The uber consultants at McKinsey’s Technology Initiative have published their first Perspectives volume, seven pieces on the major trends the firm sees emerging.
I’ll highlight the first piece here (more later on the rest). It’s called Eight business technology trends to watch (free registration required), but these trends affect three aspects of business:
- managing relationships
- managing capital and assets
- leveraging information in new ways
Of the eight trends, four help with managing relationships:
Distributing co-creation (the idea that firms will create products using outsiders)_
Using consumers as innovators (a subset of co-creation focused solely on your customers)
Tapping into a world of talent (finding independent specialists and freelancers)
Extracting more value from interactions (the idea that negotiation and conversation are becoming the most essential job skills in developed economies)
Two help with managing capital and assets:
Expanding the frontiers of automation (connecting existing systems and automating the workforce in new ways)
Unbundling production from delivery
The last two relate to leveraging information in new ways
Putting more science into management (McKinsey’s belief that we can effectively parse more data than ever before)
Making Businesses from information (the ever-growing data pools will yield many new kinds of businesses)
Bill Holstein blogged recently in Corner Office about the one he thought most interesting, distributed co-creation.
I find the two related to leveraging information most interesting, because it should encompass all the trends, and it’s a uniquely hard challenge.
What’s your preference? [poll id=2]
