Internet Impact
Interesting study from McKinsey. Lots of highlights. Would be great to see this data for New Zealand and Australia.
- Most of the economic value the Internet creates falls outside of the technology sector: companies in more traditional industries capture 75 percent of the benefits. The Internet is also a catalyst for generating jobs. Among 4,800 small and midsize enterprises surveyed, it created 2.6 of them for each lost to technology-related efficiencies.
There are clear implications:
- Enterprises need to sharpen their focus on Internet-related opportunities – especially new products, distribution and customer satisfaction
- Enterprise strategy needs to embrace the positive or negative threat of the Internet to reinvent business models and competitiveness. We talk about Efficient IT at Dell and the Internet is a clear enabler.
- Government leaders need to step-up promoting net access – since “Internet usage, quality of infrastructures, and Internet expenditure are correlated with higher growth in GDP per capita”
- Education inside society and business will matter more than ever – Internet IT skills are needed in every job
A Striking Quote & Question
From the FT:
How the fact that the world’s average age was now 27 years old would affect the global economy?
“It seems to me there is a platform here [on stage] – a union of all the world’s information, interactive gaming, and location and mobility – that platform is the platform of the 22 year old today. The next generation of great companies will be built on the synthesis of that. If I were 22, I would be obsessed by the gaming which is part of this, the socialisation aspects, and the incredible knowledge I can get in many different areas. The sum of that – a new set of learning methods, a new set of social interactions – we can only imagine.” – Eric Schmidt, Google
Best Brands Outperform
Finally catching-up on some of the FTs that landed in the driveway this week. Interesting feature on branding and overall brand performance.
The challenge with charts like those below is they are used very liberally by marketing services providers to justify brand investment. It’s far more complex that the straight line between “good brands = more market value”. Many of the brands that outperform though invest little in traditional brand building and put their weight behind the fundamentals first – great customer service, amazing products and an experience that delights. You can call that good branding. But you can equally call that plain old fashioned good business.
We misuse the gift of our cognition
Tony hits on a range of key points over at HBR. This is a great insight:
So what’s the antidote to behaving reactively — and badly — when we feel under threat?
The first step is to become more aware of when your emotions begin to turn negative. That may mean noticing your heart beating faster, or tightness in your chest, jaw, or forehead.
The next step, when you sense you’re getting frustrated or anxious, is to apply "The Golden Rules of Triggers." It’s very simple: Whatever you feel compelled to do, don’t. Compulsions are not choices, and they rarely lead to positive outcomes.
