JUNE 2010

The sale of 3 million iPads in just 80 days underlines the way technology has embedded itself in our daily lives. Accordingly, this issue of Agility Update has a decidedly technological bent with articles advising the10 mobile technologies to watch, asking if the days of email are numbered and challenging managers’ understanding of the change that social networking has brought to the workplace. Beyond IT, we feature an article that draws your attention to the growing numbers of women joining the mainstream to form their own economic bloc; and end with a fun item that doodlers can use to defend their habit.

Get Ready for the Third Billion
A huge and fast-growing group of people are poised to take their place in the economic mainstream over the next decade, as producers, consumers, employees, and entrepreneurs. Global management consulting firm Booz & Company believes this group’s impact on the global economy will be at least as significant as that of China and India’s billion-plus populations. According to Booz & Co, this “third billion” is made up of women, in both developing and industrialised nations, whose economic lives have previously been stunted, underleveraged, or suppressed. As these women move from living or contributing at a subsistence level into knowledge work and the mainstream, their sheer numbers will hasten the integration of the regions where they live into the larger economy.  And as the Third Billion’s movement into the middle class accelerates, the pattern of this emergence will probably shift from a graduated incline to a graph that looks more like a hockey stick, said Booz & Co. Read more at:
http://www.strategy-business.com/article/10211?gko=98895&cid=enews20100511

The Digital Natives and You
Here’s an item that’s worth pondering. Jim Fister, a long-time strategy futurist at Intel Corp believes managers today have an intellectual understanding of change, but not a visceral one. He believes that, as new generations of employees “born and raised with technology in their hands” arrive, managers still do not really understand “the huge sea change in how the young work force is wired,” and what it means. For example, Fister says:  “For most of us, looking down from the top, information sharing can be a complicated phenomenon. It used to be you didn’t share information with your classmates at school. I think the word for it back then was ‘cheating.’” And “employees coming in now are naturals at sharing information and collaborating…And they’re doing it in ways that those of us who were trained along individual lines just don’t understand. They naturally team up, and do handoffs in the middle of projects — process handoffs that would make normal corporate folks shudder but that are natural ways of doing business in a social network environment today.” Fister’s advice? “We don’t need to change their habits; we need to recognise that they’re doing the right thing, and we need to change our habits as a result.”  Read more at: http://sloanreview.mit.edu

The End of Email?
Is email’s reign over? Many bloggers seem to think so. Even the Wall Street Journal published an article last year arguing that Facebook and Twitter were now king among online communication tools. A study by Nielsen Co. which tracks the changing trends among teenagers’ use of online communication tools showed that between 2003 and 2009, time spent on email sites dropped 41%; social networks, on the other hand, now represent 22% of total user Internet time — up 24% since last year. Another report, by market research firm The Radicati Group, showed that although worldwide use of email will continue to grow, daily email use is dropping for both consumers and business people - clearly an effect of social networks. Details at: http://www.fastcompany.com/1661288/the-end-of-email
The Wall Street Journal article is available at:
http://online.wsj.com

10 Mobile Technologies to Watch
Organisations are ramping up both business-to-employee (B2E) and business-to-consumer (B2C) mobile spending, according to Gartner, which says that investments in mobile applications and technologies will increase through 2011. The analyst firm identified 10 mobile technologies which it believes every organisation should focus on for growth and success. These are:

1. Bluetooth (3 and 4): While Bluetooth 3 will introduce 802.11 as a bearer for faster data transmission, version 4 will enable communication with external peripherals and sensors.
2. The Mobile Web: More than 85% of handsets shipped globally will include some form of browser by 2011.
3. Platform-Independent Mobile AD Tools will reduce the costs of delivering installable applications to several platforms.
4. Mobile Widgets: These installable Web applications that use technologies such as JavaScript and HTML provide a convenient way to deliver simple, connected applications, especially those involving real-time data updates e.g. weather forecasts, e-mail notifications and information feeds.
5. App Stores: This will be the primary (and, in some cases, the only) way to distribute applications to smart phones and other mobile devices.
6. Enhanced Location Awareness: More than 75% of devices shipped in mature markets will include a GPS by the end of 2011.
7. Cellular Broadband: Continuous improvements in wireless broadband performance will increase the range of applications that no longer require fixed networking.
8. Touch screens: These will be included in over 60% of mobile devices shipped in Western Europe and North America in 2011.
9. Device-Independent Security will enable CIOs to deliver applications that can run on a variety of devices while reducing security risks.
10. M2M (Machine-to-Machine) technology enables the flow of data between machines and machines and ultimately machines and people. Key applications include smart grids that deliver electricity from suppliers to consumers using two-way digital technology to control appliances at consumers' homes; and track and trace technology to help locate and identify items travelling though distribution systems.

Read more at
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1328113 or http://awesomedc.com/tag/platform-independent-mobile-ad-tools/

The Benefits of Doodling
To conclude, here’s a quirky gem: If your regular work day includes attending numerous meetings and teleconferences, you may want to take up doodling. According to a study in Applied Cognitive Psychology cited by blogger Eric Barker, people who doodled while listening to a monotonous message recalled 29% more information than non-doodlers in a surprise memory test.  Read more at:
http://www.bakadesuyo.com/does-doodling-make-you-smarter