The Mesh - Lisa Gansky [16]
We’re in a new stage in the information revolution. All the information coming together, whether it’s personal to me, or specific to women who share certain characteristics or behaviors with me, allows a company to make me irresistible, timely, and customized offers. The challenge to a Mesh entrepreneur is to leverage an infrastructure optimized for real-customer personalization. Successful Mesh businesses harness information from customers, combine it with data from physical products and social networks, and then use that information to satisfy customers, and their friends, in ways never before dreamed of.
network power, leveraged.
Indeed, this new stage of the information revolution favors the Mesh. The story of Web-based commerce is one of learning how to make information more detailed and valuable. The first wave of Internet companies focused on sharing information between parties—in the most basic case, selling an e-mail service. As companies aggregated digital information, they began to realize its value. The information allowed them to target customers and tailor offers of digital products. Yahoo! hosted a free e-mail service because it gave the company an easy way to identify and offer users other digital products, such as Yahoo! Photos. The user’s personal information converted her from an anonymous browser hit to a specific individual with an e-mail address. The conversion increased the value of the company’s advertising business, and enabled Yahoo! to offer additional Web-hosted services under the same registration system and user name.
Internet companies then figured out ways of making money by selling specific information to third parties. Google, for example, sells search terms—the term “deadbolt” might be sold to an online hardware store that offers locks. In the next wave, Web 2.0, social networking empowered customers to become more active in shaping products and services. Yelp, for example, only functions because millions of people rate and comment on their experiences with businesses. The conversation is two-way, which makes the information more valuable. The customer is also more deeply engaged, and more likely to use their social networks to recommend products and services.
Web 2.0 has changed the relationship between customers and companies in multiple ways. For one, customers can make or break certain products and services through recommendations, requests, or complaints. They are also more powerful in shaping what products and services companies offer, and how these are upgraded. As that new power converges with mobility and real-time location data, something transformative is being born. Successful companies will increasingly participate directly with customers and prospective customers to design and refine their products and services, tailored to the individual, and delivered where and when the person wants them.
In their new book The Power of Pull, John Hagel, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison argue that companies will decisively shift away from pushing stocks of inventory on customers. Instead, businesses will make goods and services available to customers in the place, time, and manner that they want. The company doesn’t push; the customer pulls. Here, too, access beats ownership.
Mesh businesses are ahead