It is quite possible that this article is being read on a 4-10 inch screen, which means you are currently holding a mobile device.
It is quite possible that this article is being read on a 4-10 inch screen,
which means you are currently holding a mobile device. This means you are a part of something new, something big, and something novel that is taking the world by a storm – mobility. Even if you are reading this on a personal computer or a laptop, you very likely own a smart device. If you don’t, well, you are soon going to be considered outdated, because mobility is big, it is here, and it is here to stay. More importantly, it is reconstructing the business, society, culture and government landscape.
SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) wave is really transforming the way work is done. The enterprise is finding newer ways of nurturing creativity. Collaboration on the go, social intellect, and real time analytics are all no longer a competitive advantage. They are a must-have, and omnipresent.
Marketing teams can no longer control on their brand or communications. The masses on social networks now control your brand and communications. If you wish to influence the crowd, you must listen, engage, and have a plan and a philosophy on how to participate. The tide has turned.
The support structure has been inverted as well. From the traditional model where a few people in the management / IT supported the customer or the employee community, today we have everyone looking at the knowledge of the masses on the social platforms for advice, reviews, and support.
Enterprises that seek to have a top-down controlling approach towards information are failing, or will fail. They can no longer expect to survive by spoon-feeding the consumers what they think is right for them. Today they have to be open about what they are doing, and how they are doing it. If they go wrong, they need to publicly apologize. Think of Tim Cook’s letter about iOS maps. Think about the apology from Nokia about their fake Lumia camera ad. The public was always unforgiving. However, it now has the weapons to pulverize a company’s reputation. Doing business today is less production, marketing and sales, and more about creating an online community of followers.
On a social level, look at the Arab spring, which was sprung without a warning. It was made possible by shared objectives, shared pain, and shared enthusiasm for change, made possible by the technology that connected unknown faces and turned it into a crowd with a unified objective – freedom from oppression. The local NGOs and social workers could never have been able to organize a protest or an uprising a tenth the size of what came to be.
Governments are waking up to the reality too, albeit a little slowly. You now have politicians addressing the public through Google hangouts. You have bills being voted on electronically. The .gov websites are getting a makeover to satisfy today’s performance and interaction hungry masses. The control is shifting. It takes minutes to sway the opinion of hundreds of thousands through tweets / videos gone viral where it used to take days if not weeks.
The writing on the wall is clear. Everyone today is a public figure. The spotlight can turn onto you at any moment. You can only hope it is one of fame, not notoriety. The upwardly mobile crowd today is self-aware, opinionated, and more importantly, always connected. Therefore, mobility today is not just a change or an efficiency measure. It is a transformation. No, scratch that. It is a Revolution.
