On the shoulders of giants

It is clear that we are currently experiencing a pace of innovation such as has not occurred in the entire history of humanity. If between the first use of tools and the discovery of fire passed carca of 2 million years and between fire and agriculture, 788,000 years, the pace between inventions that have revolutionized the way of life of the human being has been accelerating exponentially, so that, in less than a century, We have seen how the center of our homes has rapidly pivoted from radio to television, from television to personal computer and, even in many cases, from the personal computer to the tablet and mobile that we usually carry in our pockets. Innovation is possible at this pace thanks to the fact that we have extensive historical support in many areas and that also converge in a multidisciplinary collaboration. These are the giants we look to the horizon on. These rapid changes, which now seem indispensable to us, require us to need to develop new skills, even knowing that we are thereby reducing expertise in others. Who hasn’t lost guidance ability due to GPS? This acceleration is very noticeable in technological devices. Sometimes, we have not yet become accustomed to using a device, when a new generation emerges that leaves our terminals somewhat outdated immediately. As corporate Product Manager of spaces as recent in ERP as the Social and Mobility area (two of the acronyms SMAC), on many occasions I have to get my best chess player. And this time I do not refer to chess as an attempt to Gamify our EP,  but I need to anticipate several moves before they occur, where these changing areas are going and imagine how we can get the most out of it so that when that trend is a reality we are prepared.

For this we need to distinguish between hard trends (Hard Trends) and soft trends (Soft Trends). In addition to being tangible and measurable, hard trends are those that, although still future, are sure to occur. Examples of hard trends are that, after each night, a new day will dawn, or that next year we will have more experience than we have now. Obviously something extraordinary can happen that destroys our predictions based on hard trends: the Earth could leave its solar orbit or I could suffer from a severe degenerative disease that prevents me from making new learnings from next week. The advantage of hard trends is that we can predict with little risk of being wrong, but in technology knowing these hard trends does not carry an advantage. Some hard trends, such as that the processors that will come out next year will be faster than this year, that mobile devices will have an increasingly higher connection speed and after 5G will come the 6G that will allow us to navigate more and faster, do not help us much. In technology, most trends are relatively soft or very very soft and some of them can end up in a dead end.

Soft trends are based in statistics and indicate possible futures that, while occurring, undergo numerous changes, so that some trends do not even materialize or do not reach the anticipated success. There are numerous factors that can affect the future predicted by soft trends. To succeed with a technological product it is not enough to be the first, nor to be the most efficient or with more features, you have to have the right technology for the right user at the right time.

In this series of short videos, Bill Hammack (engineerguy) discusses the reasons why three technologies failed. PicturePhone: A phone that allowed you to see the interlocutor you were talking to… in 1964! Something that seems natural to us today thanks to the internet. At the time it was strange and enormously expensive.

Dvorak keyboard: A different distribution of the keyboard that, according to the studies carried out, improves the efficiency of typing in a derisory percentage, requiring most users to replace a greatly extended system.

Sony Betamax: Appeared before its competitor VHS, technically it was superior in quality and features, but, instead, it lost the commercial battle resoundingly, especially in the consumer market.

This anticipatory game of technology requires sacrifices and, again, as in chess, we must risk some chips to continue with the game. You will agree with me that we are about to live the revolution of wearable technology (often translated as ‘wearable’) and that before the end of the year, marketing will sell us the urgent need to complement our body, like cyborg, smart watches, biometric bracelets, glasses with voice recognition,… But what devices will succeed? Android watches? Biometric wristbands? Apple’s much-rumored iWatch? Google Glass? A little bit of everything and combined? To be prepared, we have to anticipate and prepare solutions before they are available and that carries risks. Last May, we designed an app that allows you to record the hours in projects using a smart watch. What happened? That we did it with a device that had just hit the market, the SONY SmartWatch 2, which requires its own programming language and is specific to a single smartwatch model. We did a business case, an analysis, development and we have a functional application that easily records the hours spent on Agresso projects with a smart watch. The problem is that, a few weeks later, Google announced Android Wear, a platform for wearable devices with a single App developed, compatible with all Android wear devices that numerous brands (LG, Samsung and Motorola) are already launching to the market. Great news but, suddenly, the hours of development invested in the SONY device disappeared down the drain. Obviously we can take advantage of the analysis and we already have experience in how the design should be for such small screens, but we have to redo the development in Android wear and create new functionalities thanks to the fact that these new devices have voice recognition. And what will happen if Apple launches its commitment to wearables in the coming months? Well, we are not sure what will happen, but I can guarantee that we are working to anticipate and we do not want to be caught off guard. We are the Borg. Resistance is futile.

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