Innovation Copilots
Uber is intended to hit the stock market at a valuation of $82.4bn. Here’s a few things to keep in mind:
The target valuation was initially $100bn, but since Lyft was introduced on the stock market on March 28 and lost already 27% of its initial valuation, Uber had to be more conservative.
Since 2016 (a bit more actually), I’ve been pushing this simple concept: Digital is over! Being back in Shanghai right now, is among many things a perfect opportunity to check how far digital has been integrated in the every day life of this massive consumer market.
Remember, last year when I was especially impressed by how Alibaba and Starbucks did partner up to build flagships vision of the future of retail? By now this snapshot has consolidated into a full-fledged retail operating system (IT, big data platform, social web marketing, and supply chain all rolled into one “as a Service” retail mainframe) for every corner shop in China.
That’s the reason why, this year I was really excited to understand on site what Alibaba was now doing with Hema Market.
We have all witnessed how digital has transformed the retail market all across the planet. At first e-commerce, then Amazon and Alibaba platforms, then even more new entrants, more recently everyone is trying to jump in social media such as Instagram (courting young trendy « influencers »), etc. The consensus was that eventually this was not about being a prominent online force anymore nor about offering a fantastic offline experience, but both. The 2017 mantra was O2O or Online to Offline and pretty much everyone agreed to the vital necessity of being able to smoothly drive customers back and forth from an ‘O’ to another. This was all fine and (maybe unexpectedly) I agreed 100% with this trend. But to be self-critical with the idea, what started to surface is that we have maybe missed something far more subtle and game-changing. I call it Chic and Mortar Retail.
We discussed on the previous article the idea of the weak singularity, where all connected devices tend to be harvested by a few massive platforms, as a global sensor network targeting us for ads (or broader influence strategies).
The follow up of this trend is what we call Platforms’ Dark Patterns, which refer to how the GAFA / BATX are evolving to deal with growing concerns about privacy, while still sustaining their constant push for pervasiveness in our daily lives.
As I did mid-year 2017, I will start today a discussion on what I have on my innovation radar. This is what I believe will shape both B2B and B2C markets for the next two to three years. Unlike last year, I will split it up in six parts to avoid getting in another mega-article! But very much just like last year, I won’t go for the easy answers and discuss artificial intelligence, virtual reality or self-driving cars. So that may be a good reason to read on. : )