By Contributing Editors John Gehl and Suzanne Douglas
These items are from Innovation, a NewScan Service, written by John Gehl and Suzanne Douglas. They report on trends, strategies, and innovations in business and technology to give their readers an executive briefing on the future. For free trial subscription send mail to innovation-trial@newsscan.com with the word "subscribe.pl" in the Subject line.
Music producer and dedicated counterculturist Brian Eno says he thinks that the counterculture has become a mass commodity -- a wholly owned subsidiary of the establishment. "The counterculture is Calvin Klein," he says. And what does he suggest doing to restore a sense of excitement to rebellion? "A noble aspiration for a young artist today would be to try to make art that is too ugly to be used for advertising... In the flip-flop way these things go these days ... maybe it will be hip not to be hip." What he objects to is the trend in which "people express their allegiance by their choice of brand allegiance. This is a neatly reflective system for those who own the game -- letting us argue about the curtains while they design the building and choose its location." (Brian Eno, "The Counterculture Is Calvin Klein," New Perspectives Quarterly Winter 1997)
Shortly after writing a book berating educators for not increasing America's supply of world-class workers with high-tech skills and problem-solving abilities, IBM's Lou Gerstner fired some 90,000 of those highly trained employees, about one-third of IBM's 270,000 workers. Clinton E. Boutwell takes this irony as a sign of a relentless deskilling of American society, brought about by the restructuring of the economy to make it lean and competitive through technological innovation and globalization. The result? A massive shedding of workers, a reduction in future job opportunities, and a concomitant plunge in income, benefits, and living standards for millions of households. And yet, despite the decline in good jobs, universities continue to produce large numbers of high-quality professional graduates and Ph.D. candidates. Since the techno-information economy allows businesses to reduce their dependence on human resources, the American economy "now has far fewer jobs than ever before, and the future holds even fewer challenging job opportunities for tomorrow's graduates... Millions of American college and high school students are being prepared for high-performance jobs that may never exist." The answer? "A push for more technologically driven economic growth that will allow our economy to absorb a larger number of highly qualified graduates of universities and community colleges." (Clinton E. Boutwell, "Profits Without People," Phi Delta Kappan Oct 97)
While the Internet has spawned a large number of new businesses and changed the way others operate, some industries -- most notably travel -- are finding the Net formidable competition. The proliferation of online booking services, combined with reductions in agency commissions paid by U.S. airlines, is pushing many smaller agencies out of business, with a 6% reduction between January and October '97 alone. "There are about 32,000 travel agencies in business right now. I would be shocked if a year from now there are 15,000 left," says the president of one agency. Analysts note that travel agencies are among the first to experience Internet "disintermediation" -- the elimination of the middle man in purchasing and delivering goods and services. "Intuitively and transactionally, travel is a natural place for consolidation and disintermediation," says an analyst for the Aberdeen Group. In the future, it will be the travel agency's "personal touch" and value-added services that will distinguish it and enable it to survive the online challenge. (InternetWeek 24 Dec 97) http://www.techweb.cmp.com/internetwk/news/news1224-2.htm
As information systems salaries skyrocket, finding and then keeping good employees is becoming more of a challenge for businesses dependent on information technology. Companies that focus only on higher monetary compensation are risking alienating other employees and are ignoring other things that workers crave: praise and recognition, training and education, and flexible work schedules. During the next decade, savvy employers will put a high priority on workers strong in so-called right-brain activity -- that portion of the brain that controls the ability to nurture, collaborate and communicate -- in order to accommodate a variety of important new roles: managing and collaborating with external vendors, dealing with technology change, working in a team-based environment, eliminating asset management burdens, and resolving internal political issues. (CIO 15 Dec 97) http://www.cio.com/
Expressing disdain for so-called "futurists," University of Maryland physicist Robert L. Park says that the further we try to project into the future, the more certain it is that "some unforeseen, perhaps unforeseeable discovery" will undo the prediction. And yet "people who are otherwise intelligent are inclined to take such futurists seriously. The further ahead these 'experts' project their minds, the deeper their insights are thought to be. If they think far enough into the future, they're called 'visionaries.' Futurists would rather not predict what will happen next year. They prefer to think ahead -- 20 years, or a century, or a millennium. Some spend their entire lives cranking out predictions of what things will be like after they are safely retired." However, the truth is that science advances by small incremental steps: "With each hard-won insight, the scientist pauses just long enough to plot a new course, designed to take advantage of what has just been learned. If you focus on too distant a goal, you may find a crevasse blocking your way that didn't appear on the map. Better to follow the contours of the terrain. In this journey, the futurists are simply irrelevant." (Robert L. Park, "Future Schlock," New York Times 30 Dec 97)
What makes a lot of sense in a particular situation frequently makes no sense at all when the situation changes. In the last few years, many firms under competitive pressure have severely downsized and, in doing so, have reduced the level of investment they are willing to make in their employees. Maybe it's time to rethink that decision: an empirical study of ten companies found that you simply don't get the best level of performance from quasi-spot contract approaches, even though they offer the best level of organizational flexibility. Do you really need that much flexibility? If not, you need to realize that "employees seem to respond favorably in terms of both performance and attitudes when employers are willing to commit to fairly long-term relationships with them." The only time you shouldn't invest is when you just don't have the money , and the only time you should underinvest in employees is when you just don't have the time; in either case, you need to realize you're in a desperate condition, and need to do something about it. (Anne S. Tsui, Jone L. Pearce, Lyman W. Porter, Angela M. Tripoli, "Alternative Approaches To The Employee-Organization Relationship: Does Investment In Employees Pay Off?" Academy Of Management Journal v.40 n.5 1997)
Hoping to advise employers of the young twenty-somethings in the so-called X-Generation, author Cheryl O'Donovan thinks that one key is to understand that generation's deep cynicism: "They loathe hypocrisy. And Boomers, feel many Xers, drip with hypocrisy... Remember the hazy footage of boomers swarming Woodstock and protesting the Vietnam War? They didn't miss a beat in trading in those love beads and idealism for BMWs and the boardroom, and have largely preserved corporate hierarchies. Xers are struck by the double-talk. They heard about 'quality time' when they seldom saw their vagabond parents." Yet O'Donovan also suggests that the X-Generation's problem is that it has too many choices; she quotes a consultant who says: "Go into a shop where five shirts are on the shelf, and the decision is easy. Go into another store where there are 200 shirts, and after you choose, you'll always second-guess yourself." With that in mind, you not only have to "understand" Xers (and, for example, try to give them challenging, nonroutine jobs), you have to help them learn to make responsible decisions: "Some Xers will test their supervisors to see what they can get away with. Everyone had a starting point, and had mentors who helped inspire them. Teach responsibility. Teach by example." (But try not to speculate about what kind of car they'll drive twenty years from now.) (Cheryl O'Donovan, "The X-Files," Communication World Dec 97/Jan 98)
British phone-number vendor Digital Mail plans to offer an "Email for
Everyone" service that allows subscribe.plrs without a computer or modem to
send and receive e-mail. Digital Mail will forward messages it receives to
subscribe.plrs via post, fax or voice mail, and can also transmit brief
messages to mobile phones as short text notes. The downside to the service
is the large volume of unsolicited e-mail that most wired folks receive,
which could start costing subscribe.plrs big bucks. Digital Mail's managing
director says he doesn't think it's much of a problem, but a lawyer for
America Online said recently that up to 33% of the e-mail processed by AOL
is spam. (TechWeb 26 Dec 97)
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19971226S0001
Some experts say dialing and driving can be as dangerous as drinking and driving, and the cell phone industry has been working overtime to overcome the problems that have plagued voice-activated services, including dealing with engine noise and surrounding traffic sounds. Ease of use has been the primary objective, says a VP for voice technologies at Glenayre Technologies, which develops voice-activated technologies, and focusing on the "human factors" involved has resulted in systems that are practically fool-proof. "Our research has shown us that customers are not randomly calling numbers, but they are calling the same 10 to 20 numbers. So, if the recognizer hears 504 area code when most of your entries are 404, the system will make that correction automatically." Meanwhile, Lucent Technologies is taking the wraps off its Octel Messaging Division, with a trial slated to run over the next few months: "We have to be concerned about designing in error correction and error prevention. If speaking into the application, for example, and the recognition mechanism isn't sure of the command word it heard, our application will come back and ask, 'Did you say, review.pl?' The user can then respond 'yes or no'," says a Lucent project manager. And although voice recognition technologies will be integrated into the handset in some cases, most companies plan to put the intelligence into the network for easier system upgrade. (Wireless Business & Technology Dec 97)
Now there's a camera always at hand, thanks to the Professional Wrist Camera from P3 International, based in New York City. The wrist cam weighs in at 2.5-ounces, including film and wristband, and features both aperture and shutter control. It takes the same 8 by 11 cartridge film used by Minox cameras and costs $1,950. (Popular Science Jan 98) http://www.popsci.com/
Although America traditionally has been the country of the small inventor, the Congress is currently considering a revision in the U.S. patent law that would make it easier for corporations to appropriate new technology before it is patented and to use it without approval of its inventors. Under the current law, the U.S. protects the secrecy of an invention until a patent is issued; the proposed revision would align U.S. practice with that of Europe and Japan, which publish patent applications after only18 months (long before they are approved). American inventor Wilson Greatbatch protests: "The American patent system is designed to protect the inventor. The Japanese system is designed to obtain information for Japanese industry. What you're doing with this legislation is giving corporate espionage the official sanction of Congress." And Paul Herbig, author of the 1994 book "The Innovation Matrix," thinks that the patent commissioner is wrong when he dismisses the importance of individual inventors, and says that they are the ones who tend to make the most radical innovations in technology, because they are not impeded by corporate "group-think." (Reed Karaim, "Patently Wrong: A Bill Pushed By Big Business Imperils America's Culture Of Invention," Washington Post 28 Dec 97)