Gabriel Sidhom, Head of Technology at Orange Labs in San Francisco, is talking about key trends in innovation which are going to be our future. Here is my transcription of his presentation today at Orange Business Live 2010 in Washington DC

consumers

They aren't a "segment" anymore, they have faces. the key trend is Facebook, with Twitter a close brother are spreading like wildfire. Gaming is going mainstream. 1/3 of facebook users are playing games and paying to play these games. The new status is "what you are doing" (shopping with Blippy, Foursquare for geolocation etc.) New companies will figure out where you are and this will be central to business. Status update will go from hyper active to passive (automatic). Social e-commerce is also another trend. Real time is in a word, central to what is happening: from "pull(search)" to push ("notifications"). From the hardware side, tablets are now coming full force on the market

gen Y

Gen X and Y account for 50% of the population (ages 10-44). Forrester research shows that GenY is taling the lead in technology usage. Gen Y expectations are different. They account for 25% of the workforce. They are aged 10-33. They have great expectations, they don't focus on corporations and governments, and focus on personal success, they get easily bored; their attention span is very short, they are empowered and optimistic and expect to work anywhere anytime. This is putting strain on old style management when one has to see people work rather than measure their output. They are comfortable with globalization (most users of facebook aren't from the US) and are a racially and culturally diverse groups.They are skilled multitaskersn they are tech savvy and persistent in the face of change and their entrepreneurial spirit is strong.

Design for Gen Y imposes that one takes a few things into account: 1. more is more (more choice, bigger social network etc.) 2. Adhoc means control (improvisation and customization) 3. Self service (they like to make things happen) 4. Sharing & social good (viral is good, sharing is considered normal)

CRM, Social CRM and beyond

Social Media gives people a say. CRM is shifting from after sales to pre-transaction. Vendor Relationship Management is a new concept in the consumer space. Social CRM includes users themselves. It’s still pretty much company-driven but enables discussions with clients. With VRM it’s the client telling the company which product you want to buy. Consumer web 2.0 Organizations are becoming transparent and a lot of what’s happening is taking place beyond the company firewall. Marketplaces are everywhere and the browser is where you go when you haven’t found what you wanted on your smartphone (using apps). Social networking is becoming pervasive. LinkedIN is looking more and more like Facebook, namely with the new status screen. Technology is also enabling crowdsourcing (Top Corder is a company dedicated to that activity).

Porous enterprise

There are a lot of trends impacting the porous enterprise: economic situation, social openness and sharing, technological and environmental, legal and demographic factors. Porous is more like a studio 2.0: 3-4 people who write the script and everything else is outsourced. It is an example of a porous enterprise. A lot more has to be done outside of the walls. Part of this is due to the Internet making porosity a must-have for companies to thrive in a global and competitive environment. In the Internet world, product life span is 6 months, so porosity is also a must in terms of how to adapt fast. Ldap 1.0 will lead to newer versions which are more social and which we could call Ldap 2.0. One has to adopt a mesh topology. It has to be open, real-time using linked data and it has to be social. The next generation inbox will be radically different from what we are now using.

Enterprise augmented reality

What is driving it? The consumer sector via apps on your iPhone. Use cases are coming in with the glasses as well as what you see on the phone. There is a 10% increase in smartphone penetration. That market is expected to reach $732m by 2014 with advertising revenue driving that change.

We are now going into the Zettabyte era. Withing Facebook, there is 10 times as much data as there is in the transactional systems which are already inundating us now. Real time data is the past but the fast is real time knowledge instead. the name of the game is creating higher value.