McKinsey’s Eight Technology Trends to Watch for 2008 A-Team

1.Distributing co-creation 2.Using consumers as innovators 3.Tapping into a world of talent 4.Extracting more value from interactions 5.Expanding the frontiers of automation 6.Unbundling production from delivery 7.Putting more science into management 8.Making businesses from information

Using consumers as innovators Companies are leveraging so-called “web 2.0” concepts in increasingly innovative ways. One t-shirt company, for example, successfully solicits ideas for designs from its customers. “Companies that involve customers in design, testing, marketing (such as viral marketing), and the after-sales process get better insights into customer needs and behavior and may be able to cut the cost of acquiring customers, engender greater loyalty, and speed up development cycles”.

Making businesses from information There are almost a limitless number of possibilities to identify information “asymmetries” to create new businesses, such as seeing disconnects in supply, demand, pricing, etc. Or, information gathered for one purposes might be used for another. “A retailer with digital cameras to prevent shoplifting, for example, could also analyze the shopping patterns and traffic flows of customers through its stores and use these insights to improve its layout or the placement of promotional displays. It might also sell the data to its vendors so that they could use real observations of consumer behavior to reshape their merchandising approaches.”