Those of you that have some passing familiarity with design planning and some of the concepts that have evolved around it (such as innovation platforms that result from combining different types of innovation, from Doblin) understand that innovation typically involves multiple channels and is itself multifaceted. What does this mean? It means a company may advertise on MSN, Google and Yahoo. It means it may use Sharepoint for its corporate itthey may use FLEX or Windows Forms for a customer support system and Flash, WPF, and gadgest or widgets technology. It means they may leverage open source AJAX frameworks or service supported frameworks to manage the continuum of interaction with a customer. Heck, a company might even make a videogame to reach customers.
Because of this every company wants to be a platform company. In fact, Don Dodge on his blog The Next Big Thing, provides the following details on the impact that Vista will have in the technology segment.
Over 5,000 software and hardware products are ready to run on Vista, and Microsoft has more than 500,000 industry partners worldwide, including resellers, retailers and consultants as well as hardware and software companies. Millions of developers write programs that run on Windows.
For every dollar Microsoft makes on Windows Vista, the rest of the industry will collect $18 of revenue, estimates IDC, a technology research firm. Indeed, those that build products and services on top of and around Microsoft’s technology constitute an industry ecosystem that business professors have studied. And Microsoft’s long investment in nurturing that network of mutual support, they say, is a major reason that Windows holds more than 90 percent of the market for PC operating systems.
In the United States, the IDC report concluded, “this ecosystem should sell about $70 billion in products and services revolving around Windows Vista” in 2007. The introduction of Windows Vista, IDC projected, is expected to generate 157,000 jobs in the United States.
Now what's interesting about this is we often have the perspective that technology is a zero sum game. (ie you're either a JAVA guy or .NET guy or in the Ruby camp). The reality is that you may need to use multiple technology platforms to reach your customers across all touch points and those touch points offer unique opportunities for both large and small companies. Right now we see the browser as the lingua franca of software innovation. This isn't going to change but it's going to be augmented by companies that have the resource to augment it. Companies that can create unique, emotional and profitable experiences will begin creating experience that maximize the potential of a channel versus simply choosing the lowest common denominator. Companies that develop compelling platforms across multiple channels that allow the enterprise to create unique, defensible and valuable experiences will all prosper.
This creates wonderful opportunities for designers and developers alike as it will allow the practitioners of software design will be recognized for their skill in solving problems and not just their mastery tools.
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