New site coming soon: https://recommendationage.com/
If we take a look of the ages we see:
| Time Frame | Age |
| 8000 BC to 1720: | Historic Ages |
| 1780 to 1850: | Industrialization Age |
| 1850 to 1930: | Electro-Mechanical Age |
| 1930 to 1990: | Electro-Magnetic Age |
| 1990 to Now: | Information Age |
| Future: | Recommendation Age |
The difference between the Industrial Age and Information Age of business was, and what I think the new Recommendation Age will be:
| Industrial Age | Information Age | Recommendation Age |
| Practices | Principles | Architecture and Frameworks |
| Outside In | Inside Out | Environment |
| Scarcity | Abundance | Information Abundance / Right Information Scarcity |
| Control | Unleash | Filter |
| Efficiency | Effectiveness | Effective, Efficient, Speed and Execution |
| Formal authority | Moral authority | Culture authority |
| Mange things | Lead People | Retain Knowledgeable People |
| Leader is a Boss | Leader is a Servant | Leader must be visionary servants |
| Motivation is external | Motivation is intrinsic | Motivation is group |
| Boss is responsible | Culture is responsible | Right Information is responsible (Data Driven) |
As we can see there is some differences, but also a move towards a migration of the Industrial and Information age. Companies that already started to show the movement towards making money out of the recommendations is:
Google: All the websites in the world are filtered and then the best are recommended to the user, also advertisements are also becoming more focused on the user's needs.
Facebook: Facebook recommends people you might know according to you friend circles and also through listing you likes, personal info they filter advertisements that will suite you the best.
The internet is vast and we are facing an information overload, the organisations that show's that they can be the best filters to provide the needs to their customers will show sustainability. Also if I look more and more at this age, I believe we are moving in a time loop, why? In the Historic ages peopled searched for masters in the field, and trained under them. Today people look for master companies and train through them and also use their services.
Also if we venture to buy something or use a service we go to people/organisations we trust to recommend the best. Companies also look for individuals that will provide the best solution to problems, they go to recruitment firms to recommend the best individuals for that position.
There will become a need in organisations to have "Knowledge Brokers" people that will "sell and buy" information, turning it into knowledge, and then "reselling" it to other individuals inside the organisation. If we look at Business intelligence, there is a big problem in organisations today. The question they all have is "what is the value of the data and information in my database" the next questions will rise about "what is the knowledge worth in each individual in my organisation?" and "how can that knowledge be shared?" blogs and wikis are becoming more and more used because the collective knowledge gives the best results. People are reluctant to share their knowledge because either they still in the mentality of "this is how I move up the ladder" or "this knowledge I have can make me more money than I'm getting now". This leaves organisations with a problem, either the person is promoted and there is a gap in the field he was promoted from or the individual leaves the organisation for better pay and all knowledge is lost. A way I see of combating this is using "publishing" as a way out. In the old times people wrote books and thus got paid for this knowledge they have, also a king paid advisors, if an organisation wants to keep people for their knowledge they need to start paying royalties to individuals, "sharing in the profits or savings" and removing the benifits once the "author" leave the organisation like the publishing industry. Stephen Covey teaches us that people has four basic needs; to live, to love, to learn, and to leave a legacy. If we look at this people love to share their knowledge because of the need to learn, but they will not just share it to an organisation. Why? Here we need to look at what children (generation Y and X) learned from their parents. If you worked at an organisation, the organisation does not really take care of you, they "use" you until someone better comes along. Salaries work on how high you are on the corporate ladder and individuals with the least "knowledge" (education, degrees and diplomas etc) get the least pay. And if your boss does not like you, you will never get anywhere. This is why don't feel anything for organisations. I have knowledge, you pay me, if I feel you don't pay me enough for what I know, I'll find another that will.
Also I have started to see that organisations also does not know how to put individuals in postitions that will utilise their knowledge, meaning if someone said they studied B Comm Informatics or BSC Computer Sience they will end up doing the same thing, because both degrees are IT. This is the first mistake a organisation makes! I think organisations needs to start seeing what the degrees teaches people and to ask a graduate, where do you want to be placed is the second mistake! With fields becoming more and more specialised how can a graduate possibly know what field will suite him!?
Some extra companies that also use the recommendation age concept for selling:
Amazon.com: uses sales and sales ranking of each customer looking at the buying patterns of customers, grouping them together and then recommending items to these groups
Netflix: "Because Netflix stocks movies in centralized warehouses, its storage costs are far lower and its distribution costs are the same for a popular or unpopular movie. Netflix is therefore able to build a viable business stocking a far wider range of movies than a traditional movie rental store. Those economics of storage and distribution then enable the advantageous use of the Long Tail: Netflix" finds that in aggregate, "unpopular" movies are rented more than popular movies" from Long Tail Wikipedia
Crowd Concept:
The "crowds" of customers, users and small companies that inhabit the Long Tail distribution can perform collaborative and assignment work. Some relevant forms of these new production models are:
- The peer-to-peer collaboration groups that produce open-source software or create wikis such as Wikipedia.
- The crowdsourcing model, in which a company outsources work to a large group of market players using a collaborative online platform.
- The model of crowdcasting, is the process of building a network of users and then delivering challenges or tasks to be solved with the purpose of gaining insights or innovative ideas.
- Work performed by individuals in commons-like, non-market networks, described in the work of Yochai Benkler
Marketing:
There are 3 new ways of marketing coming out with the recommendation age which is : New Media Marketing, Viral Marketing and Pay per Click.
Portfolio Lifestyle
On Carte Blanche there was a story on portfolio lifestyle (http://beta.mnet.co.za/carteblanche/Article.aspx?Id=4121&ShowId=1) from this, we can list more or less what a portfolio lifestyle range of elements will be:
- People do any number of activities (which they have a talent or passion for) that will produce an income for.
- Hobbies that will produce an income
- They will not be fixed to one organisation, but multiple
- They need to focus on their financial portfolio too that will produce them passive income, due to the fact that do not have a company pension fund.
- They truly work the hours they choose, and the times they want, this requires more diligence.
With technology enabling people to work from anyplace this will become more and more popular with people because the industrial age of working is is no longer applicable. People do not need to come into office to be productive, and they do not need to work for one organisation to grow their talents. But this in mind information and knowledge security will become a problem, but the saying goes: "in order to receive, you first have to give". This falls in that motivation will be external and intrinsic, companies will have to motivate people to work on problems and stay longer and people will have to motivate themselves to work and not just be on "holiday" the whole time. The best portfolio lifestyle people will be the to work in frameworks and also must be great sales people, because they will have to sell themselves to every company.
References:
The Long Tail - Chris Anderson (http://www.longtail.com/) - (Wkik: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tail)
The Long Tail book is about the big-picture consequence of this: how our economy and culture is shifting from mass markets to million of niches. It chronicles the effect of the technologies that have made it easier for consumers to find and buy niche products, thanks to the "infinite shelf-space effect"--the new distribution mechanisms, from digital downloading to peer-to-peer markets, that break through the bottlenecks of broadcast and traditional bricks and mortar retail.
Life is a journey. Be Prepared! Many years ago someone coined the phrase ‘It is not the destination that counts, it’s the journey’.
References:
The Long Tail - Chris Anderson (http://www.longtail.com/) - (Wkik: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tail)
The Long Tail book is about the big-picture consequence of this: how our economy and culture is shifting from mass markets to million of niches. It chronicles the effect of the technologies that have made it easier for consumers to find and buy niche products, thanks to the "infinite shelf-space effect"--the new distribution mechanisms, from digital downloading to peer-to-peer markets, that break through the bottlenecks of broadcast and traditional bricks and mortar retail.
