Mobile Expert Video Series: Cognizant's Jeff Wallace, Part 1

Last week I spent some time in Silicon Valley and met up with my colleague Jeff Wallace who runs Cognizant's Mobility Practice.  I cornered him and asked his thoughts and opinions on HTML5 in this short video.  Jeff shares how HTML5 is maturing and closing the capability gap between native and HTML5.  Grab some popcorn!  When you are done, watch Part 2 here.

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant
View Linkedin Profile

Read the whitepaper on mobile, social, analytics and cloud strategies Don't Get SMACked
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

SMAC, Mobile Collaboration and Google

Have you had a chance to review the full inventory of Google's solutions and apps lately?  I have been working with many of them this week and am impressed with how Google is enabling enterprises to become true social businesses.  It is very interesting how they are not just demonstrating cool and innovative solutions but entirely new ways of running and managing businesses.

If fact, Jon Reed, John Appleby and myself recorded a Google+ Hangout session this week on the subject of enterprise mobility.  I will post the link of the recorded session as soon as it is ready.  I suggest that all businesses should study Google Hangout and understand how powerful it is.  Google Hangout is now embedded in Google Docs, Sheets and other apps.  Anytime you need to collaborate, simply push the Hangout button in the document.  Very interesting and useful!

I have also been collaborating with a group of folks around the country this week using Google Docs.  All of us can login and collaborate in real-time on the same document.  We can comment, edit and track who is adding what.  At the top of the document you can see all the people who are collaborating on the document at any moment in time.  It was an education in collaboration.
My job title is Head SMAC Analyst for Cognizant.  SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud)  represents a disruptive technological, cultural and workforce shift.  It is about connecting and collaborating whenever and wherever you are located.  Google enables workers to collaborate and access their online content, sheets, docs, notes, photos, videos, etc., across any mobile device, anywhere there is an Internet connection.  This is incredibly useful and convenient, although it takes some education to take full advantage of it.

Collaboration requires a different mindset.  Instead of individuals working on a document and then using email to send it for review by others, you can all just login to the same document in the cloud.  There are no versioning issues in this model.  Also, if you have a question about a document or sheet, again, just push the Google Hangout button on the document or sheet and invite your colleagues to gather around the item and discuss it in real-time.

Google seems to have passionately embraced SMAC and is demonstrating this by incorporating SMAC concepts and strategies in their entire inventory of solutions and apps.  With Google+ and Google Hangouts, Sheets, Docs, Blogger, Sites, Drive, Keep, etc., they are again showing the enterprise how to connect with mobile workers and effectively collaborate.  This is the death of distance some person smarter than me wrote recently.

Google is not just focused on the social component of the SMAC stack.  They have the market leading mobile operating system with Android.  They support analytics in many forms including Google BigQuery, Google Analytics and Google Universal Analytics.  They continue to demonstrate innovation with many forms of maps, navigation and location-based services.

We may associate Google mainly with their search engine, but don't miss how they are educating the world on becoming a social business using SMAC strategies.

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant
View Linkedin Profile

Read the whitepaper on mobile, social, analytics and cloud strategies Don't Get SMACked
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Integrating the Digital and Physical Worlds with Enterprise Mobility

New York City oversees 900,000 buildings and picks up 12,000 tons of trash per day.  They know how much electricity is used in the average house/apartment.  They know how many people live in the average unit.  They know what neighborhoods complain the most.  They know the health inspection records of restaurants in the area.  They have information on boilers, sprinkler systems, local taxes paid, numbers of heart attacks, fires, roach complaints, construction noise, commuting habits and test scores all stored in massive data archives available for Big Data analysis.

This is digital data, however, if you are looking to move into a new physical neighborhood in New York City, you might find this information incredibly valuable.  Real-time and Big Data capabilities integrated with location services on smartphones have the ability to revolutionize the way we live and work.

It is not hard to imagine wearing Google Glasses with this kind of data coming up on your lenses in real-time as you look at different buildings while walking down the street.

The data in New York City archives can tell you the average response times of the N.Y.P.D. to crimes in progress by neighborhood.  They can tell you where crimes were reported, the type and frequency of the crime and how it compares with other neighborhoods and cities.  They can tell you which zip codes have the youngest populations, highest SAT scores, most electricity consumed, most rat sightings reported and most laundromats.  All of this information can augment the reality of what you are seeing from a street view as you are walking down the sidewalk.

This is the kind of data that provides true situational awareness.  I want this kind of information when I am walking in a new city.  I want this kind of information when I am looking to move to a new neighborhood.  To me, this is a killer mobile app that I am willing to pay for, and what is funny is it is really all about Big Data.  The mobile app and GPS sensor on your smartphone are querying Big Data analytics in real-time as you are walking down the street.

If I want this capability personally, what about enterprises?  Where is the best place to locate a business or sell a product?  Where are the demographics that are best for your particular products and services?  What neighborhoods are safe, and which are not for your construction crew and projects?

I personally want to know this information, but is this knowledge good for society?  I am not sure.  How does a neighborhood become revitalized and move past its historic data record?  How do we integrate ex-cons and ex-sex offenders back into society if they cannot move beyond their past?  These are all interesting problems to ponder.

The bottom line is that enterprise mobility integrated with big data analytics is going to change the way we see the world around us and conduct business.  The physical world is going to be augmented by the digital world.

For more information on this subject read, The Mayor's Geek Squad in the Sunday, March 24, 2013 edition of the New York Times.
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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant
View Linkedin Profile

Read the whitepaper on mobile, social, analytics and cloud strategies Don't Get SMACked
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Advanced Mobile Strategies and Integrated Sensors

Last week I watched a presentation recorded at GigaOm Structure:Data conference featuring Gus Hunt, CTO of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).  In his presentation, he identified SMAC (social, mobile, big data analytics, and cloud) as the culprit for the massive increase in available data in the world.  He explained that the average smartphone generates huge quantities of data from the following embedded sensors:
  • proximity sensors
  • 3-axis accelerometer sensors
  • touch sensors
  • image sensors
  • microphone sensors
  • light sensors
  • GPS (geo-location) sensors
You can imagine, with the billions of phones around the world, how much additional data is produced each day!  Now add the mass volumes coming out of social media!

Hunt went on to say there is a time-value-of-data.  This is an important concept for us to understand.  The value of data is worth more this second, than it is worth in two weeks.  When I activate the GPS on my iPhone, I want something to happen now not tomorrow.  The GPS sensor needs to give me immediate feedback.  Likewise, information about the location of a bad guy this second is much more valuable than where he was last month.

Have you ever had a slow GPS navigation system?  I have.  It told me to turn after I passed by the exit. GRRRRRR!

The CIA has a unique mission that involves filtering through mass volumes of big data sources for information that is important to our national security and interests.  Hunt identified seven universal constructs for analytics, or ways of organizing data that I found very interesting:
  1. People
  2. Places
  3. Organizations
  4. Times
  5. Events
  6. Concepts (value judgements - good or bad)
  7. Things (Internet of Things)
In my SMAC strategy sessions, I spend a lot of time educating my audience on five of these seven.  I might now need to re-think how to incorporate organizations (project teams?) and concepts into my sessions as well.

In the context of enterprise mobility, the location of your people and places (think job sites, customer locations, supply depots, etc.) are all very important.  However, time and events are equally important for project management and scheduling.   What time did you start and finish a job?  How long will it take to drive to the next job site?  What did you do while at the job site?  Did you complete the task?  All of these things are very important.

It is important to again look at what Hunt said about the time-value of data.  You cannot optimize a service technician's schedule if you don't know when he starts or finishes a job.  You can't optimize his driving route if you don't know when he is driving.

Today GIS (Geospatial information systems) are beginning to associate where things are at a particular moment in time, and how they are related to other objects, people, events, etc, around them.  These relationships will be very important.  For example, a construction manager may require a backhoe to continue on a project.  The backhoe is three hours from being on the job site.  This is important information for planning and scheduling.  It is important data that has a high time value if known in advance. However, it has very little value if it is only known after the fact.

What are the relationships between the construction manager, project, P&L and backhoe?  The manager owns the project and project P&L.  The project is on hold until the backhoe arrives, which jeopardizes the profitability and completion of the project.

All of this data about location, things, relationships and times is critical to optimizing projects and plans.

In the very near future, software developers will need to be much more familiar with the physical world, as the digital and physical are integrating around real-world data.  I will emphasize again that the value of the data is dependent upon the speed in which it is collected, analyzed and shared with those who can use it in the field.  But that is not all!  Here is a final quote from Mr. Hunt,  “The power of big data can only be fully realized when it is in the hands of the average person.”

Mobile strategies are not just about managing smartphones and securing data between the office and mobile workers.  It is about all of the things identified in this article and more.  It is about the time, location and relationships between moving players, concepts and events.  This is where the real fun is today!

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant
View Linkedin Profile

Read the whitepaper on mobile, social, analytics and cloud strategies Don't Get SMACked
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

How Do You Make Money in Enterprise Mobility? A Prediction

For the past six months I have been pondering how does a MADP (mobile application development platform) company make money in enterprise mobility?  I talk to literally thousands of people a year who are involved in enterprise mobility, and it seems many in the enterprise mobility vendor world continue to struggle to make sustainable profits.

I spent many years as the CEO of a mobile platform and mobile app development company.   I can tell you from personal experience that it is incredibly hard to maintain an R&D funding pace that keeps up with, let alone surpasses, the pace of innovation in the market.  It seems like every time you identify a new set of features for a new version of your mobile platform, it is already obsolete and you are playing catch up.

Most traditional mobile platform companies I think are struggling with the challenge of keeping up with the rapidly evolving mobility market.  They have a business model based on the assumption they can achieve economies of scale by closing an increasing number of very large and lucrative deals that will all use the same mobile platform code base.  The challenge is that finding the economies of scale, when mobility is evolving so rapidly, is like chasing a rainbow.  It is very hard to achieve economies of scale with any particular platform version.

In my mind the SAP Mobile Platform is a successful anomaly.  SAP has a massive user base that will buy anything from SAP, even if they don't plan to use it for years.  SAP is often not selling a particular product and version, they are selling all mobile products and versions under the umbrella brand of SAP Mobile Platform.  In effect, they are selling a white box of mobile solutions that are near impossible to compare and contrast with competitors.  SAP doesn't have to be leading edge.  They just have to be in the neighborhood.  This is working for SAP.  Their massive user base, credibility and their customers' enormous investments make this possible.  However, this model does not translate to the rest of the mobile platform market which must stand on the merits of their latest platform versions.

I believe SAP product managers feel the same pain as the rest of the mobility market.  There is no way a company the size of SAP can respond fast enough to keep up.  That is why they have focused on their mobile platforms and MDM products which evolve more slowly.  They now embrace many different app development environments like AppCelerator, Sencha, PhoneGap/Cordova, etc., for development.  They will let smaller and more nimble companies battle it out in this hyper-speed app development market.

Even the Syclo solutions that SAP acquired last year are relatively immune from the fast paced mobile app market because they are primarily used for traditional field services organizations and utilities that are less motivated to be leading edge and that seek products with long life cycles (4-7 years).

Where does this leave traditional mobile platform vendors?  I see them increasingly moving toward the cloud.  My colleague at Cognizant, Tom Thimot, often says the ultimate place for most software solutions is in the public cloud, some will just get there faster than others.   I agree.

What do you think?

I believe traditional mobile platform companies in 2013 will be moving their solutions to the cloud, embracing HTML5 even more, and focusing more efforts on mobile application management and security in order to finally achieve the ever elusive economies of scale.

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant
View Linkedin Profile

Read the whitepaper on mobile, social, analytics and cloud strategies Don't Get SMACked
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

My YouTube Video Channel on Enterprise Mobility

I checked my YouTube channelhttp://www.youtube.com/user/kevinrbenedict/videos, this morning and there are now 245 video interviews with mobility experts published there.  Did you know you can subscribe and be notified each time a new interview with a mobility expert is uploaded?  Among those interviewed are dozens from SAP, many mobile platform and MDM vendors, industry analysts and yours truly pontificating about mobile strategies.

I like to encourage you to enjoy yourself while watching these, but if that is not possible, at least grab some popcorn.
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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant
View Linkedin Profile

Read the whitepaper on mobile, social, analytics and cloud strategies Don't Get SMACked
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Predicting the Future of Enterprise Mobility

Figure 1 - Smartphones as
Internet of Things Hubs
How many advertisements for automobiles today promote the fact their cars are horseless carriages?  None! Why?  It is an assumption that your automobile will be horseless.  The same is happening today with mobile apps.  Who would develop a work order management or scheduling system today that does not support mobile?  Who would create business intelligence dashboards for executives that were not mobile?

Today it is a mobile first world.  Our first considerations for software app designs are:
  • What mobile devices will be used?
  • How do I integrate wirelessly with my back-end data sources and systems?
  • What onboard and remote sensors can I integrate into the app?
  • How do I secure it?
If all software apps are soon to be mobile, where will we find the next wave of innovation beyond traditional mobile apps and enterprise mobility platforms?  I believe it will come from sensors and integrating the physical world with the digital.

I have been working in the field of enterprise mobility for the past 13 years.  Early on there were very few sensors in mobile devices.  The sensors were the humans users, bluetooth add-ons, and barcode and RFID scanners.  Today, however, there are many built-in sensors in each of our smartphones and thousands of different kinds of data collection sensors available through the Internet of Things.

Let's ponder how our mobile apps are going to start interacting more with the physical world.  Sensors in parking lots can already notify us of available parking spaces.  Buildings can quickly report their own needs and status with embedded structural sensors that monitor vibration levels, energy consumption, security and more.  Your cars can wirelessly report their location, status and maintenance needs directly to your smartphone.  In urban areas sound sensors can lead you to quiet areas or noisy areas.  Traffic sensors can help you find the least congested routes.  Opt-in GPS tracking can help you navigate and meet up with friends and family members.  Weather sensors report the exact conditions at millions of locations.  Integrated with predictive analytics, you can anticipate weather conditions for the next week.  Using mobile banking apps, NFC, ATM sensors and POS sensors, you can be notified any and every time there is a transaction on your account - what was purchased, where and for how much.

Your smartphone is changing from a simple communication device, media center and personal digital assistance, to a hub between the physical and digital world.  That development opens up all kinds of interesting opportunities to ponder.  It is on the very edge of digital transformation where the integration between the physical and the digital happens where the next wave of innovation lies (see figure 1).

In the future software developers will become more and more like geographers and intelligence analyst as they increasingly work with real-world data.  They will be blending geospatial data, live remote sensor data and process data to create and understand relationships about where things are, how they are connected and what that data means to the success of the mission or plan.  This information will all be available on a smartphone and tablet near you.
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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant
View Linkedin Profile

Read the whitepaper on mobile, social, analytics and cloud strategies Don't Get SMACked
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Strategies Top 55 Articles

For those of you who are employed, and perhaps actually have a family and social life, you will have purposely avoided reading many of the articles I have written over the past 24 months.  That is to be celebrated!  However, some of the articles you missed may actually be worth a read so I have compiled a list of the top 55.  Enjoy!

The Best of Mobile Strategies:
  1. Thoughts on Mobile Strategies and Social Collaboration
  2. Time-Space Compression
  3. Speed, Mobility and Online Sales
  4. Connecting the Strategic to the Tactical - Enterprise Mobility
  5. Mobility, Business Transformation and the 5th Dimension
  6. Infonomics and Enterprise Mobility
  7. M2M, Enterprise Mobility and Healthcare
  8. M2M and Enterprise Mobility - The Convergence
  9. M2M, SAP and Enterprise Mobility
  10. SAP's Mobility Vision - Any Way You Want It
  11. SAP's Sanjay Poonen Discusses Mobile Strategies with Kevin Benedict
  12. Learning about the Real World of Enterprise Mobility in Scotland
  13. Avengers, Enterprise Mobility and Network Centric Warfare
  14. Enterprise Mobility, Mobile Sensors and Data Collection
  15. Mobile Strategies and Consumer Products Companies
  16. Mobile Strategies and Situational Awareness
  17. Guidance on Selecting a Mobile Solution Vendor
  18. Development Models for Enterprise Mobility
  19. The Black Hole of Enterprise Mobility Apps
  20. Can You Handle the Truth about Enterprise Mobility and Big Data?
  21. Money Ball, Big Data, The Internet of Things and Enterprise Mobility
  22. Enterprise Mobility - A Business or IT Strategy?
  23. Mobile Strategies, PIOs, Optimized Intersections and Patterns of Life, Part 1
  24. Mobile Strategies, PIOs, Optimized Intersections and Patterns of Life, Part 2
  25. How Long is too Long for Mobile App Development?
  26. Conjecture, Enterprise Mobility and Mobile Strategies
  27. Enterprise Mobility, Remote Sensors and Nervous Systems
  28. Mobility and 4D Field Services
  29. More on Mobility and 4D Field Services
  30. Enterprise Mobility and Institutional Memory
  31. Mobile Apps the Front End to Big Data and Artificial Intelligence
  32. Velocity in Field Services
  33. Enterprise Mobility is Not for Everyone, Just Most
  34. The Value in a Mobile Enterprise Solution
  35. Enterprise Mobility, PIOs and PIVs
  36. Mobile Apps and the Marriage of My Virtual and Physical Worlds
  37. Thoughts on Enterprise Mobility, Mobile Banking and Global Economies
  38. Research on Enterprise Mobility
  39. Smart Ideas and Enterprise Mobility
  40. Field Services, Enterprise Mobility and Strategies
  41. The Benefit of Custom Mobile Applications
  42. Enterprise Mobility - A Tank Half Full
  43. Enterprise Mobility, Netcentric Operations and Military Mobility
  44. Death by Mobile App
  45. Consumer Smartphones or Industrial Grade Smartphones?
  46. What I am Learning about Enterprise Mobility
  47. More on Change Management and Enterprise Mobility
  48. Social Networking and Enterprise Mobility in Less Developed Regions
  49. Recruitment and Enterprise Mobility
  50. Enterprise Mobility and Manned/Unmanned Systems Integration Capabilities
  51. Where Should Mobile Intelligence Reside?
  52. The Importance of Mobile EAM and M2M
  53. Enterprise Mobility Application Predictions
  54. Managing a Mobile and Network Centric Operation, Part 1
  55. Managing a Mobile and Network Centric Operation, Part 2
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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant
View Linkedin Profile

Read the whitepaper on mobile, social, analytics and cloud strategies Don't Get SMACked
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Swarming, Mobility, Speed and Digital Disruptions


Digital disruptors like social media, mobile communications, analytics and cloud services are introducing crazy new dynamics into our world.  These dynamics are impacting our industries, markets, businesses, management disciplines, politics and even our culture today.  I believe we have only just begun to recognize some of the impacts of these disruptions.   

We use Facebook to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate and YouTube to tell the world. ~ Egyptian Activist

One of the impacts of digital disruptors is the increasing emergence of swarming or swarm intelligence. Here is a definition, “Swarming involves the use of decentralized forces against an object or opponent, in a manner that emphasizes mobility, communication, autonomy and coordination or synchronization.” ~ Wikipedia

Swarming, although perhaps unrecognized, is precisely what the Egyptian Activist was referring to in the above quote.  The ability for autonomous or semi-autonomous groups to work closely together because of mobile communications, social media and the ability to coordinate or synchronize one’s actions, locations, status and intentions to accomplish a joint goal.

Swarming can be a powerful force multiplier as well, where fewer resources, with mobile communications, social media, good intelligence and coordination can accomplish more than by working alone and uncoordinated.

Nearly every day we witness demonstrations of how spontaneous social media based campaigns are changing our world.  We see companies changing policies and practices due to near-real-time feedback from the market swarm.

In the new book from Forrester Executive, James McQuivey, titled Digital Disruption, he describes how to embrace digital disruptions using what I view as a swarm strategies, "Abandon traditional 'return on investment' metrics and instead, for digitally disruptive initiatives, adopt ROD—'return on disruption.' Where the goal in ROI is to generate a known return from a known investment, the goal in ROD is to invest as little as possible, placing quick, cheap bets on the initiatives with the largest possible breakout success."  Once you see a success, swarm it! Communicate it!  Synchronize around it!  Invest in it.  Run with it.

I see the same approach emerging today in marketing.  Let’s try a variety of approaches to marketing and once the successful ones emerge, invest in them.  

There is so much we don’t know.  There is so much happening at such a fast pace in social media that we cannot effectively plan for or anticipate.  New management strategies, such as swarming, must emerge to address this rapid pace of change.
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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant
View Linkedin Profile

Read the whitepaper on mobile, social, analytics and cloud strategies Don't Get SMACked
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Digital Disruption and Enterprise Mobility


This week in the March 18, 2013, edition of The Wall Street Journal was an article titled Built Not to Last by Alan Murray.  This article reviewed the book Digital Disruption by Forrester executive James McQuivey.  I loved the article and have now downloaded the book to read in its entirety.  I guess it is true that people like to hear what they already believe.  McQuivey identifies many of the trends I am also seeing in the market today.

In his book McQuivey argues that technology has made it possible to launch companies without large amounts of capital, proprietary labor pools or vast swaths of intellectual property. Increasingly, anyone with a powerful idea can assemble the tools to make his idea a reality.

Here are some of my favorite excerpts from Murray's article:

"The only defense to this massive attack [from digital disruption competitors], Mr. McQuivey says, is to mimic the enemy.   The consequences for existing companies, if you believe Mr. McQuivey, are extreme. "Digital tools allow digital disruptors to come at you from all directions— and from all ages, backgrounds and nationalities.  Equipped with a better mindset and better tools, thousands of these disruptors are ready to do better whatever it is that your company does. This isn't just competitive innovation, it's a fundamentally new type and scale and speed of competitive innovation."

I think of the hugely successful digital camera company GoPro.  I bet half of the films shown at the Banff Film Festival are filmed on a GoPro camera.  They enable every daredevil adventurer to film and produce their own next viral video for under $500.  A one person operation can now produce and publish film that would have taken a traditional studio millions of dollars.  That is digital disruption.

Here is another excerpt, "Managers must "adopt a digital disruptor's mindset" and "behave like a digital disruptor." "Gone are the days,” he writes, "when you can assign this task to the digital team or the mobile guys.  Everyone in every level of the organization must accept that they have the responsibility to become digital disruptors within their domain and as well as across traditional silos.”

I have been teaching SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) strategies sessions all over the globe the past few months.  I can verify that SMAC topics or digital disruptions cannot be limited to just the enterprise mobility team or the digital team.  Digital disruptions are impacting entire industries.  They must be taken seriously by all parties.

How do you face digital disruptions?  How do you know, what you don't know you need to know?  Here is McQuivey's recommendation, "Abandon traditional 'return on investment' metrics and instead, for digitally disruptive initiatives, adopt ROD—'return on disruption.' Where the goal in ROI is to generate a known return from a known investment, the goal in ROD is to invest as little as possible, placing quick, cheap bets on the initiatives with the largest possible breakout success."

Digital disruption means a mobile banking app can replace a physical branch.  It means a GoPro digital camera and YouTube can replace a studio.  It means Craig's List can replace billions in classified ad revenue for newspapers.  It means I can download McQuivey's e-book seconds after reading the review and by-pass the book store.

My advice is to face these digital disruptors early, before you get SMACked.  For a very good whitepaper by our Cognizant team on this subject download, Don't Get SMACked.

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant
View Linkedin Profile

Read the whitepaper on mobile, social, analytics and cloud strategies Don't Get SMACked
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Interviews with Kevin Benedict