The Age of Friction-Free Innovation : Bill Gates on the Next 10 Years
Posted By Rob Millard - 0 Comments -
There's a tendency to overestimate how much things will change in two years, says Bill Gates, and underestimate how much change will occur over ten years. There are a few things, though, that can be predicted with relative certainty.
-Networks will get faster
-Computer processing will continue to increase in accordance with Moore's Law
-Data storage will continue to fall in price
-High definition screens will become cheaper, lighter and more portable
-Mobile phones will rival today's desktop PCs for power and storage
-Software will become increasingly sophisticated, streamlined and intuitive
Several of Microsoft's recent Executive Emails, including Beyond Business Intelligence : Delivering a Comprehensive Approach to Enterprise Information Management and also The New World of Work, provide valuable strategic insights into how some of the most serious problems that face us in the way that we use technology today, are to be addressed. Just a few of the concepts that strategists can look forward to over the next few years (starting next year with the release of Vista and several other new tools) are:
-Seamless and nearly gratis collaboration in teams across the globe
-If not the end then at least a massive reduction in information overload
-A new approach to data storage, away from today's 'file and folder' thinking, that will make it far easier to find the data that you really need.
Sounds appetising! No doubt new problems will arise to replace old ones as they are solved, but Microsoft is firmly focused on addressing the following four issues, at least, over the next decade. To quote Gates:
"Productivity: Information fatigue is one inevitable result of information overload. We are working to develop tools that help information workers prioritize their work and focus on the tasks that are truly important. At the same time, we are working to create unified communication solutions that provide a single entry point to all of the tools we use to communicate with coworkers and customers.
Collaboration: New meeting technologies will make distributed meetings simple and cost effective, and provide rich tools that enable team members to work together to create documents and plans. In addition, companies will be able to capture all of the interaction in meetings and preserve institutional knowledge that is often lost today.
Business intelligence: Powerful yet intuitive software that supports advanced visualization and modeling of information will be used every day by information workers to find meaningful patterns in the vast sea of data they collect. This software will also help employees use the insight they gain to trigger processes that enable organizations to respond quickly as business conditions change.
Workflow optimization: Smarter workflow software will eliminate friction points that hamper organizational agility. These tools will automate the movement of approvals, alerts and exceptions. They will also have the intelligence to recognize inefficiencies in existing processes and make improvements."
There are enough technology blogs for there to be little value in me spending too much time on IT related topics on this one, except where there is a strong and obvious link directly to strategy. Dennis Kennedy's blog first drew all the above to my attention (thanks, Dennis!) and his is a good one to start with if you don't have any law / professional service firm relevant IT blogs in your aggregator.
Comments, as always, are most welcome and may be posted below.
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