Of Booz’s “10 most enduring business ideas,” two are tech-driven
On the 10th anniversary of its inception, Booz Allen Hamilton’s Strategy+Business magazine picked the 10 most enduring "conceptual breakthroughs" that appeared in the publication over the last 10 years. Of the 10, two are technical at heart: Customer Relationship Management and Disruptive Technology.
Would a survey across all business media of the last 10 years yield a significantly different list of enduring business ideas? Though nobody likes to dwell on the negatives, I can’t help but think that "executive accountability" has to be up there in the top 10 after the scandals that rocked corporate boardrooms and Wall Street and sent denizens of both to jail. Oh, and to bring it back to technology for a second, "The Internet" should probably be on there too. Sure, it had its roots long before 1995, but it wasn’t until the late ’90s that companies really began to use its potential in a major way.
December 9th, 2005 at 9:51 pm
The article also talks about the 5 criteria for what makes a good business idea which I found interesting:
(1) It is timely: It addresses, in a new, compelling way, an issue that is important to people right now.
(2) It has explanatory power: It reveals the hidden patterns and interrelationships that shape the phenomena we see, and that other theories or disciplines have not fully explained.
(3) It has pragmatic value: It can be put into practice to produce replicable results.
(4) It has a robust empirical foundation: It can be tested with real-world experience, and ideally with measurable data, and can survive theoretical challenge.
(5) It has a natural constituency: A group of key people are ready to hear it.
Btw, Wisdom of Crowds is number 33 on the list… at least it was mentioned. I wonder how much work consulting firms do in that space. I understand McKinsey has some interest.