The Corvus | August 2018
Advertising the Future
Onyedimmakachukwu Obiukwu
The future is increasingly the best source of competitive advantage for businesses the world over , but it poses an even greater threat to small businesses .
The biggest companies in the world today - Google , Amazon , Facebook and Alibaba , amongst dozen others - are undoubtedly renowned for the industries they dominate . However , these companies are much more revered for what they could yet become . So too the smaller , but widely popular companies , such as Uber , AirBnB and SpaceX . Known as unicorns for how fast they sprang from startups to billion dollar establishments , these companies have as their biggest selling points not just the current value of their products and services but the potential of their business model . To put it simply ; the leading companies in the world today have done , and continue to do , a great job of positioning their organizations as the businesses of the future .
Positioning for the future , in the context of this article , is not the abstract prospecting of what could come next . Rather , it is tangible , apparent and rooted in the rapid technological advancements happening all around us today . International bestselling author , Joshua Cooper Ramo , describes this future as the age of connected systems . “ Connected systems have different laws of power , and I think they can be kind of boiled down to the idea that connection changes the nature of any object ,” Ramo said , discussing his most recent work , the Seventh Sense , which postulates that with so much disruption going on in the world , we need a new sense to understand how things will change as a result of connectivity .
Things are already changing as a result of connectivity . App services like Uber now dominate the taxi industry in Lagos and several other major cities around the world , fundamentally changing how people move around town despite the fact they haven ’ t got any taxis of their own . Just as Uber has done with taxis , so too AirBnB with lodgings and Alibaba with , well , everything that you may need to ever
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