Enterprises, technology companies, and service providers need to take tangible actions which challenge traditional models and the forces of incumbency and inertia, based on providing tangible, practical solutions to business leaders clamoring for change. We can together usher at the end of an era known as much for the promise of technology hyper-acceleration as for the potential which was never achieved, an era where decentralized innovation and enterprise was corrupted into the concentration of power and control. The inevitable rise of open technologies in an as-a-service economy will finally reconcile the contradiction between innovation and inflexibility. The declining financial fortunes of traditional technology models will accelerate into an eventual demise, the twilight of the gods ending in immolation. Let the fire that burns us, cleanse, too, the ring from its curse!
The cumulative impact of proprietary, inflexible and incompatible technologies has led to an environment where enterprise technology has become wasteful, expensive, failed, and obsolete – a betrayal of the possibilities ushered in by the last generation of innovation and entrepreneurship.
Enterprises, technology companies, and service providers need to take tangible actions which challenge traditional models and the forces of incumbency/inertia, based on providing tangible, practical solutions to business leaders clamoring for change.
The convergence of innovation and enterprise which made this unprecedented proliferation of technology possible, however, was marred by an original sin which has, in under a generation, unraveled much of its progress and impact. The first wave of widely available technologies remained a closely guarded and proprietary preserve of innovators and entrepreneurs, who eventually morphed into the corporate colossuses of our time. Even as these technologies became foundational to the activities of individuals, governments, enterprises, and societies, the pace and direction of innovation became beholden to the commercial interests of a small group of technology companies. This concentration of control within a relatively narrow class of innovators, over what was supposed to be an abundant and widely accessible utility, creates impediments in the way of progress, and the squandering of much of the potential of technology.