The explosive growth of mobile technology is changing everything it touches.
A mobile device is not an inferior younger sibling of the Internet. It is a media platform in and of itself. Much as the media types that preceded it, mobile technology transforms everything it touches. Mobile technology reduces friction, shifts time and modifies location.
As Marc Andreesson, founder of Netscape and noted investor, says,
“Software is eating the world. More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services—from movies to agriculture to national defense. Many of the winners are Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurial technology companies that are invading and overturning established industry structures. …
Why is this happening now?
Six decades into the computer revolution, four decades since the invention of the microprocessor, and two decades into the rise of the modern Internet, all of the technology required to transform industries through software finally works and can be widely delivered at global scale.
Over two billion people now use the broadband Internet, up from perhaps 50 million a decade ago, when I was at Netscape, the company I co-founded. …I expect at least five billion people worldwide to own smartphones, giving every individual .. instant access to the full power of the Internet, every moment of every day.”
Wall Street Journal
The explosive growth of mobile technology is changing everything it touches. Increasingly the vanguard of the software revolution revolves around mobile devices. As they bring the broadband internet into every nook and cranny of human experience, they transform and disrupt.
Shackled with legacy tools, techniques and world views, Recruiting departments struggle to apply the lessons of the internet (reduced friction, decentralization, democratic communications, personalization, transparency and search). Meanwhile, the workforce is immersed in these factors in the rest of their lives. The combination of technology and workforce expectations will drive the coming changes.
