Is Your Business Ready For The Self-Driving Car ?

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Is Your Business Ready For the Self-Driving Car ?

In my comments published in the Harvard Business Review last year I had opined that failure to recognize platform disrupters (like the self-driving car) can be very detrimental to corporate health and existence.

However, most such Disruptions can be prevented from having a Big Bang effect by smart companies by:

- early identification of emerging trends

- what-if /SWOT analysis to identify impact on existing business

- identify opportunities to leverage the emerging trend

- get "co-opted" into the evolution process

- ride the evolutionary wave and reap the benefits.

Companies which do not do so will feel the impact of what was actually an evolutionary process as if it was a "Big Bang". Guys who see an oncoming "self-driving car' and prepare for it can run alongside it a bit and then board it ; guys who are oblivious will be "hit by a self-driving car". (with due apologies to the proverbial "bus")

So has your company started to think about self-driving cars and their likely impact on your business?

Google's motivation to be in this business may be to make more time available to individuals for web browsing (you gotta do something when you are not driving!); but a little bit of crystal ball gazing can see lots of potential downstream disruptive effects on other businesses:

- Drive thru's and Drive Thru Foods (KFC, Burger King et al): Service could be from either side of the car. Food packaging and portions, even the kinds of food available can change since the individual can focus on eating not driving and eating.

- Pepsi, Coke, Media et al: How can we get a share of the time made free from driving available to us. Can we make the "non-driver" drink more of our soda? eat more of our munchies? watch our t.v. show?

- Corporate: Can we productively engage people in our office work while they are non-driving to work? What tools/gizmos can support that?

- Electronics, Accessories: What do we get into the design pipeline to be available as ready to market products when the "self-drivong car" hits us.

Moral of the Story: The Self-Driving Car is coming. Its not as far as you think. And no, it is not likely that you will not be impacted. Better start preparing for it. The early birds will get all the worms. Others will be history.

The Ultimate Marketing Machine: Ruled by the Head or the Heart?

Caveat Emptor: I am a Big Data/BI/Analytics guy with a Marketing background.

I shudder a bit though when I hear the hype equating Big Data/Analytics Driven Marketing to the Marketer's Magic Wand. A Magic Wand which will bundle up hitherto unidentified customers and deliver them at your doorsteps in neatly labeled packets.

As Marketing increasingly focuses on its "head" (using Big Data and Analytics), there is a danger that it will lose touch with its "heart". The pendulum can swing too far in one direction!

While finding the Right Customer at the Right Time is very important and Big Data/Analytics can help with that, even more important is making the Right Emotional Connection with the Right Customer at the Right Time. So creating the Right Message, Brand Identity et al will continue to be key attributes of Marketing even in 2020 and beyond.

A brand which tugs at my purse-strings will surely get my attention but one which tugs at my heart-strings will be a steady partner.

Successful Marketing Leaders create the right mix and balance of head and heart in their teams. That has been the secret sauce of successful Marketers in the past and will continue to be in the future...2020 and Beyond!

Contextual Intelligence: A conversation with Prof. Tarun Khanna, Harvard Business School

I recently had an interesting online conversation with Prof. Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School and director of Harvard University's South Asia Institute. This was with reference to his September 2014 Harvard Business Review article : Contextual Intelligence

The author has opined about how intelligence - including market and business related can be contextual (he spoke about it being influenced by the country of operation) and how new technologies developed elsewhere (beyond the "context") are slow to diffuse. I had a slightly differing view and we had a great dialogue.

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  Deepak Seth • 2 days ago

  Interesting article. I found the title "Contextual Intelligence" to be somewhat of an oxymoron. Isn't all intelligence contextual? If not, then it is not intelligence but stupidity.

  The author has limited the context to countries in a global context but in real life the concept is infinitely extensible even from a business/marketing perspective - regions within countries, cities within regions, localities within cities and so on. One size/shape does not fit all. Most successful corporations/businesses have allowed variations in their "uniform" strategies to support/leverage these contextual nuances.

  I am surprised by the assertion : "Robust research shows that countries take decades, on average, to adopt new technologies invented elsewhere." I would think the underlying research even if robust is likely to be outdated. Cellphones are just the tip of the iceberg as far as disruptive technologies which have exhibited explosive growth and acceptance much beyond the shores where they were invented. That seems to be the norm rather than the exception for most modern technologies. I was surprised to see a newspaper image from India showing a cop readying a drone to go airborne to monitor a riot when similar use of that technology is still being debated in the US. I also hear about drones being used to photograph weddings and cultural events in India. Just an example of how the absence of rules or legislation in some cases helps the proliferation of a new technology rather than hinder it.

  I would like the author to revisit some of his assertions in light of emerging trends from within the last decade (given the fast pace of change even a decade could be too long a horizon) rather than basing it on research from an earlier time-frame.

   

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    Tarun  Deepak Seth • 2 days ago

    hi Deepak

    thanks for this. on the first point, i couldn't agree more; country is merely a (n imperfect) proxy for context. finer-grained geographic subdivisions, social communities, differing industry contexts, might all be relevant proxies for context in the sense of this article.

    On the speed of diffusion, the assertion is a large sample, statistical one, spanning multiple decades and multiple countries and multiple technologies (for example, as analyzed rigorously by the econometrician Diego Comin at Dartmouth in recent years). No one disputes that cellphones diffuse fast, as do other easy-to-spot technologies, but there are numerous others (again, over past decades) whose diffusion has been super-slow.

    ultimately though its an empirical point. you might be proven right that diffusion has sped up (when someone analyzes it rigorously) and will continue to do so. never say never, i say to myself! :)

     

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      Deepak Seth  Tarun • 2 days ago

      Thanks Tarun! Appreciate the feedback.

      Contextual Intelligence reminds me of the premise of the ancient Indian Jain doctrine of “Anekāntavāda” – doctrine of non-absolutism or non-one sidedness or non-exclusivity . A classical elaboration of the doctrine has been the parable of the Six Blind Men and the Elephant where each man depending on where they touched the elephant described it as a spear (tusk), snake (trunk), wall (side), fan (ear), rope (tail) and tree (leg), with none of them able to visualize the animal itself.
      Similarly depending on the context ("country") the same elephant ("cement industry") may have many different manifestations - highly efficient/inefficient , consolidated/ fragmented etc. Maybe a stretch of the logic but that's what I was reminded of.

       

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        Tarun  Deepak Seth • a day ago

        agreed!