Saturday, February 03, 2007

Counterintuitive Trends

On Strategy+Business, Dan Lewis of Booz Allen Hamilton, describes seven counterintuitive industry trends:

Oil, gas, and electricity, emerging talent shortages
A shift in supply chain practices, especially in the automotive industry
Consumer packaged goods, reorganizing for growth: The most successful companies are reorganizing themselves accordingly, adopting more complex organizational structures that can make more sophisticated products and brands.
Credit cards, challenged by their own success
The globalization of R&D: The emerging markets of Asia are taking off, with a particular emphasis on software design and development. China and India will account for 77 percent of all newly established R&D sites between 2005 and 2008.
The rising use of software in manufactured goods: There is more embedded software in many children’s toys today than there was in the Apollo lunar module. The same is true for appliances, tools, and even consumer products like toothbrushes — let alone for automobiles. That’s why the German industrial giant Siemens employs more software engineers than Microsoft.
Simplicity matters: the complexities of embedded software have unleashed a growing countermovement toward simplicity, such as the iPod.

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