It’s a sign of the times, from The Times.  The New York Times Sydney Ember published this article about the future of the news business.

I have been giving this subject a great deal of thought over the years and am delighted to learn that they have invested in figuring out a plan.

As I see it – the issue is that large volume news is all about targeting large audiences (to get large ad dollars) and to do that they need to produce information their readers didn’t know.  Before the internet, and after the telephone, there was a long period of time where 24 hours was usually plenty of time to stay ahead of most readers in terms of what they didn’t already know.

If the telephone was invented in 1849, and the above graph says it took 70 years for 50% of the population to have one, that takes us to about 1920.  So then if you figure Internet adoption happened at around 2000, that’s an 80 year window of smooth sailing for media.

The obvious crisis is that most of us already know the big stories within an hour or two of when the news breaks on CNN or ESPN or Geekwire, we all get news from a few places.  Sports was the first casualty – people who really follow sports figure out all of the sports scores an hour or so of when they happen – so for a print paper like The New York Times – to have a section the next day, the information has to be pretty obscure – things that are not on the front page of those online news sites, and I give The New York Times a lot of credit.  Especially over the past five years, their sports section has really gone to the edges and struck a very careful balance between the nugget and the “who cares”

But this isn’t just about the print version of The New York Times.

This is about the ongoing role of the media.  They can either go for a lower volume of people who still don’t know the news – and inform them, or they can continue to target the higher volumes and add details most of us have missed – either with more obscure facts (which risk having the mass appeal) or adding more opinions, which is a shift in their expected objectivity – but clearly places like Fox News and CNN have thrown objective reporting out the window.  One frontier that is interesting is to move the timeline to focus less on what already happened, to more on what’s coming.  There’s still a way the media can stay ahead of what information we are taking in – by telling us what’s coming, and what could happen.  In a sense the media could all become more like weather people – meteorologists – saying here’s what’s probably going to happen today – and watch out for what’s coming later in the week.

This isn’t limited to news and large audiences.  The same applies to our LinkedIn, Facebook, and other, smaller circles of information sharing.

I haven’t read all of Ember’s report yet – but I am looking forward to it and I am eager to hear what’s coming.  Because I suspect that’s a big part of the future role of the media – to focus more on the future, than the past.

I am not the first to observe that the so-called Sharing Economy is a terrible label for what’s going on.

Derek Bacon came up with this image of what it means:

Uber and Airbnb have become the poster child examples of the Sharing Economy, where the notion is that individuals who need something can buy something from other individuals who want to sell a product or service.  Up to that point the label Sharing Economy holds up.

But that oversimplifies what’s really going on and why it’s a big deal.  It’s a big deal because it has turned supply/demand economics on its ear.

The enabler of the sharing economy is increased visibility or transparency of supply and demand at the individual level (whereas supply used to only be from big companies with marking budgets and 2 degrees of separation word-of-mouth) and demand was in most cases faceless (that is Nordstrom knew how many people bought the shoes they advertised in the Sunday newspaper insert, but they had no idea who the buyers were).

Today supply has come down to the individual level and instead of only having 2 degrees of separation communication (telling your neighbor they can borrow / rent your lawn mower), it is now global.  But what’s key is that the supplier doesn’t have to know the buyer.

That’s because demand is no longer anonymous. What the Sharing Economy really has done, is to add a layer of structure/infrastructure to the communication at that individual level.  20 years ago we could send an e-mail asking our friends if they knew someone who wanted to rent their spare bedroom – today airbnb is a structured way of linking that supply and demand for that specific need.

In that sense match.com was one of the killer apps for that linkage of supply/demand linkage at the individual level, where we came to trust communications between two people who don’t know each other.  So we shouldn’t focus as much on Airbnb and Uber as the bow wave of the Sharing Economy – we need to go farther back – to companies like Match.  Update – Sonya “Swipe Right” Schwartz did this really thorough write up on match that’s a must read.

So then a company like Jet.com is simply a logical extension of that new transparency, back “up” into the supply chain to increase transparency of costs.  Internet of things, IoT, is a similar increase of transparency at the post-transaction experience level that we are learning to expect because everything is specific and structured at the individual behavior level.

So now that we have this transparency, in a structured way, and we trust – even expect it at the more specific way that Airbnb and Uber have offered – we expect it everywhere.

So should it be called the Transparency Economy? The Power to the People Economy?  I don’t know.   That’s not really my department.

I think the bigger question is that now that people see this happening, with Apple, Google, Netflix, Amazon as the untouchable tech companies (Farad Manjoo is on the right track with his thinking on this article – though he stops short of actually calling them untouchable) – is that why companies like Under Armour are sprinting to stay ahead of them.  This article in Geekwire about Kevin Plank has the right idea.

What it boils down to is that now that Match, Uber, Airbnb have turned supply/demand on its ear, as the owners of all of the data – which informs a lot of behaviors, will Apple, Google, Netflix, Amazon come and and take control of this new supply/demand universe as the new order of things settles down.

I don’t think it’s going to be quite that simple.  I do think we will see some unlikely M&A going on where Google might buy the Ford Motor Company.  If nothing else it would be a fascinating turn of events relative to what Nobel Laureate Ronald Coase predicted (basically it made sense for Ford to grow to be so huge when it did in the 1920s, because the search cost of finding a company to perform a service like growing rubber for tires or hiring ships to move cars exceeded the cost of hiring someone to do it internally – the internet seemed to flip that upside down – proving Coase again correct as search costs plummeted – suggesting a company should never get big again because search costs were so low – you could always find someone to do it better/faster/cheaper instead of hiring someone).

The question is whether it once again makes sense for companies to get huge again?

Serendipity is close but not quite the right word.

And it’s something we are losing when it comes to information.  It’s “finding what you are not looking for” and thinking we need a new word for that – that which we are losing our ability to do because of the way we now access and consume information through sites like Google, Bing, and others.

Some of the most amazing information I have in my head is from finding things I wasn’t looking for – and several of my favorite examples of all time are below.

Would my life be worse off because I hadn’t stumbled on those articles? Doubtful.  But from a pure quality of life perspective – I can’t tell you how many times these stories have brought a smile to my face, or how many times I have shared them with friends as well as little kids, even co-workers.

These are the articles that I would never in a million years have searched for, and they would probably never show up on some of your favorite destination web sites like Linkedin, Geekwire, or CNN in my case.  These are articles that in some cases are more than ten years old, but I still talk about them often.

There’s no big call to action in this post, just really wondering out loud, as it were, how our kids will be able to stumble on these gems in the future.  As print news goes away, and we have fewer opportunities to “stumble” on pieces like these, people will miss out. I think in some cases it would change their lives.  If I had found that article about bird migrations, or the one on squid camouflage, I might have actually made some different career choices because they are that cool – to me.

So here are some of the best ever.  If you have some similar favorites – I’d love to see them.

This is one about the platypus that’s full of incredible information (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/08/science/08platypus.html).  This is another one about camouflage (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/science/19camo.html).  And this one combines insanely long nonstop bird migrations with internet of things technologies and more (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/science/25migrate.html)

Sometimes it’s not even an article – even a graphic that tells an unbelievable story, like this one. (http://freakonomics.com/2008/08/21/usain-bolt-its-just-not-normal/).  Sorry this graphic isn’t bigger – go to the link to see it better.

There you go.

I have been doing a lot of research lately and as part of that, I have watched a lot of TED talks.  Because I have been delving into how people measure and define happiness, they are weighted that way, but the ones about design and communication are really amazing.

And then the one at the end is not a TED talk, but it’s still pretty impressive.
Measuring Happiness  https://www.ted.com/talks/chip_conley_measuring_what_makes_life_worthwhile?language=en

It’s time to panic if you are in software development and you don’t have a clear path to continuous delivery – which means weekly or daily software releases.  And if you roll your eyes and think that’s just for Amazon and Google and that doesn’t apply to you – you are completely missing the point.

And surprising as it may sound, this actually starts with Agile software delivery methods.

People have been talking about Agile as a way to manage software development for a long time.  In many respects people see it as the butterfly where waterfall models were the caterpillar.  An inevitable evolution where the result is completely different, and better, than what was there before.

The good news is that with rigor and discipline, Agile is much better, and with some of the newer models of “continuous delivery” where some people publish new software every day – or in increasing cases, hundreds or even thousands of times a day (Amazon), it’s a competitive differentiator.

The bad news is that transforming to true Agile takes rigor, discipline, coaching, a roadmap, and more.  There are entire companies like LeadingAgile who help companies realize the vision and promise of Agile.  One of the things the LeadingAgile people have seen is that it takes more than one person with a budget to make the change – everyone needs to be bought in, like a single collective soul in their commitment to the vision.

Here’s the rub – Agile is a little bit like the process reengineering movement of the 90s in that people see some boxes, chevrons, and arrows on a page and think it’s easy – they can do it.  Shooting baskets is pretty easy – but there’s a reason LeBron James makes $22.96 million a year more at it than I do.

The beauty of both process (as well as capability modeling) and Agile are that they help make things clear and simple – but getting to that clarity takes skill and hard work and experience, so many people fail because they underestimate the work.

Which is where most organizations are today.

Companies have gotten to a certain point with Agile and while they aren’t happy they aren’t at the panic stage.  They should be at panic level for three reasons, one more obvious than the other two.

1. Maintenance costs are skyrocketing and defect rates are growing.  The folks at LeadingAgile will tell you this – too much is being spent on legacy systems built in the waterfall days.  They are architected for a bygone era and they are spending money to maintain them in a way that is not sustainable.  It’s a bit of a boiling frog phenomenon – it has gotten really bad, but it has happened gradually, so people don’t realize just how bad it is.  That is a painful, but probably pretty obvious message to a lot of people.  Many people are asking for help, but even now they may underestimate the magnitude of transformation that is needed.  Just try to get a caterpillar to fly.
2. Continuous Delivery Applies to Everyone.  While there are some features/functions that need frequent updates, and there is plenty of information about the parallel A/B, or “split” testing of production systems.  Those are often the features with a high velocity of change required.  Many of those are in fact limited to the Googles and Amazons of the world.  While those high velocity features are fully inside the Venn diagram circle of Continuous Delivery, the Continuous Delivery circle is much bigger than that.  Continuous Delivery is about breaking big requirements into little ones, reducing risk, removing dependencies, massively automating testing, and it applies to all features and functions, DevOps, and so forth whether customer facing or not.  This takes pretty major organizational change, and Brad Power and Andy Singleton have an article in the works about that (with input from Joe Weinman and Roger Camrass), and I will post the link when that’s out.
3. Experience data is coming and it is a gi-normous amount of new data.  This is a huge wave of data.  When you go from transaction level CRM data to experience level data, it’s a massive change in development, sales, marketing, customer, service, everything.  Organizations aren’t ready for this if they don’t have their agile/continuous delivery house in order.  There’s a lot of talk about Digital Transformation and Customer Experience Transformation these days.  It’s real.  People are starting to collect orders of magnitudes more data about their customers and their experience because of GPS and smart mobile devices and things like FitBits and the Disney MagicBand.  So where there might have been five clicks or transactions over the course of a week or an experience that informed “personalized” marketing efforts – tomorrow there will be 5,000 pieces of information every day about every person.  This isn’t going to happen slowly, like Agile has.  It is already happening, and it’s happening fast.  Most companies will need to be part of this or they will be swept away by this wave.

The silver lining of all of this is that things are about to get a lot better for customers, in little ways and in big ways.  There are enormous opportunities for technology to improve our quality of life.  There remain some big issues about privacy and “who owns the data” but one of the good things about capitalism and democracy is that these things tend to work themselves out after a few bumps and mistakes.

For most organizations – this is a wake up call.  Get a plan.  Build a roadmap.  Build the chrysalis for your transformation.

A) Join a startup

B) Work for Amazon or Google or Facebook or Netflix or a high profile tech company like that

C) Change the world

D) Do strategy work and become a Chief Strategy Officer

E) Create and run a boring company

If you could ask a bunch of 23 year-olds what they want to do with their life, using TinyPulse or Survey Monkey or a service like that – my guess is that a very high percentage of them would swiftly and happily choose one of the above answers.  Some might wonder why there isn’t an option F for  “None of the above” or a fill in the blank option.  But I think a number close to zero would choose option E.  If you know it’s boring – why would anyone ever do it?

I’ll tell you why.

It seems there are two kinds of smart people in the world.  There are those people who want to be doing cool, fun, strategic things all the time – who can get hired to work at McKinsey or be a Chief Strategy Officer or change the world or do a startup.  Then there are the smart people who figure out that there’s a really key need everyone has, that’s actually pretty boring that no one else wants to do and they build a business around that, and have other people run the business so they can do anything they want and not worry about a thing.  They can go fly fishing in New Zealand or work on something cool and strategic any time they want.  They only have to get involved when something unexpected happens.

What are some examples of boring companies?

Waste Management.  Dealing with garbage sounds pretty boring and un-sexy.  But Waste Management is a $27 billion company listed on the New York Stock exchange under the ticker WM.  If you think a company like Zillow is really cool – it’s only worth $5 billion.  Which would you rather own and run today?

Robison Plumbing.  Never heard of them?  Of course you haven’t unless you live on the western side of Puget Sound in the state of Washington.  But they are the leading plumber out there – their trucks are everyone you go.  And what do they do that makes them different?  They show up the same day you call – there’s never any waiting.  And for a lot of us, when we call a plumber, we need help that day.

Slalom Consulting.  They aren’t a household name like Accenture or McKinsey, but they are a little more than ten years old, and they are on a path to making over $2 billion per year.   They don’t compete with Accenture or McKinsey – they do tech consulting every company needs at a competitive rate.  It’s coarsely analogous to the plumbing example above.  Everyone needs plumbing – and if you can get it done reliably at a decent rate, you will keep hiring the same plumber over and over and over.   Slalom figured out a model that worked and then did cookie cutter copying of the model in every city in North America.

Casper.  Buying a mattress in a big store like Macy’s is a terrible experience and the world of mattresses hadn’t changed much in ages.  Until Casper came along.  They took a boring, unpleasant experience, and made a couple of tweaks like home delivery and inflatable mattresses that aren’t too bulky and almost overnight they have a $100 million business.

Amazon Web Services.  While Amazon came onto the scene in something like 20 years ago as a radical new thing – AWS is actually a pretty boring un-sexy thing in many respects.  Running web services for an organization is important, but like photo copiers that you expect to work and waste management people who come and get your garbage, web services have some of the attributes of a boring un-sexy business as the rest of them. And some have said it will be worth over $200 billion soon.

So before you decide you start the next Uber or Airbnb or some artificial intelligence or virtual reality company, think about something really basic and boring like garbage or plumbing or mattresses and ask what could be done there that could really take off?