The benefits of being laggardly
April 24, 2008
Now and then a gem of an article turns up that stops me dead in my tracks. Very occasionally, two in a row make me have the digital equivalent of an ah-ha moment. Today is one of those days. Earlier in the week I read Jeff Nolan’s Sandhill piece on ‘incrementalism.’ It had me nodding in agreement but wondering what the next big thing will look like:
As I survey the landscape of consumer- and business- focused software and service providers I am struck by how much incrementalism there is at the moment. Something like Twitter is ground breaking in terms of breakout adoption, but what about the other 10,000 startups? There are few bold “aha” ideas, lot’s of social “-this or -that”, and mostly a bunch of companies hoping to draft on the perceived success of a few gorillas. Will we suffer through yet another “Year of the Mobile Web” or “Year of the Semantic Web”?
Jeff then followed this up with a stab at what he’d like to see in the next software:
So rather than hearing about what new technology and hot company I should be watching at this week’s Web 2 Expo, I want to state the question another way.
- I want technology that is pervasive but obscured, in other words I don’t want to have to think about it in order to use it.
- I want applications and services that don’t force me into Faustian bargains that require me to give up my privacy in order to benefit from them.
- Give me advertising and promotion that has utility for me, that does something productive while at the same time fulfilling the advertising objective.
- Give me use-anywhere-any-time.
- Most of all, stop talking about what you do and tell me what you will do for me.
I hear that Web 2.0 is ‘dull’ and that there is nothing cool to see. I’ve not heard anything that makes me go ‘wow.’ But then I am also hearing from others that the whole, Web 2.0 thing is losing its allure. I’m not surprised. Too often it seems, we are faced with technology looking for a problem to solve or which is so over-hyped that we end up burned out with listening to rehashed stories of what once sounded novel but which has been done to death.
As I survey the professional world, very little has changed in the last couple of years. Web 2.0 has not yet caught on in any scale but that’s not a bad thing. We’ve seen the emergence of numerous tools but little to suggest how these might be brought together to form a coherent whole. I’ve speculated that the combination of tools like blogs, wikis, RSS and bookmarking might hold the key and in that regard, I am starting to see the first glimpses of what these combined tools might look like. They’re very much people centric in the sense they’re designed to give people a way of interacting with information that’s far more intuitive than systems of the past But there needs to be a lot more.
Current generations of accounting software are archaic, reflecting a bygone age where the transaction mattered and everything else took second place. There are some sparks of innovation out there, some of which are reflected in the sponsored posts contained at the top of the sidebar.
FreeAgent, with its unique approach to helping freelancers is one. Xero and its strong vertical market approach is another. And in the days to come, I am expecting great things of CODA. But these are few and far between.
What Jeff doesn’t say is that the incumbents will fight tooth and nail to retain their share of market. They’ll continue to spend relentlessly on marketing in order to keep professionals tied to their brands. It is the last gasp of a dying breed but it won’t prevent them from trying.
The next couple of years are going to be interesting as the dust settles on the recent wave of innovation and the truly smart people start to envision our next generation of business software. Curiously, I see a certain irony in the profession being the beneficiary of a laggardly approach to software acquisition and use.
Comments
2 Responses to “The benefits of being laggardly”
Got something to say?
On FriendFeed, this post was liked by 0 people and commented on 0 times hide
I totally agree. I am the guy with the wallet who at the moment is completely underwhelmed and is keeping his wallet shut.
But incrementalism isn’t a bad thing. It is like clearing the underbrush–a neccesary step in landscaping. Dull though. You just have to understand where the cycle is at the moment. So I watch and test.
If a vendor even utters the word “wiki” (or any insider jargon) I know they are talking to themselves and not to me and what my business needs to do. If a vendor’s basic premise is that human nature will change in favor of shiny software, I’m dubious. And yes to @elsua unfortunately this means that email will be with us for a while.
An ideal solution should be as intrusive as telephone dialtone or electricity–self-obvious and just there. I like “shiny” and toys but that gets in the way sometimes of getting things done. Dialtone and get out of the way. That’s what I will buy.
[Reply]
Hi Dennis
Zemanta should pretty much qualify under all 5 points you make (and I have to say I agree with all of them
If you have any more ideas of how service could be more useful for you, please let us know!
bye
andraz from Zemanta
[Reply]