It’s been some time since I’ve used Design Thinking Digest as much of a forum, for commentary or curation. Some of this is because I’ve found tools such as Linked In, Facebook and Twitter have replaced much of what I used Design Thinking Digest for—but some of it is probably also due to what I’d characterize as ‘social media fatigue’. After SxSW and MIX I wasn’t certain I was contributing much that was unique or that warranted a blog post.
Over the past three months a big part of my daily activities I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about how the economic slowdown is impacting the digital marketing and digital agency ecosystem that I frequently work with.
Like any other segment of our economy it’s been hit hard by current events. But, perhaps not surprisingly to many readers, parts of these eco-system are also thriving as they never have before.
As I put a toe back in the blogosphere I see three trends that will impact designers greatly over the next 12 to 24 months.
Welcome to the new normal
Our new economic environment is not a downturn as much a reset. The realities that we deal with today are marketing dynamics that we’re gong to have to deal with going forward. In fact this is a theme that Steve Ballmer has been touching on for some time in many public speeches. In Chicago recently he framed it this way at a luncheon at the Chicago Executive Club.
I want to talk a little bit about the economy, but really only to set up the thing that to me is probably more important to talk about, which is productivity and innovation. We are going through an unprecedented kind of economic (crisis) – I like to call it reset. I don't think we're in a recession; I think we are resetting. I think this is the new normal, and yesterday was the exception. And I think we got ourselves there in a lot of ways, but economic growth in general is fueled, GDP growth is fueled by productivity and innovation and debt, and over the last 10, 15, 20 years we've seen debt for businesses and consumers rise to almost 300 percent of GDP. It was 150 percent, by the way, before the Great Depression. And we were kind of borrowing our way to prosperity, and I'm afraid post-reset we're going to have to innovate and improve productivity to drive GDP growth.
It's clear debt will not be the economic growth driver of the next 10 years. After every major deleveraging of the world's economy in the last 200 years, people were slow to bring back debt.
Social media is the driver of innovation in marketing and mass media
Although I may have ‘fatigue’ from social media it’s perhaps more important now than it ever was. Social media is the glue of just about every advertising, marketing, communications or public relations scenario that you can think of. But most CTOs or CMOs misunderstand or are flat out terrified of the implications. There has never been a better opportunity for professionals and services that can enable the architecture of social media scenarios. But it’s still a nascent space requiring a hybrid of skills that is not the exclusive domain of social media pioneers that build great individual brands nor digital marketers focused more on digital, but traditional, push or destination marketing in the digital realm.
Productivity and innovation will drive economic growth
We we talk about an economic reset one pillar that companies use to fuel growth, debt, is effectively off the table for many folks. For fueling growth we need to turn to the other two pillars of innovation and productivity.
If you compare the capital costs of starting a business in 1999 to 2009 it’s a different world. The infrastructure to get phone service, office space, internet and office productivity tools is a fraction of what it was 10 years ago. A committed entrepreneur can have a digital shingle on a door in a matter of a few hours today because of the advent of services that we just not available and competitive in the world of Web 1.0.
But if you look at the way we build and implement business-both physically and digitally you might find that little has changed in many economic segments.
If you look at how companies measure or ‘sense’ what their actual business performance is many companies are lousy at it.
The successful companies of tomorrow will use technology and new business processes and workflows to increase productivity in areas they’ve yet been able to, or had incentive to address.
Productivity alone is now enough however, it’s a tide that raises all boats if we continue with metaphors. What does provide a competitive advantage is innovation. Innovation isn’t borne completely of technology, but is also a result of the application business strategy and the innovation planning process that a company can bring to bear. This where concepts like a thorough understanding of customer experience and platforms can allow a company to shine. It’s why the iPhone and the Application Store are such a success, it’s why Windows, with a global platform of one billion users and vast developer ecosystem is still incredibly powerful and valuable despite recent predictions about it’s demise.
Over the summer I’ll be focusing a bit on the things we can control as designers in our own profession practice and with our customers—namely how can we be more productive and how can we, as designers, be a key driver of innovation.
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