The old tongue-in-cheek saying goes that forecasting is very hard (difficult), especially when it involves the future.

In the course of my job here at Kahuna Content, I spend a considerable amount of time reading cultural and social trend forecasts.  Like anything else, some are great and others a lot less great.  In their quality they vary.  But one way they don’t vary is this.  In all of them I’ve read lately, I’m amazed that they forecast changes in society that are based on changes in the “hard” stuff, the technology; in other words its the hardware (technology) that influences the “software” (people).  It’s a bit disheartening, from a human standpoint that is.

Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

And shouldn’t other “uncontrollable” forces in the environment be critical factors in these trend forecasts?  Factors like government and economy can have just as much effect upon cultural and social trends as technology, perhaps even more.  This is an area which forms a foundation of some of my work.  I’ll be writing more on this in future.

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“They” say that the only thing that is certain is change.  Let’s discuss.

I literally wrote the book on web competitive intelligence.

In 2001, I wrote “Dangerous Competition: Critical Issues in eCompetitive Intelligence Analysis.”  This book was the first of its kind to look at the “New Economy,” as it was called then, from the perspective of competitive analysis.

Perusing some pages of the book the other day I came across the idea of allowing employees to get closer to customers.  Very relevant given the orientation of today’s social media intiatives.  “Giving employees full access to company information means that much present management must change.”  (p 48)  Now, of course, full information might not be such a great idea.  But the concept I was putting forth there was that of allowing employees to solve problems for customers and giving those employees the necessary info to do so.  This I was discussing from within the context of ecommerce, seven years ago.  And I was discussing it as an element of competitive analysis, for the analyst to observe to what degree did his competitors do this?

Seems that things really haven’t changed much in that time.  In social media strategy, we’re still discussing how the corporation should allow its employees access to info so that they can solve customers’ problems.  (Jeremy Wright talks about this concept heavity in Blog Marketing.)  So, in web business initiatives, managerial flux is still needed. After seven years.

So how is change the only thing that is certain?

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