Changes Everything

Ride the rocket of change

Not long ago I gave a talk to the board of directors of a German financial institution. These were experienced businesspeople. The youngest person there was probably fifty-five, and many of them were in their sixties. They'd seen a lot of changes in banking and they'd lived through a lot of technology changes, too. The bank had not yet, though, begun to use the new Internet technologies.

On the day of my visit they'd heard a series of talks from Microsoft employees about the company. When I walked into the room, they were all sitting there with their arms folded across their chests, looking unhappy.

"OK," I said." What's the problem?"

One of them replied, "We think that banking is in the process of changing completely, and we're getting technical talks from people here at Microsoft - more technical than we're used to." He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes and said, "This is probably good, although it's making us tired." After a pause he continued. "It's good that you're just going to make all of your products better, but what is the overall plan? To view you as a long-term supplier, we need you to give us a vision of the future. What are your organizing principles for development?"

The senior Microsoft executive who ends a meeting with customers doesn't usually bring a prepared talk. Instead, the person answers questions and makes a summary of what we'll do in response to any important issues that have come up. So as I stood in front of the German bankers I was thinking, "Oh boy. We've spent eight hours talking to this bank and we haven't answered the customer's central concerns. Now I've got to do it without notes..."

But by that time I'd given my talk on the digital nervous system a couple of dozen times, and I'd been working on this book for almost a year. So I began to write down the major changes that I thought were going to happen with technology in the near future. I was writing down ten changes that I thought would have a significant effect on industries, I told the bankers. These were important changes in customer behavior that were all related to digital technology and were all happening now.