Chris Shipley on The Empowered Individual
I noticed that Chris Shipley's opening remarks at DEMO were about the "Empowered Individual":
[from The Empowered Individual: The DEMO '07 Opening Remarks | Guidewire Group]The Empowered Individual is easy to see in consumer markets, and most surely consumer products will garner a great deal of attention at this DEMO event. But I also see the empowered individual influenging all aspects of the enterprise market. Empowered Individuals influence which business applications to adopt. They are purchasing for themselves mobile phones and laptop computers and portable storage, and a range of other products; their personal preferences drive those buying decisions. They are demanding performance, and ease of use, and reliability, and Web-like experiences with enterprise data. Even where the buying decision is held deep in an IT organization, those decisions are greatly influenced by the need to serve a savvy end-user base. Later today, we’ll see a number of enterprise products that would barely be necessary if individuals at the end points of these highly distributed environments weren’t demanding better support, quicker response times, more reliable systems, all while fully addressing their specific business needs and their specific business styles. Decisions are not taken in a vacuum; solutions are not imposed upon a work group.
Instead they are driven by individual interests, requirements, and influence. While we may think that the influentcial individual might concentrate market momentum into specific market segments. The reality is that highly distributed computing power drives to a highly diversified innovation marketplace.
I agree with Chris, but I think the term that I have been pushing is better: "Me First" has a more potent punch that "Empowered Individual," although the same thinking lies behind it.
The power has shifted from the center to the edge, from the organization/group to the individual. We, the edglings, are operating in a new context, of our own making, and we won't go back, we won't give it back. And the centroids will have to realize that something profound has happened, over here, out at the edge, where the social applications are being invented.
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