Page 13 - AC/E's Digital Culture Annual Report 2015

Challenges of the twenty-first century. How to adapt a company to the twenty-first centuryRodolfo Carpintier, @RCarpintierWhat is it that makes the twenty-first centuryso different from the previous one? First of all, the Internet has created an environment where communication has gone from one-to-many to many-to-many in which everyone communicates with everyone else and any customer can initiate a movement against our brand. The power is shifting to the end user.Furthermore, the Internet has given rise to a cross-pollination in which computer experts, statisticians, biologists, engineers, doctorsand any other specialists or professionals can, almost effortlessly, advance in their research with the usually selfless help of thousands of experts in any field of science who are willing to collaborate in a mutually beneficial way. Within a matter of hours, a major project can bring together an outstanding multidisciplinary team from all over the world, achieving in days what used to take years.What is occurring – initially in industries such as music or video which are basically digital but gradually spreading to all areas of production or services – is that business models are changing at lightning speed. Many twentieth-century companies still believe they can get away with not changing their business models in the twenty-first century. This is a serious mistake that will render many of them incapable of adapting and understanding what is going on around them.Many make the mistake of Thomas John Wat- son, boss of IBM in the 1940s and 1950s, who stated at a public presentation that there was a world market for only half a dozen computers. What seems a ridiculous statement coming from a prominent person who was furthermore one of the best CEOs in IBM’s history is nonetheless justified if we analyse what a computer consisted of back then: a huge piece of equipment that occupied an entire building and had the