Scan Monthly No. 016June 2004 |
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Signals of Change
Not-So-Viral Marketing
SoC057
The metaphor that exists within the term viral marketing is helpful in quickly communicating the geometric multiplication of influence that a successful viral-marketing campaign generates. But anyone wishing to understand how viral-marketing campaigns operate will have to move beyond the metaphor. The manner in which ideas and innovations spread through a complex social system differs dramatically from the way diseases spread through a population. Researchers exploring diffusion in social networks are discovering that success in the marketplace may depend less on the quality of a new product than on the network processes that spread the word about it.
Synthetic Biology
SoC058
Advances in biotechnology are allowing researchers to create new life forms, genetically program existing life forms, and use life forms to manufacture hormones, metabolites, or drugs. The wide diversity of techniques that researchers use can now apply to the design of biological systems using standard parts, a field that they call synthetic biology. Sorting out the hype from the reality will take a while, but in the meantime some very interesting capabilities and opportunities are cropping up in the newly christened domain.
Creating Markets in Developing Countries
SoC059
What's a company to do once it's tapped available existing markets? Create new ones. An increasing number of companies are looking for long-term growth strategies that include serving developing countries. But in many developing countries, companies will have to create markets before they can serve them. Fortunately, many of the information technologies currently under development make excellent bootstrapping technologies that people in developing countries can use to start and run businesses that will create markets through creating wealth.
Paper Technologies
SoC060
Paper has erved civilization so well for so long that to abandon it now would be a shame. Not to worry: Innovators are coming up with some fascinating uses for paper that should keep it in currency. DVDs composed of 51% paper and printable batteries and transistors are just some of the offerings that researchers have developed or are working on.
Insights
| Information Cascades and Social Contagion | View summary |
| D04-2474 | Download this Insight |
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Biological models as metaphors for communications or information processes are legion in the business press—one might even compare their frequency to a plague except that doing so would perpetuate the use of the metaphor. Viral marketing, computer viruses, social contagion, and infectious ideas are all terms that leverage common understandings of biological processes in relating basic properties of information-communication processes. But the metaphors have limits—most specifically when they refer to the processes that we know as social and commercial fads, financial crashes (and bubbles), blockbuster products, and political or social revolutions. These phenomena propagate through a population in what some researchers call information cascades or social contagion. But the way that ideas spread through a population differs dramatically from the way that diseases spread through a population. Businesspeople interested in the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, the maintenance of a healthy brand, the diffusion of innovative products in the marketplace or ideas in the corporation, and the role of change leaders and early adopters in society need to examine and understand diffusion processes much more carefully than just in a metaphorical sense. Researchers exploring the dynamics of social networks are discovering that in many cases the social-network processes in disseminating an idea or word of a product are more important to the product's success than the quality or price of the product. Unfortunately, our ability to characterize, quantify, and understand these social-network dynamics is still at a very early stage. Author: Kermit M. Patton. 10 pages. |
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| Noninvasive Testing and Sensors for Health Care | View summary |
| D04-2475 | Download this Insight |
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The ability to perform a variety of medical tests without drawing blood or breaking the patient's skin in any way has until recently been limited to the realm of science fiction. But now, technological advances in conjunction with market demand and cost constraints in the health-care industry are providing incentives for companies to develop noninvasive testing techniques and tools. In the past two decades, health-care delivery has gradually moved from hospitals to outpatient settings. As the elderly population increases in size and lives longer and as elderly individuals prefer to stay in their own homes, many forms of care will shift from the outpatient setting to the home. Easy-to-use, noninvasive testing techniques will see increasing utility and value as a means of providing safe and effective home-care solutions. Noninvasive tools can measure mechanical parameters such as heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, and temperature; electrical parameters from the heart and brain; and chemical parameters such as glucose, metabolites, and hormones. Potential applications extend well beyond disease diagnosis and treatment to include fitness fanatics and the worried well—people who are healthy and willing to invest in staying healthy. Author: Jose Joseph. 11 pages. |
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| Selling Products and Services in Emerging Markets | View summary |
| D04-2476 | Download this Insight |
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Multinational companies have long targeted the world's wealthiest consumers and businesses in their sales strategies—and the eighty-twenty rule does apply: 80% of the world's companies sell to 20% of the world's population. Most companies do not consider the world's poor as viable targets for their products because the poor simply earn too little to afford any of the companies' products. Such an assumption is increasingly open to challenge. Researchers, academics, and corporate strategists are beginning to look at consumers in developing countries as a viable new target market. Companies, these pioneers argue, are in a unique position to supply many necessities to consumers and businesses in poor, rural areas. Necessities include, among other products and services, clean water, access to capital or financial services, energy, telecommunications, Internet access, and health-care services and medicine. Although creating markets and reaching consumers in emerging markets must stand the test of time to prove their value, doing so has already caught the attention of some of the world's largest organizations. Author: Greg Powell. 12 pages. |
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| Future Audiences for Advertising: Enraged or Engaged? | View summary |
| D04-2477 | Download this Insight |
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As audiences increasingly adopt interactive technology, will they use that power to turn away from advertising? Or will audiences use interactivity to intensify their relationship with advertisers? Of course, not everyone will respond the same way. But on balance, will interactive audiences be enraged or engaged by advertisers? Suppliers of interactive technology often hope to find new business models for collecting revenue, and some of those models involve revenue from advertising. For Yahoo and Google, advertising is generating billions of dollars of annual revenue. Users engage with "Ads by Google" because these ads are relevant. The enraged-versus-engaged theme applies across a range of technologies: television, electronic games, cell phones, and more. Notably, digital-video recorders let people skip TV commercials. If interactive audiences can control the content they experience, they may filter out advertising messages. In reality, both enraged and engaged practices will continue: Audiences will evade intrusive advertising and welcome interaction with friendly suppliers of goods and services. But uncertainties remain about what attitudes toward advertising will prevail among future audiences and what steps businesses must take to engage audiences. This study, which SRI Consulting Business Intelligence's Digital Futures program developed in conjunction with the Scan™ and VALS™ programs, conducts a thorough examination of the issues and provides a framework for characterizing trends in interactivity. Author: Michael Gold. 38 pages. |
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Calendar
Scan™ Briefings
The biannual Scan™ Briefings in which Scan staff present Scan analysis and findings in Menlo Park, California, will take place on:
- 21 October 2004 at 8:00 am
- 19 May 2005 at 8:00 am
Scan™ Abstract Meetings
Scan abstract meetings (in which SRIC-BI [now SBI] staff participate in a free-form discussion of current Scan abstracts) are open for client observation/participation on:
- 21 July 2004 at 9:00 am
- 22 September 2004 at 9:00 am
- 20 October 2004 at 1:30 pm
- 26 January 2005 at 9:00 am
- 23 March 2005 at 9:00 am
- 18 May 2005 at 1:30 pm.
Watch List
The Scan program's scanning and research processes identify areas on the periphery of your organizations's focus that constitute potential opportunities or threats. The areas that we decide bear watching go on Scan's watch list of defining forces that are transforming the business environment. Current watch-list topics include:
