There’s no long since Uber now gave birth to a verb: “Uberize”. What’s up with it and what does it mean? We’re sure it’s no fashion trend, as Uber is here to stay. But there’s something more vicious inside, hugely spread in many industries these past year. Digital, with short cycle, scarce resources, low capital needs and low level entry raised new kind of ventures, with communities, members, paywalls or value, opened new and large innovations and opportunities, but in the same time, threatened many historic business models. Nobody’s safe against the new digital revolution. “Live it or leave it”, leads to embrace the change or die. That’s it, no one to blame but to innovate, change and prevent the new challenges, in this Pandora’s box.
The world will never be the same. There was before, and after. The digital wave changed deeply, hard jobs, process, business models, management and mindset. Despite the size and resources, any company now has its own nightmares to get “uberized”, and wake up with no more market, no more customer, no more business model and vanish into graveyards. When you read things like that, you may be very worried about the future and what become “traditional jobs” and what left behind: loans, houses, families, engagements, “careers”. Progress has always been considered as “better lives in better world” and that means some resilience and equal share of happiness, welfare and sustainable time. Scarcity of “workforce” may touch any industry, any process and is definitely our close future. And that means huge threats on employment and what stands behind: wealth concentration, less equality, narrow access to any kind of job but engineering, freeness era open up replacing skilled people, retired too early. I don’t know for you, but that stroke me straight and launched a worrying position: where do you bet, as self-employed or Soho, to the next professional playground?
Things are interesting, disruptive and so new. Say, new values boost so high but with no real “assets”. The fight for experience, customer capture, users’ interfaces takes place right now. Direct, direct, direct seems the obsession with customer, throwing away hardware, strong infrastructures and layoffs in the end. Many companies now search for the “web blue note”, the one sustainable, flexible and with less stickiness to change. “Interfaces are where the value is” says, and the main first contact point with brands. Any efficient is your back office, delivering and products, the moment of truth is front.
I really like progress, digital and the big and smart opportunities inside, and hope there will ever be so. What I just see is that this silent moves will profit for few only, while the huge community of users or fans, work to build the value without receive any advantage back. If one asked you few years ago “can you success with no cars, no homes, no inventory, no contents…?”. You would have probably answered…”no way, no chance or whatsoever”. And left the big pictures. Where new kind of entrepreneurs bet, launched and showed the way. Will that way be a “win-win” situation…I’m not sure right now, facing such jobs destruction. But, in the end, what’s the cost or the price of disruption?
Do you care, and how do you see/live your uberization?
