He who lives by the crystal ball soon learns to eat ground glass.
EDGAR R. FIEDLER, ECONOMIST
In 1980, at an otherwise ordinary industry conference, William Synott, then Senior Vice President of the First National Bank of Boston, approached the microphone and boldly asserted a prediction for the future of his profession. The event was the Information Management Exposition and Conference, and Synott would create a moniker, redefine the IT function, and invent a new career aspiration for the budding professionals in attendance. He stated:
The manager of information systems in the 1980s has to be Superman—retaining his technology cape, but doffing the technical suit for a business suit and becoming one of the chief executives of the firm. The job of the chief information officer (CIO)—equal in rank to chief executive and chief financial officers—does not exist today, but the CIO will identify, collect and manage information as a resource, set corporate information policy and affect all office and distributed systems.1
With that, a new title and role for information managers was born. The goal of their craft was no longer merely to be a technical expert but to combine this know how with business proficiency to advance the goals of the enterprise.
That same year, the largest IPO in nearly 25 years was offered, creating more millionaires than any company in history. Apple would grow to become the largest technology company in the world as measured by revenue and profit, topping Google and Microsoft combined, but its origins were a bit volatile. After several unsuccessful runs at conquering the enterprise user, Apple stuck to its niche in creating elegant devices with superior intuitive capabilities and providing them to a committed base of zealots in the consumer market. By the mid nineties, the company fully embraced its consumer identity and held fast to creating cooler computers with better capabilities. By the turn of the century, the niche player succeeded where so many before it had failed in devising a commerce platform through its iTunes storefront that finally made an MP3 player worth owning. Not long after, it took the same design and commerce principles and redefined the smartphone market—one previously reserved for the serious Blackberry enterprise user, with the launch of iPhone. iPad soon followed, generating more revenues in the first quarter of its debut than the entire company had just 10 years prior.
It is fitting, if not fate, that Apple's success would be predicated on consumer acceptance of its better mousetraps. The same year the company went public marks the genesis of a generation that would grow up as the most connected in history. Millennials would mature during the age of the Internet, mobile ubiquity, and Facebook, hardly living a moment of their lives unconnected to the virtual world surrounding them. Their rabid appetite for all things digital spawned the growth of new forms of communication and content and upended traditional business models for companies attempting to woo a multitasking generation on steroids.
As these examples illustrate, every so often, the confluence of multiple trends creates seismic shifts that even the most visionary futurists would have failed to predict given their seemingly unrelated origins. The year 1980 illustrates how disparate movements can originate in isolation, only to drift together decades later with tectonic force. Those technology-insatiable Millennials are now storming the enterprise gates and will represent roughly one-third of the workforce by 2014.2 Apple is a seemingly unstoppable juggernaut launching ever-cooler new devices to a now insatiable base of consumers that goes well beyond the niche fringes. In an ironic twist, these enthusiastic consumers have given Apple entrée to the enterprise market that once eluded it as they increasingly use their iPhones and iPads in the work environment—in some cases, without their company's consent. And, the CIO, once a position conceived by a visionary speaker at an industry conference and now an essential role within most private enterprises, finds himself in the eye of a perfect storm—a changing workforce with radically different work habits colliding with consumer companies that have become the gold standard in shaping how technology is used. The result some decades later is perhaps the most profound shift to ripple through enterprises since the advent of the personal computer.
Fueling this transformation are employees and the expectations they bring to the workplace as by-products of behaviors first adopted in the home. The way employees work is fundamentally changing. Buoyed by the plethora of technology options surrounding them and the marriage of previously distinct personal and professional personas, employees (and the land grab by companies to attract and retain the most attractive of them) are at the center of this change. Of course, there are also external forces in play accelerating the momentum and creating an environment conducive to the transformation:
Although these external forces are playing out in shaping how employees work, they are also having an impact on how enterprises compete. Almost since the arrival of Michael Porter's seminal work in studying the forces of competition, debates have raged about whether technology is sufficient in creating sustainable competitive advantage for a firm. We side with the school of thought that it is not. To find sustainable competitive advantage, a firm must generate something valuable, heterogeneous (meaning that it is composed of multiple elements such that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts), and highly immobile (meaning that other firms would find great difficulty in attempting to replicate said advantage to equalize the playing field). Technology on its own is subject to commoditization, making it difficult for companies to leverage it for sustainable competitive advantage. However, although technology alone is insufficient for this cause, it is an essential ingredient in other aspects of how enterprises function.
Among the most important intangible elements affected by technology is a company's culture. A firm's ability to create sustainable competitive advantage by affecting the heterogeneous, invisible activities surrounding its culture can be significantly hampered or enabled with its technology mind-set. This reality is also changing the definition of critical roles within the enterprise:
In short, the external forces of mobility, cloud, data analytics, and collaboration are creating seismic shifts in the role of employees at all levels of the organization. The result can mean the difference between success and failure for the employee or the company itself. In fact, although politicians for years have stressed the urgency behind a “digital divide” in the United States—one where more populous areas are the beneficiaries of more advanced technology options (such as broadband), leading to increased growth potential—there is, in fact, a less popular digital divide remaining in this country, because it is not among consumer households. Indeed, the digital divide still plaguing the nation's opportunity for growth falls between the more advanced enterprises that use technology as a strategic asset and those that still view technology as a necessary evil. As economists have demonstrated with numerous studies, consumer broadband penetration alone is a leading indicator of economic growth for a nation. Imagine the national growth potential when broadband and associated technologies are examined within the context of private enterprises responsible for jobs, goods, and services. It is this last digital divide and the contrast between successful and unsuccessful companies that will be explored in this book.
The journey begins with a closer analysis of the sweeping technology trends affecting enterprises of all sizes, including employees' increasing appetite for mobility, the role of the cloud in transforming business economics, the significant opportunities and challenges precipitated by seemingly infinite data, and the dynamic pace of workflow brought forth by collaboration. Next, the associated change occurring for various roles within the company, including next-generation knowledge workers, human resource professionals, marketers, finance heads, and information technology leaders will be explored. This analysis will be reconciled against the impact on company culture with an assessment of how technology can play a part in a firm's financial success. Finally, broader technology implications will be discussed in the context of economic advantage—whether in leveling the playing field between large and small enterprises or competing for growth on a global stage between national superpowers. Each chapter will be accompanied by prescriptive actions for businesses wrestling with these knotty issues, if not pointed observations of how the landscape is poised for change in the not-too-distant future.
To examine the topic from multiple angles requires a review of some of the more provocative insights over the past few decades from leading researchers and analysts. Those commentaries are included throughout the book. At the same time, these findings are augmented by multiple primary research studies commissioned by the global telecommunications leader Alcatel-Lucent. One study in particular represents more than 2,800 respondents across every walk of life in the U.S. enterprise—including frontline knowledge workers and HR, IT, and business decision makers. It includes representation from the very small (between five and 19 employees) to the largest of companies (more than 1,000 employees). It is augmented by a separate questionnaire covering more than 300 elite upcoming graduates from the top 100 universities in the United States. Throughout this book, the results of this study offer perspective to the broader trends discussed. Hereafter, the results derived from this research will be referred to as the “2012 Alcatel-Lucent study,” and they specifically cover findings among U.S. respondents, unless otherwise noted. In particular, this research informs the analysis to address the following questions:
Although the most prophetic soothsayer would have been hard pressed to recognize the relationship between an emerging IT function, the rise of consumer technology juggernauts, and the birth of an always-on connected generation in 1980, the confluence of these trends in our current year is undeniable. There are likely numerous “unrelated” trends currently happening that will not reach fruition of intersection for multiple decades hence. We the authors won't be so bold as to connect these yet-unrelated dots, but this book will inform you how the current landscape is poised for future transformation in the next couple of years. In doing so, it offers prescriptive advice to companies struggling with their own digital divide and employees angling to compete in a workplace increasingly transformed by habits first adopted in the home. Although it is true that there is no crystal ball to indicate where the road will lead decades from now, research and analysis will illuminate the possibilities of the path. The destination 30 years hence remains unclear, but the journey begins now.