Page 14 - AC/E's Digital Culture Annual Report 2015

Cultural business models on the Internet14electricity consumption of a medium-sized town. Watson made the mistake of not analysing what would happen when, owing to progress in technology, computers cost less and could run on just a battery.In the field of music, the power of a few major companies has been undermined by the profu- sion of digital businesses that are cornering them on all sides of their business models and have caused them to lose much of their importance and business.We are witnessing this, industry by industry, in all of them. Little by little, new entrepreneurs who approach the problem armed with this century’s knowledge and technology are designing business models which, almost imperceptibly at first and then massively, attack the – by now unsatisfactory – solutions of companies intent on not giving way to the new century by digitising all their purchases, sales, customer relations, research and development, post-sales processes, etc...The new entrepreneurs are designing business models based on knowledge and technology, digitising all their processes.Let us examine the case of 3D printers, which appeared nearly ten years ago. The first we saw were barely capable of producing anythingand cost $150,000 apiece. Industry smiledand ceased to regard them as possible future competition. Today there are already 3D printers available for less than $2,000 and they can be installed in any home. What is more, a host ofnew formats and materials have emerged that even make it possible to “print a steak”.How can this affect the pharmaceutical industry or pharmacies? Do you know how many resi- dents’ associations there are in Spain? Millions, though they are currently hard to reach and fall outside the business scope of most companies of this kind. However, if a software manufacturer were to suddenly decide to provide them witha management solution, within a few years it would have hundreds of thousands of associa- tions of this kind as customers and, by extension, the millions of residents who belong to them.How long will they take to realise that by having access to the customer at home they can do much more business that what their software represents? What would happen if this software company suddenly realised it could sell 500,000 vending machines in the properties it manages? For example, in order to cover the need for non-prescription paramedical products.What would happen if they also put a 3D printer in each residents’ association and usedit to print medicines from ingredients supplied by a pharmaceuticals company? Why throw away thousands of medicines that are never used? We would print them “on demand”, near home, and this would change whole distribution sectors forever with street-level business models, and even the modern design of new residents’ associations devised for the twenty-first century and its amenities.We have a “use and throw away” habit that is destroying the planet and gradually raising our awareness that we are on the verge of a disasterChallenges of the twenty-first century. How to adapt a company to the twenty-first century