By Brian Kilcourse, Managing Partner
6/17/2008
Nicholas Carr is at it again. Carr, as many IT leaders will recall, published an article in the Harvard Business review in 2003 entitled, “IT Doesn’t Matter,” which ignited a firestorm of debate about what had hitherto been a forbidden question in retail: “Is the IT investment really worth it?” I had the pleasure of interacting with Carr at the Global Retail Technology Forum 2005 in Barcelona, Spain, and he admitted to me that the title of the article itself was intended to get a reaction. The point of his article, however, was more complex: IT will commoditize, then the use of IT will also commoditize, therefore, the ability to gain competitive advantage from either technology itself or the use of technology is diminishing, and quickly.
Well, he’s apparently succeeded once more in provoking another public discussion, this time with a piece in the Atlantic Monthly entitled, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” His question is whether the Internet is “rewiring” our brains to think differently. Commenting on how the Internet has affected how he himself thinks, Carr says, “…what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation… Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.” [1] Although Carr used himself and his colleagues as examples of the effects of this “skimming activity,” he is really addressing the potentially far-reaching effects of Internet technologies on the cognitive capabilities of the next generation.
This indeed was the subject of a discussion at the TOPSS conference produced by Chain Store Age last week in Las Vegas. The discussion was entitled “Digital Natives and Retail,” with Calvin Hollinger (CIO, Urban Outfitters) and Robert Fort (CIO, Virgin Entertainment) participating. Both Hollinger and Fort can rightfully claim to have “Millennials” for both employees and customers by virtue of their companies’ value offerings. The CIOs focused on the value of “web 2.0” capabilities, digital avatars and communities, IM and SMS (vs. e-mail) and the young generation’s effortless acceptance of anywhere/anytime access to just about anything that can be digitized.
Retailers, of course, have heard all of this before, but in (perhaps) typical fashion, seem more concerned about how the trend will impact their traditional ways of doing business than in determining its potential and how to use it to advantage. Both Hollinger and Fort extolled the audience of retailers to embrace the changes that the Internet has brought with it, to enable the new generation of customers and employees. They talked specifically to some of the changes that their organizations are making to what used to be called “the man/machine boundary” - the point of human interaction with technology. But while they spoke of the new technologies, what they didn’t specifically address is how their organizations will attract the new wave of consumers and employees that use the technologies in the first place, or how to mold the business to them rather than molding them to the business. And as Carr said in 2003, the ability for technology itself to create lasting strategic value is diminishing quickly.
Retailers aren’t alone in struggling to grapple with the changes that Millennials embody. RSR partner Steve Rowen was telling me about a professional recruiter for one of the top consulting firms that he sat next to on a recent flight. In conversation, she expressed horror with the mental “bandwidth” of the Millennials she routinely meets with. According to the recruiter, job candidates often sit in interviews and text message digital connections while talking to her, with an iPod earbud in one ear. She said that she had actually had complaints from employers regarding bright young kids she’d placed, who displayed the same “multi-tasking” behaviors during actual meetings once on the job. She claimed that the job applicants also use “text speak” during professional conversations – “IMHO” for “in my humble opinion,” “TTYL” for “talk to you later,” etc.
The generational shift that is implied in discussions like these is a lot closer than “Boomer generation” business leaders may want to admit. At my daughter’s college graduation last weekend, I got a dose of things to come. My grad and her friends were casually talking to us parents about being a “millennial.” “You know, we think differently than you do,” said one. “Our brains are wired like the Internet, and we multi-task all the time” (really - she said these things!). Now I’m pretty sure that these young adults have never heard of Nicholas Carr, and don’t read The Atlantic either. But they had already been confronted with – and accepted the truth of – Carr’s supposition. The speed with which this has occurred speaks volumes about how information will be communicated and absorbed.
At RSR, we have often stated that it is the function of the IT organization to “get actionable information into the hands of decision makers” and that with the availability of anywhere/anytime/anything digital access, those decision makers are increasingly at the very edge of the enterprise, where the customer interacts with the solution provider. Staid “A, then B, followed by C” business processes will have to be replaced by rules and information that are linked in real-time by the person using them. The changes to retail business practices and the technologies that support them will be profound.
[1] “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, The Atlantic July/August 2008, p.57
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