Ten tech-enabled business trends to watch

I have already written here about several of these trends, and now I want to highlight some of them.

The Trends

• Trend 1: Distributed cocreation moves into the mainstream
• Trend 2: Making the network the organization
• Trend 3: Collaboration at scale
• Trend 4: The growing ‘Internet of Things’
• Trend 5: Experimentation and big data
• Trend 6: Wiring for a sustainable world
• Trend 7: Imagining anything as a service
• Trend 8: The age of the multisided business model
• Trend 9: Innovating from the bottom of the pyramid
• Trend 10: Producing public good on the grid

Trend 1, 2, 3 and partially trend 9 is nutured from something also known crowdsourcing, partnering, or open innovation.

In Earlier Times

Im earlier times the game was: your company against the rest – keep all your information secret. Introduced by the internet, we have learned step-by-step that open processes and networked organizations will be the game of the future.

Nowadays, not single companies compete against each others, but networks of partners, who meet at the same hight, compete against different partner networks. Sometimes it is even quite normal that your partner in one business area is your competitor in a different one, and vice versa.

Levels of a Strategic Partner Program

To be strategic, a typical partner program address different levels of cooperation. This is necessary, as no company can maintain the same level of intimacy with all of their partners:

• Lowest level – Internet Communities, where the individual partners can share ideas, or know how
• Certified Partners, where the partners are trained in your products, and where they are able to take over certain services on your behalf
• Cooperations, and project related partnerships, where both of you cooperate in local projects
• Distribution agreements with a high(er) level of upfront investment, such as OEM-Partnerships, where one company exclusively buys products from a different company, to be able to offer the combined service.
• Strategic OEM Partnerships, which consist of a unified branding and development between two partners
• Highest level – Joint Ventures, in which the partner financially engage themselves in a company that is owned by both partners.

A well defined partner strategy enables you to work along severeral of the above-mentioned trends. The leveled approach provides you and your partners with a rapid orientation, and it enables you to efficiently deal with a large partnernetwork.

Further Information

With the tag → Web2.0 you can find  additional, and related reading.

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This entry was posted on Mittwoch, August 11th, 2010 at 8:53 pm. It is filed under Innovation, Thema des Tages and tagged with Corporate Strategy, Crowdsourcing, English Content, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.