smarterplanet: Three Ways Companies Can Reinvent...

Three Ways Companies Can Reinvent Themselves Digitally
By Saul Berman, PhD, Partner and Vice President, Strategy & Transformation, IBM Global Business Services
In less than a decade, the systems that defined the 20th Century — mass production, mass consumption, mass marketing — have been swept away by co-creation, co-production, co-distribution.
In an era where anyone can become a brand’s biggest gadfly on Twitter, an activist organizing millions on Facebook, or an ad-hoc taxi service or hotel through Uber and Airbnb, what it means to be in business is being completely overhauled.
Consumers are now the biggest influencers of business strategy, second only to the C-suite itself, according to 55 percent of executives surveyed in our annual C-Suite study. And over the next five years, 63 percent of execs expect consumers to gain even more power and influence over their businesses, according to IBM’s recent Digital Reinvention Study.
The quadruple whammy of social networking, mobility, the cloud, and analytics is creating a new playing field. It used to take years before a new technology would impact a business, but now connectivity and collaboration are turbocharging the pace of change.

(via ibmconsulting)