Commentary

The Future Only Happens At The Pace The Present Will Allow

Predicting the future of anything could perhaps be better described as The Art of Being Wrong. The only real variables are the questions of degree and direction. We all know no one can accurately predict the future -- unless it’s the immediate future in which case it tends to be obvious to all. Anyone who claims to do so is either delusional or a snake oil salesman -- or both.

Once we come to terms with our inability to be wholly accurate, then we can get on with the fun business of being wrong. That said, when contemplating any aspect of the future of media, it’s always helpful to take a look over one’s shoulder at recent history.

Not because change always happens in a predictable and linear fashion -- or even at the same pace -- but because the clues for how things will evolve are always there. And they tend to be anchored in the same fundamentals.

Unfortunately, when looking at the new, bright shiny objects that come our way at an ever-increasing pace (social networking, location-based marketing, touchscreens and tablets, time-shifting), we tend to look at the function at the expense of wider considerations.  In other words, we focus -- sometimes obsessively -- on what they can do rather than on why people would want to change their behavior to adopt that functionality on a sustainable (profitable) basis.

Of course, this doesn’t always mean that things are doomed to a miserable and prolonged demise, but it frequently accounts for why adoption takes longer and often plateaus sooner than generally expected.  It does mean, however, that change only truly takes hold at the pace that the prevailing circumstances give ground and allow for it.

What are these fundamentals that continue to have an influence on how media evolve and which we overlook all too easily when considering the future?  There are many -- price, for example -- but four I feel are the most important:

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  •  The Status Quo
    Things are the way they are because someone profits from it. Even if there is a universally held view that there is a need to adapt, the essential need to hang onto market share, profits and maintain share prices will trump every other consideration relating to the deployment of a new service or business model -- no matter how compelling the case may be.

  •  The User Experience
    No matter how solid the business case for a new service or product, it can (and does) all come horribly unraveled where the consumer gets involved if the user experience doesn’t deliver.  There may be all sorts of reasons why yours is the best, the brightest, the cheapest and the sexiest -- but if it doesn’t deliver on expectations, you’re dead in the water.  The engineering and business plan may appear to be great, but if you find yourself saying “the users just don’t get it," then it’s a pretty fair bet the product team and/or marketing team are ones who really don’t get it.

  •  Inertia Something that is frequently overlooked is the fact that most people are perfectly happy with the status quo and are, at best, ambivalent to change.  “Why bother” is the death knell to innovation and change.  It’s desperately easy to carry on doing thing the way you always have and unless a critical mass of consumers can be successfully persuaded to adapt to new propositions, progress will be slow to nonexistent. Sadly, this applies to corporations as well, even when dealing with new ways to tackle previously intractable problems.

  •  The Curse of the Early Adopter
    Too often, projections of change are informed by how the digerati respond to and chatter about given innovations. Forever surrounded by and listening to each other, it’s easy for early tech adopters to both hold and give an impression that adoption is moving faster and wider than it really is.  Twitter and Foursquare are examples. They’ve taken a long time to get to their current levels, much longer than many predicted.

A former chairman of mine once imparted words of wisdom that he jokingly declared were the Four Laws of Business:

  • What’s
  • Innit
  • For
  • Me?

His view was that if you could help answer that question for the consumer, the corporation or anyone else to whom the issue may apply, you were on your way to gaining acceptance.

I would suggest that these “laws” not only apply to the factors listed above and their impact on the pace of change, but can help us as we try to gaze into the future -- with the goal of being as close to not-wrong as we can be.

2 comments about "The Future Only Happens At The Pace The Present Will Allow".
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  1. Don Seaman from Wayne Lifestyle Magazine, January 4, 2012 at 11:14 a.m.

    Well put, Mike.

  2. Matt Straz from Namely, January 4, 2012 at 2:27 p.m.

    Mike this is such a great column. It helps to explain everything from the dynamics of the enterprise software business to why television is not bought and sold like online advertising.

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