What do you get when you ask 128 of the world’s top CEOs and senior executives about the future of technology, communications and entertainment?
A set of breathless predictions coupled with a charming sense of bewilderment.
A total of 64 per cent of these honchos believe that we will all connect to computers over high speed, broadband connections very soon. Yet at least one admitted he didn’t have the foggiest idea what people are going to do with all that bandwidth.
The worldwide study, called Business Redefined, was unveiled recently by Ernst & Young and Cap Gemini at a briefing in Calgary. It involved more than a dozen Canadian CEOs including Jean Monty of BCE and Roy Osing of Telus.
There’s a decided telecommunications slant to the people they talked to, but they also tried to capture the ideas of leaders in the entertainment industry. In fact, one of the key premises of the study is that the line between communications and entertainment is blurring.
Jim Shaw of Shaw Communications is probably living proof of that, and he was one of the people they interviewed.
The report debunks the idea that we’ll all be running around slowly and painfully surfing the Internet on our cellphones. Anybody’s who’s tried that knows that it’s rarely worth the trouble. One respondent put it succinctly, saying: “Wireless Internet is virtually worthless” because of its “small screen, lack of interface standards and slow speed.”
People will be using mobile communications services, but it will be for checking stock prices, sending short messages, and carrying out transactions.
In some parts of the world you can already buy a soft drink from a vending machine by waving your cellphone at it.
The real action is going to be in broadband connectivity. The study reports that households with broadband access “consume” entertainment and other content an average 635 minutes per day.
As broadband becomes cheap and available everywhere, great new uses will be found for it.
“Who would have predicted a few years ago that Napster would have been the fastest growing product out there?” asked Sheila Sharaf Eddin, of Cap Gemini Ernst and Young.
She concludes that Napster demonstrated a huge pent up demand, in this case for online music. But what else can be sold that way? With the advent of broadband connections, and with storage cost coming way down, you’ll soon be able to satisfy even your most idiosyncratic taste in home movies.
If you can remember the title, even if it’s a Hitchcock film from the 1920s, you’ll be able get it on demand from some online library.
Of course there’s a big leap of faith from saying that Napster has 64 million users grabbing songs for free to a world where people pay actually for digital video on demand.
One solution may be “time-based pricing.” You might pay, say, $150 to have a few friends over to watch the latest StarWars movie weeks before it comes out in theatres. As the movie makes the rounds on theatre screens, cable and regular TV, the price per view will drop to almost, but not quite, zero. The study reports that five major studios alone control over 120,000 titles, so you won’t run out of things to watch.
Who will provide this service? Will it be the studios? The telecommunications companies that can get them to us? Perhaps Canada Post? Business Redefined argues for a new breed of company they call a content packager. They would become the gatekeepers between millions of business and consumers and the digital content they are seeking.
And they’ll do it in an intelligent fashion, learning your preferences and forming a relationship with you. Unlike the 500-channel universe, which seems to just overwhelm most people, your content packager might suggest movies you would like based on your past selections.
And they’ll also safeguard your privacy so people don’t know what you’re watching. If you see commercials at all, they’ll be customized to suit your lifestyle as recorded by your set top box. That would please one respondent who said: “I won’t have to watch cat-food commercials. I hate cats.”
The study concludes that there will only be a limited number of successful content packagers because the leaders will get the best content, attracting more loyal subscribers, which will bring in even more content owners. The technology to make all this possible, mainly the digital set top box, is already here.
John Goudey, the Ernst and Young partner responsible for this study, says the CEOs also identified many challenges in creating this idyllic world.
Competition will be ferocious because the stakes are so high. Everybody is looking for the next “killer app” that will be as important, and maybe more profitable, than Napster.
Goudey himself thinks it will probably be online learning — modules to help people learn faster and better through technology.
There’s no doubt that having highly skilled staff is going to be the key to success in this new world. Goudey quotes one respondent as saying: “Our top five strategic priorities are people, people, people, people, and people.”
It’s true that even with the dot-com downturn, finding and keeping the right employees is a challenge. Add to that the demands of agility and customer service and you have a business that’s not for the weak of heart. Those who want to enter it should probably program their own set top boxes with a steady diet of Stallone’s Rocky movies to get psyched.
Web Watch:
www.capgemini.ca/news/business_redefined.html
