of contents below. MegaTrend Five: Modularization One of the most important, yet least visible, implications of the current phase of information technology is the ability to break down business processes and activities into their components. Web services is
Continue reading Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services – #5 Modularization
The latest issue of BusinessWeek has an interesting interview with Mena Trott of Six Apart, the company that provides the software on which this blog is based, on the future of the blog. Some of the interesting issues raised include how blogging has brought a more personal tone to mainstream journalism, images, audio, and video
Download the complete White Paper: The Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services Continued from Connectivity. Full table of contents below. MegaTrend Four: Transparency On October 25, 2004, the board of directors of financial services conglomerate Marsh & McLennan announced “significant reforms to the business model… which will be rooted in transparency.” The controversy on the payments
Continue reading Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services – #4 Transparency
Following on from my story from last November, Microcredit gains momentum, the leading Indian microfinance institution SKS India has launched a great new website, driven by Chris Turillo, who is in Hyderabad after acting as business development manager for my US partner organization Business Development Institute. The website provides details on the lending methodology SKS
Download the complete White Paper: The Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services Continued from #2 Governance. Full table of contents below. MegaTrend Three: Connectivity As we bustle about with Blackberries, mobile phones, WiFi laptops, and for the novelty seekers sometimes an entire armful of devices, we can now consider ourselves connected. Aside from when they’re out
Continue reading Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services – #3 Connectivity
In web parlance, a “mashup” is a computer application that brings together elements of other applications. One of the key concepts behind it is that of APIs (application program interfaces), a term that is increasingly hard to avoid seeing. An API basically defines how other programmers can access a particular application. When Google first published
Download the complete White Paper: The Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services Continued from #1 – Client Sophistication. Full table of contents below. MegaTrend Two: Governance The cowboy days are over. In the space of a couple of years at the beginning of the century, the business world shifted dramatically. Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen, and similar
Continue reading Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services – #2 Governance
My colleague Richard Watson, who among other claims to fame runs the fabulous NowandNext site, has just come out with what will be an annual report. 2006+ 10 Trends: Predictions & Provocations is through Richard’s generosity available here as a free download (usually £35), and Richard is allowing any use of his material with acknowledgement.
http://www.rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2006/02/seven_megatrend.htmlDownload the complete White Paper: The Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services Continued from Introduction. Full table of contents below. MegaTrend One: Client Sophistication What do you prefer? A sophisticated client, or an unsophisticated one? It’s an interesting issue to debate with professionals. Some say they like unsophisticated clients, because, as they usually express a little
Continue reading The Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services – #1 Client Sophistication
Around six months ago, I wrote a White Paper for the enterprise software company Epicor titled “The Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services: The Forces That Are Transforming Professional Services Industries and How To Respond”. The paper has attracted a huge amount of interest, however up until now, it has only been available on sites requiring
Continue reading The Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services – Introduction
A new peer-to-peer bank, Prosper.com, is launching in the US, attracting articles in both the New York Times and BusinessWeek, with the latter titling the story “The eBay of Loans”. The principle is simple – you lend to individuals at interest rates based on their credit rating, and since you’re cutting out the bank as
Lexus has given iPod Nanos to some customers who had delayed delivery of their cars, and has got big coverage not just in the Club Lexus Forums, but also in blogs and even on Digg. These days, companies can get massive benefit, as well as problems, from how customers spread how they feel by word
What many people don’t appreciate about blogging is that its power comes from how blogs are interlinked, not the blogs on their won. Individual blogs can be interesting. However it is the linking and commenting on other bloggers’ posts and thoughts that creates a single “blogosphere”. This unitary space of all blogs has powerful emergent
Following on from my recent story on collaborative filtering for music, it’s worth taking a look at Videobomb (Thanks for the link Steve Rubel!). This enables people to post links to online videos. If enough people vote for the video, it appears on the site’s front page, so users can immediately find the most popular
Continue reading Collaborative filtering supports meritocratic Internet TV
Market research company Polk has found that first-time car buyers barely use traditional media in assessing potential options, leading to a description of traditional media as “nearly obsolete” for this sector. Internet is the primary information source for 35% of these buyers, four times that for television, and eight times that for magazines. Sixty-five percent
Continue reading Mass media is “nearly obsolete” for some buyers
John Hagel has a very interesting piece on zero-sum thinking – the idea that there if one person wins, another must lose. He draws out how this is epidemic in the business world. A great example is how companies treat their suppliers. In what way do companies do better if their suppliers suffer? Yet that
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About the Blog author
Ross Dawson is globally recognized as a leading futurist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, strategy advisor, and bestselling author. He is Founding Chairman of AHT Group, which consists of 3 companies: consulting, publishing, and ventures firm Advanced Human Technologies, future and strategy firm Future Exploration Network, and events company The Insight Exchange.
Ross is author most recently of Implementing Enterprise 2.0, the prescient Living Networks, which anticipated the social network revolution, and the Amazon.com bestseller Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships (click on the links for free chapter downloads). He is based in Sydney and San Francisco with his wife jewellery designer Victoria Buckley and two beautiful young daughters.
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Future of Media Report 2008
Future of Media Report 2007
Future of Media Report 2006
Executive Insights into Enterprise Social Network Strategy
Future of the Media Lifecycle
Future of Media: Strategy Tools
Executive Insights into Enterprise 2.0
Web 2.0 Framework
Trend map 2007+
Extinction Timeline
SAP White Paper: Service Delivery Innovation
White Paper: The Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services
CNET/ University of Virginia White Paper: How Technology Purchasing Decisions Are Really Made
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Microsoft Strategic White Paper: How To Lock-in Your Clients (1.1MB)
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