Information Technology 6 May 09

Shari D. Riley

#074768

Assignment #2

BA545 Emerging Information Technologies

26 April 2009

There are four design principles of reshaping the landscape. There four design principles are outsourcing to the customer, cannibalize your markets, treat each customer as a market segment of one, and create communities of value. Data collection and customer service functions can now be outsourced, not to other forms, but directly to the customer. You outsource to customers by building an interface into your information sources and then giving customers the tools they need to navigate and customize them. The customer is the best customer service representative and the customer is the best product developer. Outsourcing to the customers works as well for manufacturers as it does for service providers. Outsourcing the customer service function is also proceeding with breakneck speed in the travel industry, much to the chagrin of travel agents who rely on the limited access to rate and package information to justify their commissions from airlines. Executives in a recent survey agreed that technology is redefining the marketplace, upsetting current plans, and allowing unknown, global competitors to spring up overnight, but may seem paralyzed by a fear that taking action today may cannibalize current operations. The cannibals understand that the present value of current channels needs to be balanced against the unrealized power of other information assets they can exploit in cyberspace. Cannibalizing your markets recognizes that the old channels will mature or disappear on their own soon enough, but by taking steps that may hasten that end you can get into the new channel early. The cannibals lead with brand, an information asset that gives them competitive advantage in cyberspace. Treating each customer as unique entity is inexpensive when you use existing digital content and the expanding global computing network. Customers, in addition to doing their own product design, willingly part with marketing information that most organizations would kill to get their hands on. Organizations should create communities of value by valuing community. This principle applies with even greater force in cyberspace, since cyberspace is ruled by network economics. Communities create their own value as they grow, and low entry and exit costs change many of the rules of competition, disaggregating and re-aggregating long-standing industry models. As a result of a new understanding of how our bodies work, the better nutrition and a complete mapping of the human genome, those that are born near the 22nd century can expect lifetimes of perhaps several hundred years. Preventive medicine will begin in the womb with gene therapy. We can expect organ replacement and repairing of fractured DNA to be commonplace. With our aging population we can expect greater challenges in improving the quality of life, while working on ways to save our planet from natural resource exploitation that may ultimately limits its ability to produce food. Our greatest technological advances will be in the ability to manipulate matter at the atomic scale. We will truly become latter-day alchemists ... combining the elements to build custom molecules, that will give us new materials and medicines. Computing will also advance to the nanoscale, with storage of information within electron orbitals and spin. Binary will be replaced by tri-state and multistate machines that will have the capacity to process and store terabytes of information in microseconds. Sensors and computers will be implanted within our bodies and embedded within the very fabric of what we wear, in the walls of our home and in our places of business. We will have personal information spaces that provide access to vast storehouses of knowledge that we can access and mine instantaneously, using intelligent agents that will filter and reconstruct three dimensional representations of information. Other software and hardware robots will assist us in our work, play and home maintenance. Money will not be needed ... just our physical characteristics act as a "fingerprint" to signal our identity with electronic processing of transactions that automatically adjusts our instantaneous net worth. Since we will be able to track the identity of everybody with sensors within our environment, the nature of crime will change ... indeed, prisons as we know them will become obsolete as we will use new therapies to rehabilitate. Our transportation systems will become more efficient, and less polluting. Everything will be wireless. Central power generation will not be needed as we will have self-contained generators in our homes that use fusion as a means of powering our appliances. The development of the computer in the 1960s was the start of the huge effect of the development of the information technology. Downes and Mui describe its profound revolutionary effects on not only technology but on the world of economics as well, the strategy involved for a company to foster the proper environment to encourage its discovery and the methods to remain standing after its cataclysmic wake.

Nike today introduced the Nike Lunar Glide, a new lightweight running shoe designed with an innovative mid-sole architecture called Dynamic Support, a patent-pending system that adapts to a runner’s gait with each step, providing superior cushioning and as-needed stability. Runners traditionally had to choose between stability or cushioning shoes based on their style. Now, consumers can choose a single running shoe that will respond to all of their needs, even adjusting on the fly during a run.” Flywire Technology. The Nike Lunar Glide incorporates another Beijing innovation: Flywire technology. The integration of Flywire threads into the upper design of shoes from a variety of sports including running, basketball and tennis, has allowed Nike designers to shed unprecedented amounts of weight without losing necessary support and stability.