Page 24
www.us-
tech.com Blurred and Disrupted By Philip Stoten, Scoop Communications (@philipstoten) T
here was a time, not so long ago, where we knew what each industry did. The automotive
industry made cars, the apparel in- dustry made clothes and the elec- tronics industry made electronics. Now everything is a little less clear. Take the example of a seatbelt
that senses the heartbeat of the driv- er and can provide alerts when a po- tential problem occurs or even take over should the driver pass out. Is this a wearable product? Is this a medical product? Is this an automo- tive product? The answer is yes, yes and yes. In January, CEOs from Bosch,
Comcast and Cisco joined David Kirkpatrick, Founder of Techonomy for a roundtable entitled, “Fast Inno- vation — Disrupt or be Disrupted.” During that session Cisco CEO John Chambers made two statements that stuck in my mind. One was that 60 percent of current fortune 500 com- panies will be irrelevant in just 10 years and the other was that every company is a technology company. I think what John and the rest of the panel were driving at is that change is accelerating and the apparently robust business models or even in- dustry models of the past may no longer be robust or even relevant.
Industry Disrupters The two examples regularly
used as examples of industry disrup-
tion are Uber and AirBnB, and these are indeed disruptive. A cab driver in London recently
told me that some of his peers had set up a protest in the city against the arrival of Uber into their previ- ously secure marketplace. The protest did nothing but
highlight the taxi driver’s intransi- gence and promote the Uber brand resulting in a spike in membership. My taxi driver was pragmatic, end- ing with the words “you can’t fight the market.” AirBnB has similarly disrupted
the hotel industry, providing people with a peer-to-peer tool to buy or sell accommodation. They have created new markets and new business mod- els, disrupted the status quo and achieved substantial success doing so. Uber has been slated as having
a value of $40Billion. What this means to the elec-
tronics manufacturing industry is a less predictable future where sectors are less important and solutions more so. Being an electronics manu- facturing company may not be enough to succeed in the wearable electronics space for example, where the supply chains and manufactur- ing techniques of the clothing indus- try and now the fashion industry are becoming more important and are blurring with traditional PCBA (Printed Circuit Board Assembly) and box build. Likewise many con-
sumer electronics devices may need FDA approval in the future as they start to have a role in the medical, fitness or wellbeing sectors of the in- dustry.
Recognizing your Customers Another challenge moving for-
ward may be recognizing your cus- tomers and communicating with them. As the lines blur between com- panies in fashion and companies in technology or companies providing software and companies providing hardware, it becomes harder to rec- ognize who will be the purchaser of the almost half a trillion dollars of outsourced electronics. Customers may no longer be the
traditional industrial companies of the past. They may now, and often are, the small startups that quickly grow and acquire both new and tradi- tional businesses. Look at Google and Facebook, who were the new kids on the block and are now the es- tablished giants seen as the most likely to acquire new tech startups and disruptors like Uber or AirBnB. Once you’ve recognized a start-
up as being potentially important, which is hard enough, you have to engage them. Communicating with them requires a more entrepreneur- ial approach that would not common- ly be associated with many of the players in the industry. Often crowd- funded, these startups are social me-
Philip Stoten is an internation- ally recognized EMS industry expert. Known for his skills as an inter viewer, reporter and
panel moderator, Philip is a fea- tured multi-media contributor to U.S. Tech on a regular basis.
dia savvy and are ready to consider new models for their business and for the supply chain that supports it.
Blurred Boundaries We no longer have visibility of
which industry we are working in or for and we no longer know with cer- tainty who our customers will be in
Continued on page 47
March, 2015
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104