Some of my key themes for 2013 (picture gallery): Internet rights, digital content issues, privacy / publicy, data is the new oil, ecosystems and 'ego to eco', sustainable capitalism, pay-will vs paywall, freemium futures, human-machine scenarios...

Watch out - the deer now have guns! (great meme!!)

"Institutions are not in control anymore. The digital revolution has given guns to the deer, and they don't hesitate to use them. This loss of control has rocked media but it has penetrated all of society."

via www.guardian.co.uk

Great way to put it!!  Picture via Flickr/lynetter -- Thanks!!

Businesses to enter a new era of decentralisation (says Ricoh study, and I agree)

Absolutely agreed. This is a huge powershift. Get ready to be disrupted. Read more here.

"London, 16 February 2012 - New figures from a study sponsored by Ricoh show that by 2020 the impact of new technology in the workplace will force businesses into a new era of decentralisation. The research , conducted by the Economist Intelligence unit, shows that 63 per cent of business leaders predict a shift towards a more decentralised business model and that responsibility for business decision making will move from centralised management boards towards individual employees.  “We believe that businesses will be more process orientated, ensuring that critical information is more centralised and data can be received, stored and retrieved by employees. This will mean decision making can be less hierarchical and allow employees, who are collaborating directly with customers, to make important business decisions, without delay,” says David Mills, Executive Vice President, Operations, Ricoh Europe.

Supporting closer customer collaboration is essential as by 2020, business leaders believe that customers will be the main source of new product or service ideas.   Furthermore, 86 per cent of business leaders agree that customers will become an integral part of internal decision-making and that project teams will typically include people from outside the organisation such as customers and business partners... In the future, there will also be a need to consider how experts outside the organisation can input and retrieve information to act on behalf of the business. 85.7 per cent of business leaders agree that project teams will typically include members from outside the organisation (for example, customers, partners, communities)... Mills says, “In the new era of decentralisation it will be essential for businesses to do more to adapt to the digital world, especially as critical information will need to be accessed by employees, many of whom will be working virtually or outside the business..."

 

Related articles

• Midem 2012: Understanding Marketing in a Networked Society (video) (mediafuturist.com)
• Distribute control to adapt (stoweboyd.com)
• "The business climate has entered a next-two-hours era, which I call the Age of Flux. This time,..." (futureof.biz)
• Must-read: Jeremy Rifkin: Energy-sharing is the new internet (Wired UK) (mediafuturist.com)
• "Across the board we are in an era of almost unprecedented creative destruction of institutions and..." (futureof.biz)

An important meme that cuts across many industries: from Ownership to Access

This is a crucial meme for the next 3-5 years, and one I have written about many times (influenced, among many others, by the great Kevin Kelly - just watch this video), see:

The browser is the new iPod

Content 2.0: free vs paid

Shaping the networked society (video)

The future of music publishing (impact mag 2008)

The future of IPR and copyright (slideshow)

... and much more

Related articles

• 2011: The Year in Memes (bits.blogs.nytimes.com)
• This is a short but rather poignant video featuring some... (greenfuturist.com)
• "Welcome to the Age of Big Data. The new megarich of Silicon Valley, first at Google and now..." (futureof.biz)
• Gerd Leonhard: Read this: The SOPA Debate Ignores How Much Copyright Protection We Already Have (via The Atlantic) (mediafuturist.com)