Please Enlighten Me. Exactly, How Many Boats do You Plan to Miss?

You have to admit it. Despite unprecedented technological and societal change over the past decade, most businesses look an awful lot like they did in 2005.

You could argue, and you know that I do, that in the face of unprecedented upheaval to human beings and markets, it is a lethargy that is (very) hard to defend if you are even remotely interested in growth.

As one of the truly great memes put it:

“I am currently experiencing life at 60 WTF’s per hour”.

In the aftermath (and in the midst) of a technological and communications revolution that has ushered in capabilities that not even the Star Trek writers could have conceived of, why do some companies still have fax numbers on their business cards?

And, er… why do they have business cards?

We’ve all probably laughed about knowing someone who has a degree in the completely f….ng obvious. It’s quite something else though, to have one in missing the completely f….ng obvious.

I could hammer away at all kinds of examples that many simply miss, but let’s focus — for the sake of this musing at least — on perhaps the mother of all mothers of change:

The rise of the platform. *Cue the Star Wars soundtrack*.

It all started when someone had the inspired idea, of sharing the computing power in their server room (remember those?) with someone else. Ever noticed that so much growth seems to come from sharing, or giving, or connecting…? There’s some ancient wisdom in there somewhere.

In that particular moment of sharing, the “cloud” was born, and by 2012, it had become a mainstream business enabler across the globe. But it’s not a phenomenon in isolation. Think on this.

Without the cloud, mobile — that thing in your pocket that is now your constant companion and 24/7 remote control of your life — would not be mobile as we know it. Without cloud, there is no Uber, AirBnB, or Whatsapp — irrespective of their lovely mobile apps.