Interview with John Hagel on The Real Time Web
I was fortunate enough to get a chance to sit down with John Hagel at last week’s Web 2.0 Summit and discuss a few big-ticket emerging trends: (1) the rise of the “real time” web, (2) the move from the information web (the web of documents) to the social web (the web of people) and (3) the continued promise of mobile devices.
John is the co-chair of Deloitte’s Center for Edge Innovation, has written, numerous, influential books and is the co-author of the must-read blog, The Big Shift so I wanted him to analyze these trends from the lens of their potential impact on large organizations.
This first video discusses the rise of the real-time web which I am loosely defining as the convergence of three phenomena:
- Near zero latency communication protocols best embodied by something like Twitter but well described by Anil Dash as “The Pushbutton Web”
- Pervasive connectivity – our PCs are always on – able to send and receive up-to-the-minute with no barriers to “getting” online.
- Mobile access – Ubiquitous access to the web from mobile devices to view or create content wherever you are.
The effects of moving to the real time web are broad and deep. Like the Internet itself there isn’t a single, totalizing meta-narrative to make sense of it. John takes a slice of the real-time analysis and lays down an argument that goes something like this:
A. The Internet as a global communications and computation platform has accelerated the rate of change for the enterprise – faster product cycle times being one example
B. This accelerated rate of change depreciates the value of explicit knowledge (what I know – which can be summarized in documents, policies, procedures, workflow etc.) and privileges tacit knowledge (know how – the “knowledge that is difficult to be transferred to another person by means of writing down or verbalizing”)
C. In this environment, the source of value for the enterprise is moving from what John calls, “stocks of knowledge” (what we know at any given point in time) toward flows of knowledge (what we know at this current moment in time). Real-time “flows” of knowledge help an enterprise move at the pace of change but more importantly – they connect you to people – think about social CRM and being able to immediately recognize when you have customer issues (as opposed to surveys with huge lag times) and respond in the moment. Real time flows provide real time feedback to assess effectiveness and recalibrate response.
John also talks about the “dark secret of the enterprise” – but you have to watch the video to get that insight.
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