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Gareth Harries
'The digital age is making it possible to create value on different levels. In particular, advancing technologies are enabling the creation of new business models that prioritise the delivery of
Gareth Harries ... Social media and digital marketing communications specialist
... outcomes rather than just selling products and services.' Take a look at Carlo Gagliardi's new megatrends blog on the sharing economy and the revolution of digital services http://bit.ly/1wdOCi0
Digital continues its journey of discovery - Megatrend matters bit.ly [see below]
By Carlo Gagliardi In October last year, the UK newspaper and magazine wholesaler Smiths News launched a same-day collection service jointly with Amazon. The story got little coverage in the mainstream press. But if you spotted it, you’ll know the servi...
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Suvi Reivilä, Raul Cardeira like this
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Peter Burgess
Peter Burgess
Founder/CEO at TrueValueMetrics developing Multi Dimension Impact Accounting
No question that a lot of good can come out of the deployment of digital data analysis and decision making ... but in the end is society going to be a better place? The last 40 years of productivity gains have been huge, but the wealth resulting has only been of benefit to owners and very little to workers (most of us). The modern digital models are funded to an unhealthy degree by advertising which has its singular aim to sell more stuff whether or not we consumers need the stuff. Media and information are in trouble because of digital and because advertising for them is in flux ... and consumers of news are less while consumers of entertainment are more. Little pieces of the new digital world are good and exciting ... a bigger part of the digital world may be problematic.
Sad ... but exciting times.
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Anna Bateson
Anna
Anna Bateson
Founder of strategy consultancy Cutting Through The Grey 'Enabling business to develop Situational Intelligence'
So digital requires a new way of thinking. Some of the boards I work with are curious and instinctively get it. They listen to their customers and deliver value by creating agile and collaborative organisation models. I am reminded of the delight of working with PW colleague and digital guru, Alf Chattell back in the 1990s as he reserached and published 'Creating Value in the Digital Era - achieving success through insight, imagination and innovation.' The underlying principles are resilient.
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Digital continues its journey of discovery
25 February 2015
By Carlo Gagliardi
In October last year, the UK newspaper and magazine wholesaler Smiths News launched a same-day collection service jointly with Amazon. The story got little coverage in the mainstream press. But if you spotted it, you’ll know the service is called ‘Pass my Parcel’. The idea is to exploit what was - previously - un-utilised spare capacity in Smiths News’ vans. By doing so, this new service enables Amazon Prime members to order items in the morning and then pick them up in the afternoon from any one of over 500 independent retail outlets.
In my view, this is an example that underlines the dramatic emergence of new business models, and in particular of the sharing economy, heralding a future where an empty cubic meter of space in a lorry driving from London to Leeds could be auctioned on eBay.
21726_Capacity-blog_250215
The sharing economy is about “sharing” of a number of things, such as labour or assets. As services such as Uber have demonstrated, valuable but previously inaccessible capacity of many kinds can now be parcelled up, advertised, auctioned and sold using digital platforms. This is because the spare asset can now be digitally tagged at a very granular level, even down to an empty cube meter of space in a delivery van. The effect is often to enable outcomes – such as getting a parcel or a person from A to B at a lower cost.
By way of example, consider the lorry fleet of a hub-and-spoke business, such as a network of motor repair garages. The company’s lorries will generally travel out from the distribution centre 90% full and travel back empty – meaning that on average they use only 45% of their capacity. Technology can now provide a means to monetise this spare space: precisely the type of opportunity that Smiths News has seized with ‘Pass my Parcel’.
And such examples of sharing economy are being mirrored by a parallel advance towards enabling and (when possible) delivering outcomes: consider how customers can now share their own behavioural and consumption data with online providers to visualise, gamify and achieve a personal goal, be it to learn about classical music or get fitter.
Providers of a vast array of goods and services are now using a digital return path and two-way interactivity to share data and analytics with consumers, and support them in pursuing whatever personal objective they’re looking to achieve. An obvious example is the way connected Fitbit products allow people to track their fitness performance. And there are many others: by sharing data with Amazon on what and how they read, and personal reading and learning goals, consumers can experience a video game-type visualisation of their progress. This trend has much farther to run.
And there is more. The digital age is making it possible to create value on different levels. Take for example books. The first level was to sell a book in a bookstore; the second was to sell a book from a postal catalogue; then came websites like Amazon selling books online; followed by the eBook that could be read on an eReader, providing a user experience that was more convenient but otherwise little different from that with the physical product.
In summary the digital age is making new business models possible that create value by making the sharing economy a reality and by enabling outcomes rather than just selling products and/or services.
The megatrends and emerging business models based on the sharing economy and/or outcome-based value creation have already driven rapid advances in digital services. But in my view, the real revolution is only just beginning. Welcome to the next phase of the digital economy.
Carlo Gagliardi | Partner and Co-Lead of the Digital Practice
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