Difference between revisions of "Introduction"

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[[Image:Pix_of_Uncertainty.jpg|thumb|'''The Beginning of the Beginning?''']]
==INTRODUCTION==


The future of the Internet in 2015 has been the subject of a group project managed by 28 [http://www.rsm.nl RSM] MBA students during the course of Scenarios and Strategies for the Internet and Organisations from October to December 2004. The process of scenario thinking has been used, where old assumptions related to the Internet were challenged to develop new ones. To come up with four plausible scenarios, various learning stages were covered, from storytelling to systems thinking to web site creation and driving forces. Some of the questions the class addressed included:
Google is currently the biggest and most popular search engine in the world. Its future is the most discussed subject in the business world. There are many different scenarios created by the experts of the marketing sector about the future business of Google.


* How could the Internet be a more interactive, creative medium?
Our group has developed 3 scenarios about the future of Google. These scenarios were created according to the driving forces that might have direct effect to the Google’s success in the future.


* Are you worried about privacy on the Internet?  
In the first scenario, it was tried to show what could have happened when the law allowed the collection of personal data and sale of the profile info to the advertisement companies. How would Google position itself when this happened i.e. what kind of preparation would Google have in terms of applications, network, etc? Besides that, how would Google benefit the growing hi-fi technology and how would affect that the Google’s future business, online shopping search engine?


* Do you shop online? What do you think about the E-Commerce?  
In the second scenario, it was tried to show how things could have changed in a dramatic way if the law had brought restrictions to the personal data collection. How would that affect Google’s business and future plans and also its stock value? Where would Google’s business divert when this happened.


* How do you see the Internet shapes the new, knowledge-based economy?
In the last scenario, it was tried to show how might have Google changed its strategy in case any restrictions brought to the personal data collection by law. How Google’s new applications (Froogle and Gpay) would help it to overcome the bottleneck caused by the privacy issues. What would be the Google’s new role in the online shopping market? Also, it was analyzed whether Google would need any investments for its new business direction.


When creating these scenarios, following driving forces were taken into account:
• Law
• Marketing
• Advertising
• Shopping
• Video on demand
• Internet everywhere


[http://leadertoleader.org/leaderbooks/drucker/bio.html Peter F. Drucker] has predicted that information technology will bring about the demise of the university as currently constituted. Do you share this view?


* What changes will the Internet help bring to education?
Law was the most important driving force since the current strategy of Google is to collect as much personal data as possible for its future plans.


Marketing is the key success factor for its popularity and increasing use today and in the future. Therefore, this was also very important when building the scenarios.


We could keep writing many questions about the evolution of the Internet and its impact on our society. The Internet today is a widespread information infrastructure, the initial prototype of what is often called the National (or Global or Galactic) Information Infrastructure. Its history is complex and involves many aspects - technological, organisational, and community. And as it can be seen in the above questions, its influence reaches not only to the technical fields of computer communications but throughout society as we move toward increasing use of online tools to accomplish electronic commerce, information acquisition, and community operations.  
Advertisement is an old established giant business but its dominant play field is mainly TV and Radio. Since the use of these sources is too expensive, its current strategy is change its direction to the improving sector, Internet.  
Shopping will always have the biggest attention from the companies since that’s the way they make money and sell their products. Shopping habits and trends of the customers in the future will shape the futures marketing and advertisement strategies.


Video on demand is a new growing sector. It started to become popular with the growing Internet technology and bandwidth. In the future, customers will start buying their videos, and music on the Internet since it will be much more cheaper because of the low costs of the companies.


The Internet has changed much in the two decades since it came into existence. However, should we conclude that the Internet has now finished changing and impacting our society? Is there a future of the Internet, and if so, what will it be?
Increase of Internet usage and availability will definitely change the habits of people for shopping, leisure activities, learning, etc. Therefore, this was the second most important driving force to build the scenarios mentioned above. Without growing Internet usage and availability, Google’s future plans might get into the danger.
 
 
These pressing questions are easy to ask but hard to answer. The form of the Internet and its impact will be difficult to guess, given the large number of concerned driving forces and stake-holders. Thinking of its past evolution and present situation from our mindset will lead us to default projections. Added to this, we live in a world increasingly shaken by discontinuities and sudden changes, which makes the activity of constructing the future complex. A new approach is needed to support both very short-term thinking and long-term planning with a ‘‘futures’’ methodology that escapes our mindset and contemplates multiple alternative backdrops.
 
 
In the class project, different means of communication--including the information system 'Wiki', workshops with speeches, and e-mails--have also helped to share a common language and ideas about the subject. Additionally,  [http://scenariothinking.org/wiki/index.php/Image:Dr_Evil.jpg Daniel Erasmus], the project sponsor and our facilitator, has guided the students in the design of scenarios while helping with scenario building, especially their principles of construction, and facilitating the live workshops to ensure proper engagement with the process and effective sharing of mental models.
 
 
This report will first present the timeline of the whole process by summarising each session of the course. Then, the methodology used to vote for four final plausible scenarios:
 
* [http://scenariothinking.org/wiki/index.php/Group_5:_More_of_the_Same More of the Same]
 
* [http://scenariothinking.org/wiki/index.php/Group_3:_Real_Net Real Net],
 
* [http://scenariothinking.org/wiki/index.php/Group_2:_Virtual_Society Virtual Society], and
 
* Separate Directions will be described.
 
 
An analysis of the key uncertainties, which may or may not make these scenarios happen, will follow. Finally, the weak signals, showing which direction the future will take regarding the Internet, will be identified and their implications will be analysed.
 
 
 
''Click here to return to [http://scenariothinking.org/wiki/index.php/Group_4:_The_Scenario_Logic Group 4: The Scenario Logic]''

Revision as of 21:42, 4 May 2006

INTRODUCTION

Google is currently the biggest and most popular search engine in the world. Its future is the most discussed subject in the business world. There are many different scenarios created by the experts of the marketing sector about the future business of Google.

Our group has developed 3 scenarios about the future of Google. These scenarios were created according to the driving forces that might have direct effect to the Google’s success in the future.

In the first scenario, it was tried to show what could have happened when the law allowed the collection of personal data and sale of the profile info to the advertisement companies. How would Google position itself when this happened i.e. what kind of preparation would Google have in terms of applications, network, etc? Besides that, how would Google benefit the growing hi-fi technology and how would affect that the Google’s future business, online shopping search engine?

In the second scenario, it was tried to show how things could have changed in a dramatic way if the law had brought restrictions to the personal data collection. How would that affect Google’s business and future plans and also its stock value? Where would Google’s business divert when this happened.

In the last scenario, it was tried to show how might have Google changed its strategy in case any restrictions brought to the personal data collection by law. How Google’s new applications (Froogle and Gpay) would help it to overcome the bottleneck caused by the privacy issues. What would be the Google’s new role in the online shopping market? Also, it was analyzed whether Google would need any investments for its new business direction.

When creating these scenarios, following driving forces were taken into account:

• Law • Marketing • Advertising • Shopping • Video on demand • Internet everywhere


Law was the most important driving force since the current strategy of Google is to collect as much personal data as possible for its future plans.

Marketing is the key success factor for its popularity and increasing use today and in the future. Therefore, this was also very important when building the scenarios.

Advertisement is an old established giant business but its dominant play field is mainly TV and Radio. Since the use of these sources is too expensive, its current strategy is change its direction to the improving sector, Internet. Shopping will always have the biggest attention from the companies since that’s the way they make money and sell their products. Shopping habits and trends of the customers in the future will shape the futures marketing and advertisement strategies.

Video on demand is a new growing sector. It started to become popular with the growing Internet technology and bandwidth. In the future, customers will start buying their videos, and music on the Internet since it will be much more cheaper because of the low costs of the companies.

Increase of Internet usage and availability will definitely change the habits of people for shopping, leisure activities, learning, etc. Therefore, this was the second most important driving force to build the scenarios mentioned above. Without growing Internet usage and availability, Google’s future plans might get into the danger.

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