Rocktails Blog > IBM innovation research : "Who's in charge here? In the world of digital convergence, it's the end user"

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> IBM innovation research : "Who's in charge here? In the world of digital convergence, it's the end user"

Richard Jones, iMagineer-in-Chief // 4 February 2007

Okay, no big surprises here but an interesting piece by the IBM institute which underlines the power shift from major corporates to the consumer. Innovation 'proves itself' first within the consumer base these days and feeds its way back into enterprise. The juice for this process is the all pervasive technological infrastructure that brings communities (big and small) together to collaborate and create.

(Quick aside - all this fits with the core concept in the Leadbetter book "We Think" that I have pretty much finished. Review / summary article coming soon).

Here's IBM's pretty picture, which I am pleased to adopt to break up what would otherwise be a plain page of text:

As the researchers write : "today's pervasive digital infrastructure is enabling people to collaborate and create as never before. As we move into the era of digital convergence, we believe it is now individuals - not businesses - that dictate the fate of new products, services and markets."

No shit, Sherlock. Heartening to think this sort of stuff is beaming its way into Head Office though.

The report is a bit wordy, but there is some interesting stuff in what they reckon makes a great user experience. See Pretty Picture #2 below.

There are some challenges in all this to make web 2.0 fly - interoperability for example (can you trade your eBay rating anywhere else? Does MySpace content and interaction dovetail with Blogger?) There is also a lot more that can be done on natural human interfaces (which will be core to the user experience and potentially a key differentiator as competition increases). We'll start look at this in more in the the design section shortly.

> IBM innovation research "Who's in charge here? In the world of digital convergence, it's the end user."

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