Accenture (News - Alert), a global management consultant company, has released its Accenture Technology Vision 2015 report, which provides businesses with an analysis of global technology trends and their possible uses for the coming year. What may take shape this year, above all other elements, is the so-called “We Economy” -- a complete reversal in the way businesses have always looked at digital technology.
What is different about the We Economy is that businesses are looking beyond their horizons. They will partner with other digital businesses, customers, and devices in order to create ecosystems that support technologies which function at their industry boundaries. Accenture reportedly solidified the existence of this new economy within a survey it conducted of more than 2,000 business executives. These executives said they believed the traditional boundaries of businesses of all types would blur as they reached into the pockets of other industries to use tools that had previously been foreign.
Paul Daugherty, the chief technology officer at Accenture, commented in this most recent announcement about the structure of businesses. He said “digital has become part of the fabric of [businesses'] operating DNA.
“They are stretching their boundaries to leverage a broader ecosystem of digital businesses as they shape the next generation of their products, services, and business models to effect change on a much broader scale.”
The information presented here, which surrounds the creation of a We Economy, has been vague. To make things a bit clearer, consider the operation of Home Depot, the chain of home improvement stores. Accenture notes that Home Depot supports the Wink home connected system. It is not enough, though, to simply sell the Wink product; Home Depot is going further to ensure that the other products it sells will function well with Wink, and through that action it is creating its own internal economy that surrounds home connections.
TMC (News - Alert) wrote earlier this year about the possibility that the connected home market would continue significant growth through 2018. This is but one market among seemingly countless others, and major businesses such as Home Depot may soon want to get their hands on the devices that players in these growing markets already produce. Healthcare, real estate, construction, manufacturing, and all other sorts of entities may find ways in the coming year and beyond to take advantage of digital products in ways they never have before. With various products making connections at the edge of their traditional networks, expanding businesses willing to reach out may find their own operations streamlined and their sales boosted as a result of making new friends with new tech.