Technology only rolls one way - downhill!

Hands up if you remember company presentations where 35mm slides were used. That was all you could do 20+ years ago - have a very expensive, time consuming and therefore, by necessity, static set of images. Then the repographic department got their hands on Harvard Graphics and suddenly these acetates with pie charts started appearing. Then, and keep it quiet, there'd be a rumour that someone in marketing had a 'copy' of it and could circumvent the wait and inconvenience of having to convince the repro' people to do something for you.

Wind forward a little and a few, then more, then many and now almost all professionals have access to Powerpoint on their machine.

Think of computers themselves. Some people on here started working with computers that took punchcards. You had to book time to get access and come back the day after for the results. The first work computer I used was an Apple II - no hard disk and it was shared across a department. Then an IBM PC appeared.... and then another. Again fast forward (with or without Scooby Doo shimmery screen effect in your head as you wish). Many of us have computers at home as well as work and some have separate computers for their kids.

It's the same effect - something is a specialist skill that only a few people can do and gradually it becomes more widely available, cheaper and easier to use (no punchcards now - only blue screens of death and sanctimonious Mac users to deal with).


Many great technology companies are the ones that have made a big leap down this line and conversely, many great technology companies are no more because they got stuck and time overtook them.

If you're nodding your head now, can you tell me why people in some businesses don't recognise this.

What you are doing completely by hand now, someone one is trying to automate in part. If it's part automated, someone is trying to make it a pure handle turning exercise. What needs intervention from a human, probably won't in a while - and if you're not thinking about your product in those terms then rest assured - someone else will!

Let me give you an example of how you can respond strategically when you accept the reality of this inexorable drive from costly and rare to cheap and more widely used.

I was on the phone to a nice guy recently with a service for Internet companies. He is trying to sell his time around a nice bit of software that does some analysis of a site. He's trying to get this off the ground and he's got a good and interesting idea (imho). So if he want's a sustainable business you've got to ask if part of the analysis could be fully automated (YES). Could it be bought off the web if someone pays and enters their website URL (YES). So a good directoin looks to be to complete the application and, instead of trying to stay up the top left of that diagram (providing a specialist skill at high cost), he could be one of the people driving users down that diagram.

Are you going 'downhill' or staying still?

Copyright Richard A D Jones 2005