For my keynote at the Vision 2020 Financial Services conference last month in Mumbai I prepared some ‘quick and dirty’ scenarios for the global financial services industry landscape in 2020 from a technology perspective. Below is an overview of the content I used in my presentation. The complete slide deck from my keynote is also available, though it needs the explanation as below.
WARNING: These are scenarios prepared for a presentation, so they are far from rigorous or comprehensive. True scenarios should have fully developed storylines that evoke the richness of how the scenario unfolds and could actually happen. To be truly valuable, scenarios need to be created for a specific organization or strategic decisions – generic scenarios are of limited value. Always work with someone highly experienced in the field – most consultants that claim to do scenario planning are making it up. The Driving Forces and Critical Uncertainties identified below are highly summarized, and would be presented and aggregated very differently in a real scenario project. OK warning over, on with the content…
Scenario planning
Scenario planning recognizes that beyond a certain degree of uncertainty forecasting is of limited value (or can even be detrimental to good decisions). The process of creating a set of relevant, plausible, and complementary scenarios (more than the scenarios themselves) can be invaluable in creating and implementing effective, responsive strategies.
The heart of the scenario planning process is distinguishing between Driving Forces (consistent long-term trends) and Critical Uncertainties (unpredictable elements). Once these are identified, they are brought together to create a set of scenarios that reflect both what you know and what you don’t know about how the environment will change.
The image below shows a sanitized version of the process for a scenario planning project I ran for a major financial institution. This was quite a streamlined process relative to a comprehensive scenario planning project, however was designed to bring the insights directly into the existing group and divisional strategy process.
Below are the scenarios in detail:
- Driving Forces: Global Financial Services
- Critical Uncertainties: Global Financial Services
- Scenario Framework for Global Financial Services
- Four Scenarios for Global Financial Services
DRIVING FORCES: GLOBAL FINANCIAL SERVICES
1. Economic shift
Economic power is shifting to the major developing countries. The BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) together host close to half the world’s population, and their pace of economic development means that before long there will be multiple economic superpowers. In addition, global economic growth is shifting to the virtual, and developing countries will gradually wean themselves from primary and secondary industries to be significantly based on knowledge-based services.
Read more →
Detailed financial results from an iPhone developer: what they are earning
By Ross DawsonFollowing my post yesterday on financial transparency my brother Graham released complete sales and financial details for his OzWeather iPhone app. This should prove extremely useful to those who are developing iPhone apps or considering doing so.
Covered in his detailed post are daily revenue data since the app’s release, estimates of development costs, and comparison with advertising revenue from the initial web app.
The upshot is that Graham is currently earning around A$220 per day from the app, and if sales continue on current trends, he will get a pay-back on development costs of 2-3 months (though in this calculation he has used a per diem rate that is far less than a market rate for his skills).
Clearly the OzWeather app is a particularly high-quality app that meets a consumer need (though it has competitors).
Hopefully more iPhone and other software developers will release financial information, as Graham requests in his post. It makes it far easier for the entrepreneurial community to assess where they should be investing their energy, benefiting everyone.
The ‘Minority Report’ user interface is here
By Ross DawsonThe film Minority Report featured a user interface in which Tom Cruise’s character controlled computer screens and information using gestures, while wearing special gloves.
This was at the time the best representation of what I have long thought was a natural and inevitable direction for user interfaces. I’ve written about the shift to richer computer interfaces extensively over the years, including featuring Interfaces as one of the three technologies that will bring the networks to life in Chapter 2 of my 2002 book Living Networks, describing New Interfaces as one of the Six Trends that are transforming Living Online, and looking at the future of interfaces in mobile and home environments in the Future of the Media Lifecycle framework.
The film below shows the ‘g-speak’ technology in use. This is still transitional technology that will lead to broadly-used commercial applications, but definitely shows where things are heading.
g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.
Thanks to Engadget.
Financial transparency drives business results
By Ross DawsonWhen solo developer Peldi Guilizzoni launched web design mock-up tool Balsamiq in July, he promised to disclose his revenues, reports ReadWriteWeb.
He has just announced he has hit $100,000 in revenue in the last five months, with revenue on a very significant uptrend.
I am a big believer in business transparency, absolutely for public companies, and also in many cases for private companies. Transparency is one of the Seven MegaTrends of professional services I described in 2005, one of the Six Facets of the future of PR, central to investor relations, while the naked start-up is becoming more common.
Clearly Guilizzoni is going to make a lot more money because of his financial transparency, given the attention it’s attracting.
Secrecy has its place in business, but it is highly over-rated. In most cases there is no valid reason not to share information, just a disinclination to give away things. We are going to see transparent models increasingly favored moving forward. Certainly I find the reporting and accounts of many public companies to be extraordinarily opaque, giving little insight into the real drivers of business performance (a case in point being most non-US media companies). The most significant result is that investors shy away and shareholder value is lost.
‘Open book management’ is not a new idea, but the majority of companies are slow to shift on this front. I’m toying with the idea of a business model which includes publishing all company accounts on the web – hopefully this will be becoming more common by the time I get to this.
Check out Online Social Networking and Business Collaboration World on 24-25 November (and Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum 2009 on 24 February!)
By Ross DawsonThe Australian event industry is quickly getting better from what was until recently a very low base. There are more quality events than ever.
A few months ago I was planning to run an Enterprise Social Network Strategy event in early December. Then I found out that a very similar high-quality event was already set for the week before. As such I cancelled my event and rolled what I was intending to cover into my next Enterprise 2.0 conference. I then spoke to the organizers of the November event, AC Events, to see if we could collaborate. We have worked out a great arrangement whereby we are together bringing two highly complementary events to the market.
Read more →
Getting successful iPhone apps to market: the experience of Oz Weather
By Ross DawsonMy brother Graham Dawson moved to Sydney at the beginning of this year. It’s been great to have him around, not least to tap his tech expertise!
Graham launched his first iPhone app on Sunday, and it’s already selling extremely well. It’s aimed at the Australian market and provides weather forecasts, detailed current weather and daily extremes, and an extremely nifty rain radar that provides timed moving images and centers on your current location.
Graham’s blog post Oz Weather goes live provides a full review of the app and Graham’s experience with the iPhone submission process – very interesting. He’ll have more up on his blog soon on what he’s learning as an iPhone app developer and marketer.
Also see the OzPDA site for info and access to the iTunes store for the app.
If you’re interested in the weather (including avoiding showers!), definitely download it.
See below for a video demo.
Webcast Keynote: Creating Business Value from Web 2.0
By Ross DawsonThis Thursday November 5 at 11am US Pacific Time I’ll be doing the keynote for a webcast on Creating Business Value from Web 2.0, targeted to the manufacturing sector. Webcast viewing is free with registration. The description of my presentation is:
Creating Business Value from Web 2.0
Business technology is being transformed. Web 2.0-style technologies that have emerged in the consumer space such as blogs, wikis, presence, RSS, and mashups are being adapted to enterprise use, changing how IT platforms support business success. The Web 2.0 Framework gives clarity into the tools and processes of Web 2.0 and how it creates business value. Applying the Web 2.0 Framework helps organizations to tap fully the insights of their knowledge workers, build more efficient processes, and get products to market faster. Six key steps to creating business value from Web 2.0 help executives to plan the path forward.
Following my keynote Tim Teeter, Product Marketing Manager from Epicor, and Scott Smith, Director of Technology from Epicor, will present how manufacturing companies specifically can apply Web 2.0 capabilities.
I’ll share some of my presentation here later.
Scenario planning: strategy for the future of global financial services
By Ross DawsonFor my keynote at the Vision 2020 Financial Services conference last month in Mumbai I prepared some ‘quick and dirty’ scenarios for the global financial services industry landscape in 2020 from a technology perspective. Below is an overview of the content I used in my presentation. The complete slide deck from my keynote is also available, though it needs the explanation as below.
Scenario planning
Scenario planning recognizes that beyond a certain degree of uncertainty forecasting is of limited value (or can even be detrimental to good decisions). The process of creating a set of relevant, plausible, and complementary scenarios (more than the scenarios themselves) can be invaluable in creating and implementing effective, responsive strategies.
The heart of the scenario planning process is distinguishing between Driving Forces (consistent long-term trends) and Critical Uncertainties (unpredictable elements). Once these are identified, they are brought together to create a set of scenarios that reflect both what you know and what you don’t know about how the environment will change.
The image below shows a sanitized version of the process for a scenario planning project I ran for a major financial institution. This was quite a streamlined process relative to a comprehensive scenario planning project, however was designed to bring the insights directly into the existing group and divisional strategy process.
Below are the scenarios in detail:
DRIVING FORCES: GLOBAL FINANCIAL SERVICES
1. Economic shift
Economic power is shifting to the major developing countries. The BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) together host close to half the world’s population, and their pace of economic development means that before long there will be multiple economic superpowers. In addition, global economic growth is shifting to the virtual, and developing countries will gradually wean themselves from primary and secondary industries to be significantly based on knowledge-based services.
Read more →
Web 2.0 is happening inside organizations anyway – time to recognize it and do it well
By Ross DawsonThe current issue of MIS magazine Australia has an excellent feature on Corporate Web 2.0 titled Meetings of 2.0 Minds, introduced with the words: The social communication tools of the web are making their irrevocably into today’s enterprise.
The piece begins with the example of how Bond University conducted an audit of use of Web 2.0 technologies, and “uncovered a vast, organic network of technologies already being used…”
The article goes on to quote me:
Read more →
Future Files by Richard Watson hits global markets
By Ross DawsonA little while ago I announced that Future Exploration Network’s extraordinary Chief Futurist, Richard Watson, had released his book Future Files: A History of the Next 50 Years, including a few excerpts.
Since then it has sold at a giddying pace, selling out in Australia, and has now been launched in 10 editions worldwide, including two Chinese versions. The book has now been launched in the US and UK to great fanfare. The London book launch broke RSA’s record for most books sold, exceeding that for Clay Shirky’s event (see the event video).
Publisher’s Week in the US made Future Files its Web Pick of Week, saying…
Great to see Richard’s thinking getting out there! His talents and provocative insights are highly valued by Future Exploration Network’s consulting clients.
The steady shift to an RSS-based universe
By Ross DawsonThe Guardian is now providing full-text RSS feeds.
Let’s dig into why this is important, and an indicator of one of the broadest shifts happening in the information landscape.
Over the last few years RSS has shifted from a geek-thing that required explanation, to the point where most people have an RSS reader of some type on their desktops. As people go to more and more information sources, it becomes highly inefficient to visit to them separately, while an RSS readers allows all of your selected information sources to be found in the one place.
Currently virtually every professional publisher provides partial feeds, meaning that if you subscribe to their news feeds in an RSS reader you only get an excerpt or the beginning of the article, and you have to click through to the publishers’ website to read the article. For some years there has been a vigorous debate on whether publishers should provide full or partial feeds. Professional publishers have almost always chosen to direct readers back to their sites, where they can ply them with advertising and make money.
The Guardian is in fact the first major newspaper in the world to provide full-text feeds, according to the Google Reader team.
Read more →