So now that 2017 has arrived, I am asking myself three key questions:
- What surprised me in 2016?
- What had I anticipated?
- And how, if at all, are these phenomena connected?
Among the unexpected events, I would like to highlight three things that probably shocked many of us. Globally, we witnessed Donald Trump being elected in the US (despite all the media and polls predicting that Hillary would triumph). On the European level, we nervously watched the UK voting to leave the EU; Brexit really is happening. And finally, at a more local level, one of the most surprising events happened in the real estate market in Slovakia where they approved a law that obliges developers to pay a fee to obtain a building permit. Did they even consider what this would do to the country’s ability to compete against its neighbours?
More readily anticipated events, whose predictability only goes to confirm their significance, were obviously the advance of technology and its impact on everyone’s life. New innovations are being made every day and the role of technology is increasing at an exponential rate. New trends include: the use of robots in everything from agriculture to manufacturing; the e-commerce explosion – online growth at 16% YoY and almost 20% of e-commerce purchases being made on mobile devices; the rise of Crowdfunding; and mobile advertising spending now bigger than all other ad revenue streams. All reports show that online shopping increased massively across the globe in 2016. I believe that is still just the start of the sea change in customer behaviour that is ahead of us. P3 used humour to describe this phenomenon in its P3 Xmas Video 2016, which you can have a look at HERE.
So, are all these events somehow connected? Or, did we the expected events give rise to the unexpected? I believe so.
The technology now available has given us a capability we have never experienced before – a huge amount of data that we can analyse. Thanks to this data we are now able to specifically target certain groups of people and influence their behaviour as consumers or as voters. On one hand we possess an extremely powerful tool to spread information to allow people to make informed decisions, but on the other hand how do we ensure its accuracy and relevance? And do we consider the consequences? We use data and information to make decisions, but do we invest the same level of energy to understanding the “facts” that justify those decisions? Do we educate the public enough to understand what is really happening? Does the public really see all the consequences? Are we really ready for this amount of information? Are the other aspects of our lives in equilibrium with the technological change?
Technology is certainly an extraordinary tool but clearly it also creates new dilemmas. I believe we should make sure we educate ourselves as quickly as we can, so that we can properly use the new advances that are arriving every day. Otherwise, we may easily become victims of our own decisions, or make decisions without sufficiently understanding the consequences.
The P3 Conference, held in Prague towards the end of last year (2016), explored how advances in technology are impacting on lives, businesses and the supply chain – find out more about what was discussed HERE and I will be returning to these themes in future blogs.