Agility Update May 2011

Agility Update May is a study in contrasts. One article points to a list of 10 industries slowly sliding downhill. Another focuses on the rapid spread of ‘gamification’ and how this is blurring the lines between business and fun. In a related topic, a new study confirms that time is indeed compressed for following up on online business leads. Finally, we alert you to a new US court ruling on border searches and its implications for travellers with commercially sensitive information on their laptops and smartphones.

Top 10 Dying Industries
Research organisation IBISWorld has identified a top 10 list of industries that will decline even after the US economy recovers. Although the focus is on the US, the trend is just as relevant to Australia.. These industries are:

1. Wired Telecom Carriers
2. Textile Mills
3. Newspaper Publishing
4. Apparel Manufacturing
5. DVD, Game & Video Rental
6. Manufactured Home Dealers
7. Video Production Services
8. Record Stores
9. Photofinishing
10. Formal Wear & Costume Rental

IBISWorld says each and every one of these industries has been impacted by one or more of three industry factors including external competition, advances in technology and industry stagnation. However, the report adds: “It does not mean that the players that operate within them are also on the brink of death. Industry operators that protect their strengths in certain market segments, focus on niche opportunities and capitalise on the dwindling number of competitors often reap the strongest rewards of sole operation, market survival and profitability. A PDF of the report is available at: http://www.ibisworld.com/Common/MediaCenter/Dying%20Industries.pdf

New Buzzword: “Gamification”
Whether businesses like it or not, ‘Gamification’ is here to stay. Gamification is the broad trend of employing game mechanics to non-game environments such as innovation, marketing, training, employee performance, health and social change. And IT research company Gartner predicts that over half of all innovation will be gamified by 2015. The point of gamification isn't necessarily to build games but rather to use game mechanics to motivate certain behaviours. An example is the UK Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), which created Idea Street - a social collaboration platform with points, leader boards and buzz index - which helped generate 1,400 ideas from its staff of 120,000 people. As of November 2010 last year, the DWP said it has amassed £21m in benefits from the 60-plus projects born out of Ideas Street, and the game has been implemented by three other central government departments. However, there are failures to balance such spectacular successes.  It is estimated that a multiplayer online game - Code of Everand - commissioned by the UK Department for Transport (DfT) to teach kids about road safety will have cost the DfT £2.8m, a total of £16.33 per registered user by April 2011. Other examples of gamification include American Express’ Cash IQ to promote its UK Platinum Cashback Credit Card, and IBM’s CItyOne to demonstrate the links between technology and building a sustainable environment. Read the Gamification – Cheat Sheet at: http://www.silicon.com/technology/software/2011/01/18/gamification-cheat-sheet-39746819/ and What’s Next: The Gamification of Everything at: http://blogs.gartner.com/brian_burke/2011/01/27/whats-next-the-gamification-of-everything/

Move It, Or Lose It
Online leads grow cold quickly. But did you know how quickly? According to a Harvard Business Review article, companies have a window of just 60 minutes. Companies that try to contact potential customers within an hour of receiving queries are nearly 7 times as likely to have meaningful conversations with key decision makers as firms that try to contact prospects even an hour later. Yet only 37% of companies respond to queries within an hour, according to a study of 2,241 U.S. firms led by James B. Oldroyd of Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea. Read more at: http://hbr.org/2011/03/the-short-life-of-online-sales-leads/ar/1#

What’s in your Laptop and SmartPhone?
If you travel regularly to the U.S. for business, you may be interested to know that your laptop computer and other mobile devices may be randomly seized without a warrant and sent to a secondary site for forensic inspection. The ruling by the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in early April has important implications, especially for business travellers with commercially sensitive company data on their laptops. The ruling is the second in less than a year that allows the U.S. government to conduct warrantless, offsite searches of digital devices seized at the country's borders. In the Cotterman case, Custom officials had inspected Howard Cotterman's computers because their computer systems showed he was a registered sex offender in California. Nothing suspicious was found on initial inspection, but Customs seized the computer and sent it for further investigation. Cotterman argued that the government needed to have a specific suspicion to conduct such an extended search; however the Ninth Court upheld the government’s contention that the border search doctrine allows such actions even without reasonable suspicion or cause. The essential point here is that by definition all border searches are reasonable because they occur at the border. Read more at: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/040611-us-can-conduct-offsite-searches.html