WE have never been more connected. Electronically. Virtually. Online.

John Sheridan is the CEO of Digital Business insights.

In many ways now, we need to recognise what that means and adjust our offline connections, crossroads and meeting places to reflect that need.

The natural meeting places where we congregate outside of work, schools, universities, and home are shopping centres, libraries, sports stadiums, parks and entertainment or leisure facilities.

In the new digital economy, connection, collaboration and integration are the currents carrying us towards our destination.

So now we need to add this new capacity onto our built environment and extend the physical to match the virtual. It won't be cheap, but it needs to enter into the consideration of planners and architects more than it has today.

We need more real world collaboration spaces to match the virtual. And we need to integrate our living, working and activity silos together in the same way we integrate our virtual activities and processes together.

Where are the existing collaboration hubs?

University precincts, schools, hospitals, child-care and aged care facilities. Libraries, fitness centres and shopping centres. Transport hubs.

These environments are evolving already. Most shopping malls have offices attached, but this is still old world thinking.

Universities provide precincts for students and sometimes even related startup industries, but still old world thinking.

Incubators and enterprise centres also try to aggregate startups but still old world thinking.

Digital Work Hubs provide office facilities, meeting rooms, cafes and kitchens but still old world thinking.

City centre new commercial office developments are now providing a range of comfortable meeting space, cafes and board rooms to support the offices but it is still old world thinking.

It has to go one step further.

Add all the above into a number of carefully selected strategic suburban offline and online environments and connect to surrounding homes and the SoHo's.

Connect it all together with booking and payment systems, transport and delivery, virtual classrooms, meeting rooms, and collaboration environments, and you begin to get the idea.

It's happening online. Now it has to happen offline.

It's about adding extra and relevant "stickiness" to customer relationships for councils, commercial developers, retailers and small businesses of all kinds.

If your online customer relationships have just been stolen by competitors, or you have been disintermediated, then you need to consider your future.

You can review what you do or retire of course, but unless you are one of the lucky few, you can't continue business as usual.

Telstra retains customers through bundling a group of products and services together to add value to customers. The bundled offer can then be discounted if competition on any of the services arises to make the bundle even more "sticky".

Customers who are thinking about moving, find it all too hard and remain...at least for the time being.

Shopping centres have been steadily extending their offering to include entertainment, gyms, child-care and food courts and are now adding work-spaces into the overall environment.

This has the added value of not only delivering a greater number of regular customers for the centre management but also brings them into direct relationship with shops and traders who are being impacted by online sales.

It's time for councils, state government and developers to think collectively and more broadly about the issue, focused on the shared value outcome of building new knowledge centres based on suburban shopping centres, libraries, art galleries, lecture theatres, play centres, medical centres, gyms and meeting spaces.

And linking these new knowledge centres electronically to surrounding SoHo's and households intelligently.

The hard infrastructure needs to be supported by soft infrastructure - wired and wireless broadband, collaboration software, booking and payment software and IT support services.

The business intelligence "logic" of what collaboration can offer needs to be overlaid as well, so that the right connections, groupings, meetings and collaborations can happen actively as well as accidentally.

All supported by local business media - offline and online.

In the 21st century, we have to move beyond serendipity and accident, and incorporate the potential power of cross-pollination into our planning.

Digital gardening.

We can replicate and layer the online opportunities with real world opportunities, providing a rich layer cake of digital world and real world opportunity - the best of both worlds.

Providing the new meeting places for the 21st century.

- John Sheridan, July 2013

* John Sheridan is CEO of Digital Business insights, an organisation based in Brisbane, Australia, which focuses on helping organisations and communities adapt to, and flourish in, the new digital world. He is the author of Connecting the Dots and getting more out of the digital revolution. Digital Business insights has been researching and analysing the digital revolution for more than 12 years and has surveyed more than 50,000 businesses, conducting in-depth case study analysis on more than 350 organisations and digital entrepreneurs.

www.db-insights.com

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THE US Army has admitted to blocking access to parts of the Guardian website for thousands of defence personnel across the USA.

John Sheridan, Digital Business insights CEO.

A spokesman said the military was filtering out reports and content relating to government surveillance programs to preserve "network hygiene" and prevent any classified material appearing on unclassified parts of its computer systems.

And all this in a country that has free speech built into its constitution, for what it is worth. Hmm.

Another example.

This is how Director of National Intelligence James Clapper responded in March to a question raised by Senator Ron Wyden.

"Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"

Clapper testified, "No sir, it does not."

Senator Wyden asked for clarification, and Clapper hedged: "Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps collect, but not wittingly."

Director Clapper later defended this stupendous lie to the Senator as the least untruthful answer possible.

Sounds like Newspeak.

Newspeak is the fictional language in the novel 1984, by George Orwell. It is a language created by the totalitarian state as a tool to limit free thought, and concepts that pose a threat to the regime such as freedom, self- expression, individuality, peace, etc.

Any alternative to the party's view is classified as "thoughtcrime".

Well, I guess a lot of us are now criminals under that definition.

Apparently, recent sales of the novel 1984 on Amazon have risen by 6000 percent. Surprise, surprise.

What is going on in the home of the brave and land of the free?

Not so brave any more. Everybody now needs a gun to protect themselves.

And free?

Well apart from the incredibly large population of unfree Americans in prison - over six million, which is more than were in Stalin's Gulag, there is of course the new surveillance society, which routinely snoops into the phone records of Americans.

And now we see the good ol' USA throwing its considerable weight into chasing and punishing the individual who brought this to everybody's attention - Edward Snowden.

We already know that the USA is the most powerful nation in the world. It has the most powerful military and an extremely strong and resilient economic base. It houses most of the world's leading corporations. It houses most of the world's leading IT companies.

Using that enormous power to openly pursue an individual, foolish or wise enough to expose internal government lies, newspeak and corruption, whilst leaning on everybody and anybody who may possibly get in the way is without any grace, wisdom or common sense.

Of course it isn't really aimed at us. It is for internal consumption. It is the big stick being waved for the American market and public. And especially for US government employees. Dare any other American follow in those footsteps and they can be sure what will happen.

Few Americans believe that they live in a police state of course, but the fact that police have the right to monitor the communications of all its citizens is an indication of something worth consideration.

If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck and acts like a duck then it's a duck.

The downside of course, and we can all see it only too clearly, is that the "government" of the USA can now reach out through its corporations, its IT companies, its media and its embassies across the world not just to gather intelligence but to lean hard on anybody suspected of telling people about this. And then deny that they did this in the first place.

That doesn't help the business and sales activities of Amazon web services, Google, IBM, HP, Salesforce, Microsoft and so on, all of whom are busy knocking on doors saying "Trust us with your business data and information, we will look after it securely and wisely."

Hmmm. I guess you will.

- John Sheridan, July 2013

* John Sheridan is CEO of Digital Business insights, an organisation based in Brisbane, Australia, which focuses on helping organisations and communities adapt to, and flourish in, the new digital world. He is the author of Connecting the Dots and getting more out of the digital revolution. Digital Business insights has been researching and analysing the digital revolution for more than 12 years and has surveyed more than 50,000 businesses, conducting in-depth case study analysis on more than 350 organisations and digital entrepreneurs.

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DEPARTMENTS are a throw back to the industrial revolution. At that time and throughout most of the 20th century it was the way we got things done. We put things into departments to be easily and sensibly managed.

Digital Business insights CEO John Sheridan.

In effect, we built assembly lines in factories and in offices, staged and compartmentalised activities, and did one thing at a time in a straight line. In a paper based, manual filing and postal world, that was the most efficient way to operate.

There was a limit to the degree of complexity we could manage at any one time and breaking activities into their component parts made perfect sense.

Then along came computers. First a few expensive, giant mainframes in a few locations and today, an enormous choice of different personal computing devices owned and used by billions of individuals and organisations all over the world, connected by wires, wireless and networks of many varieties.

This degree of connectivity makes new things possible. Fast computing power and cheap storage makes even more new things possible.

It's a new game. But we are still thinking like the old game.

We are using the new power to enhance and enforce our old ways of doing and thinking.

The new computing power and connectivity allows us to handle things in a way our forefathers and foremothers couldn't have imagined.

The digital revolution doesn't only make our traditional actions and activities more efficient, it allows us to create and manage new actions and activities that extend far beyond what we have become used to.

Because the old limits have gone. The original reasons for organising ourselves into departments for efficiency have disappeared.

The limitations of the tools diminish every day.

The limitations of our thinking remain.

Every business leader has to build time into the week to look forwards now. Just a few big businesses do this systematically - Google, 3M, GE and some others.

They don't just give themselves time to think about today, they give themselves time to consider their future. They look down at their feet, desktops, machines, computer screens like most of us, but also look up at the sky. They look ahead and forwards to tomorrow, imagine and create their future.

Is this stupid? Is this something only they can do? Well, no! It is something that every business and every organisation needs to do.

Because, we exist in an increasingly connected business environment and we have to understand the disruptions and we have to make time to consider. To innovate, just like Google, 3M and GE. It should be standard operating practice. 10% or even 20% of time dedicated to the future...minimum.

Not just for businesses, but for government departments and for any and every organisation.

In a disruptive time like this, it is wise to look around. It is wise to think about today and tomorrow.

The processing tools we now have provide the support but the vision has to come from us. And we need the time to do this. So make time.

Because the operating environment has changed.

The walls have disappeared. Connections extend between silos and across the walls and across the streets and across the seas and across the planet. The digital revolution takes complexity and reduces it to 1s and 0s.

The values have changed.

Which opens a new door.

When things connect in this way, any entity wishing to negotiate a successful journey forwards into the future has to understand what the implications of this degree of connectivity means to them.

They have to understand what it means within their business or organisation. But much more importantly, they have to understand the external changing connected environment.

This is where most digital strategy falls down.

Understanding the position a 21st century organisation holds in relation to all the disruptive forces now in play is essential to plotting a course forwards.

You have to know where you are.

Strategy requires knowledge of "who we are" "where we are" "our resources" - then a clear vision of "where we want to get to".

In the past this was relatively easy. A bit like planning a round Australia tour. Up the road, turn left, drive for 15 miles, turn right, stop for tea, and on we go.

This easy to negotiate fixed environment has gone forever.

The new disruptive environment is like the sea. There are no landmarks. There are no seamarks - because it moves all the time.

But even in a permanently disrupted operating environment (which will get worse as even more organisations connect, collaborate and integrate), we can still use the digital tools - business intelligence tools, accounting tools, search tools, and web based tools of many kinds to inform us "where we are" "who we are", "current resources" and "where we want to get to".

The key is using these tools to inform us as to where we are on our journey relative to our destination - even when the wind blows, the waves get higher, the fog arises, the next financial crisis hits, the dollar rises, the dollar falls and so on.

Understanding what the new environment offers is the key to safe arrival. That is where most digital strategy falls down. Not understanding that the old game is now the new game.

That is why the media empires are struggling. That's why the "old school" IT companies are struggling. That is why all governments are struggling with this issue.

That is why property developers are struggling. That is why retail is struggling. That is why so many business categories are struggling - because they don't know the new operating conditions and continue to play as though this is just a phase...that things will return to business as usual.

Yes, it is a phase. But probably at least a hundred year phase, which makes it the new permanent operating condition where things will only get worse for those who can't or won't become more agile, decisive and adaptive.

That is hard for the big boys. Their strength was their capacity to reinforce and reward consistency and punish innovation with "firing" or encouragement to move on, " you're not fitting in well with our organisational culture, maybe you should look elsewhere".

Large organisations are good at firing the people they need most and keeping the people they need least.

These guys now have all the wrong kind of employees and an "immune system" culture that kills innovation like our bodies kill bacteria. That organisational culture is toxic in the new digital economy.

It all joins up. Understanding thoroughly what is going on and using the new digital toolkit properly offers a future.

Ignoring it, confirms failure.

So on all levels. "Should my digital strategy connect to my social media strategy, connect to my business strategy, connect to my HR strategy, connect to my sales strategy, connect to my staying alive strategy etc?"

Well duh! Of course.

Should my overall strategy be connected and informed by the larger digital revolutionary changes across all business sectors, categories, regions, states, countries?

Yes, as well.

And that is a brand new game.

- John Sheridan, July 2013.

www.db-insights.com

* John Sheridan is CEO of Digital Business insights, an organisation based in Brisbane, Australia, which focuses on helping organisations and communities adapt to, and flourish in, the new digital world. He is the author of Connecting the Dots and getting more out of the digital revolution. Digital Business insights has been researching and analysing the digital revolution for more than 12 years and has surveyed more than 50,000 businesses, conducting in-depth case study analysis on more than 350 organisations and digital entrepreneurs.

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I have said it before, but I will say it again. The customer has changed. Power has shifted to the customer, probably forever.

Digital Business insights CEO, John Sheridan.

"We know," everybody responds. But do you really?

It is not enough just to say something. To be meaningful it has to be followed by action...appropriate action.

Because if power has shifted to the customer, then everybody with existing customer relationships (and that is most of us) has to consider what that means to them.

One thing it means is actually listening to what your customers are saying. Or doing. And responding accordingly.

Example:

Recent Adobe research found that only 8% of people paid attention to online ads. No surprises there. Print ads in newspapers scored 26%. TV ads scored 22%. Radio 16% and Billboards 14%. Ads in apps and games scored only 5%.

And I even managed to ignore completely the ads spinning and moving and trying to drop into my field of vision on the web page where I found the research described above.

I was aware of movement, but no clue what was moving. So I am one of the 92% who ignore online ads successfully.

So if that is what customers are doing, shouldn't that initiate a rethink by vendors on the value of their online investment?

Another example:

Over the last six or seven years DBi has asked businesses and non-profits how they get information and advice on ICT and how they would prefer to get information and advice.

The options range from friends, colleagues and families through media and industry and government websites, advisors and consultants.

Consistently, when asked about technology and innovation CEOs and other senior managers say they would prefer information to be sent to them by email, would like to experience new options "hands on" in workshops and seminars and would like to speak with somebody one to one.

These options out-perform all other options by a considerable margin and have remained consistent for many years.

If people have no choice they will compromise, but on the whole the preference for over three quarters of respondents is outlined above.

So does anybody listen and respond? Not usually. Government, for many different reasons (mainly cost saving) does the opposite and tries to encourage people to come to their websites.

This would be great if the websites were full of valuable and relevant information, but they are not.

Nearly all government information on digital economy is vanilla flavoured, generic and "cleaned up" by legal, PR and policy advisors, leaving little of any real value.

In the real world, there are "comparison-sites-a-plenty".

Products and services of all kinds from holidays to cars and insurance are rated and compared helping visitors make decisions.

It is still early days with this sort of web service and the validity of the ratings and information may leave much to be desired, but the popularity of the sites demonstrates a real need.

People don't seem to care much about the validity, they look at the comparisons, good and bad and make their minds up anyway. It seems that any advice is better than vanilla advice.

So, government is stranded in the 20th century and doesn't move on. It is not easy for them. It means doing things differently, thinking outside the box, even outsourcing services and that is not something they are good at.

This example is not unique to government.

There is a digital reality gap. It is a gap between what the new customer says they want and what the old vendor delivers.

The old vendor is not really listening and tries to carry on business as usual, but with a few digital bells and whistles.

Into the digital reality gap now marches a competitor. Somebody who hasn't just listened, but heard.

Example:

Appliances online. Australia's largest online appliance retailer marched into the digital reality gap left by Harvey Norman and other appliance retailers.

Now, they all have a new problem they could have done without.

John Winning created the site because of conversations he had with his customers. He listened. He acted. Now he employs 500 people to fulfil demand.

In the retail sector it will only get worse for retailers that don't listen. And it will even get worse for retailers that do.

The customer has changed and no sector can afford to leave a digital reality gap between them and their customers.

So talk to them. Listen to them.

And bridge the reality gap with action.

- John Sheridan, July 2013

* John Sheridan is CEO of Digital Business insights, an organisation based in Brisbane, Australia, which focuses on helping organisations and communities adapt to, and flourish in, the new digital world. He is the author of Connecting the Dots and getting more out of the digital revolution. Digital Business insights has been researching and analysing the digital revolution for more than 12 years and has surveyed more than 50,000 businesses, conducting in-depth case study analysis on more than 350 organisations and digital entrepreneurs.

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