MacroMyopia overestimating the short term and underestimating the long term

There is a severe case of MacroMyopia spreading across the blogosphere. Today it is The Death of Email. Yesterday it was Inbox 2.0 - Email meets Social Networks. Macro-Myopia is the tendency to overestimate the short term impact of a new product or technology, and underestimate its long term implications on the marketplace, and how competitors will react.

Straight up and to the right - It is human nature to extrapolate the early success of a "new thing" to world domination, and to the death of the "old thing". Insert any variable for "new thing" like; Facebook, Twitter, Text Messaging, Open Source, Linux, YouTube...and you can finish the sentence with the death of the "old thing".

The best of both worlds - In most cases the early innovator of a product or technology wins some early success in a narrow market segment. The big winners come in later by incorporating the new technology into an existing product or service and creating a best of both worlds solution that appeals to a much broader market. I call this the "Innovate or Imitate - Fame or Fortune" scenario.

Will Social Networks, Twitter, and SMS rule the world? No, I don't think so. But, elements of each of them will be blended into existing business applications like Email, CRM, Knowledge Management, recruiting, and other enterprise services.

Email is ripe for innovation. As I wrote yesterday, Email is your natural social network, and there are big opportunities at the intersection points of social networks and business applications.  Brad Feld, Fred Wilson, Tom Evslin, and a bunch of smart people are getting together in NYC to think about ideas and investment opportunities at those intersection points.

But kids don't use Email...so Email is dead, right? Yes, it is true that the younger generation does text messaging and IM, not email. It is also true that they use MySpace and Facebook, not discussion boards and workspaces. So, Facebook, Twitter, and SMS will rule the world, right?

In a word, No. Those communication modes work great for kids, but kids grow up and get jobs. Work requires a different form of communication and collaboration. Social Networks are fun, but business networks get things done, and ultimately make money. Lots of money. Email might be one of those forgotten markets that could be a huge opportunity in the future.

Zoli Erdos agrees and has some neat graphs to tell the story. Mathew Ingram, a professional newspaper writer, has an interesting perspective too.

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Comments

[Sam Sethi]

Spot on Don. People still use other older means of communication. One thing I have learnt is that new technologies don't totally replace older technologies.

People still fax, write letters etc. even though there is email. We are all learning which is the best form of communication to use for each occasion. Often a twitter, sms or IM conversation is all I need as I don't require to keep an archive or thread of the conversation.

Email may reduce in the volume we send - which has got to be a good thing - in favour of other communication mediums.

[Robert Pease]

Don-
Couldn't agree more. Email is the de facto workflow tool in the enterprise with everything else at least one step behind. The pain we all endure from email makes it ripe for innovation but it has to fit into how we work today and the sometimes bad habits we have created.

[Meghan M. Biro]

Right on Don. As a busy executive recruiter email remains my primary tool for business communication. I have been wondering the same myself regarding intersection points--good to know the wheels are turning. There is a huge opportunity here for additional email functionality and new channels of development. Cool stuff...

-M

[Paul Saffo]

About Macromyopia, s-curves and over/underestimating change.

Here is a link that details the origins of the over/underestimating concept, which should be credited to Roy Amara, who was talking about it in the mid-1970s:
http://www.rexblog.com/2004/03/05/12121/

The term "Macromyopia" was to the best of my knowledge coined by Ian Morrison sometime aound 1988.

For an essay describing how to use the s-curve in forecasting, see my recent Harvard Business review article "Six Rules For Effective forecasting" (http://www.saffo.com/essays/index.php ) or ( http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbr/articles/article.jsp?ml_action=get-article&articleID=R0707K&ml_page=1&ml_subscriber=true )

best
Paul Saffo
www.saffo.com

[Edwin Khodabakchian]

Don: may be what people mean is that a stand alone email experience like outlook/exchange is about to become dead and that email is going to morph into a more unified experience. More unified with the browser (gmail/yahoo), more unified with application (facebook, SAP, Oracle etc), more unified with devices/SMS/mobility (iphone/SMS), more unified with voicemail, video chat, etc...

What is Microsoft doing to help drive this transformation?

[Don Dodge]

Mr. Saffo,
Thanks for the comment and links to the origin of the various terms. I am not a scholar, historian, or journalist, so I don’t pay much attention to the origins of words or concepts. I appreciate that you do, and thanks for pointing it out.

It was not my intent to take credit for coining the term. I will be sure to credit Mr. Morrison in the future.

The notion of over/underestimating has been around for a very long time. It goes by many different names. Some call it Macromyopia, some call it an S curve, Gartner calls it the Technology Hype Curve, and I think Geoffrey Moore called it “Crossing the Chasm”.

Whatever label one uses, the basic concept is the same. New ideas and technologies go through fairly predictible cycles. Yet, many people tend to forget this and succumb to the hype.

My main point with this topic, and most things, is to look beyond the hype and focus on the longer term implications.

Thanks,

Don Dodge

[Don Dodge]

Edwin, Thanks for your question. Microsoft is doing a LOT to realize the "unified communications" vision. In fact we have a very large team at Microsoft called UCG - Unified Communications Group. Microsoft made some big product announcements recently. For details please see http://www.microsoft.com/uc/Default.mspx

This topic deserves its own separate post. I will try to do that in the next few days.

[Sandeep Sharma]

Right. I think the current phenomenon is quite similar to what we observe in stock markets. This is a consolidation phase full of volatility with no particular clear trend emerging. There is too much of noise (read new technologies) that require filtering before any prediction is made. Some old economy stocks (read email) would remain favourite for some time to come.

Email would be tool for quite sometime to come due to proven business value coupled by intertia to move to anything new. As rightly pointed by you eventually good and proven functionality would blend into the world of business applications including ERP applications.