The speed of thought

It’s not the portfolio of High Frequency Traders (HFT).

It’s not the hand speed of legendary boxer Sugar Ray Leonard or Muhammad Ali.

It’s not the flapping wings of a hummingbird.

It’s a title of a movie, but it has applications for leaders, start-ups, companies, and governments, as today’s time-pressed customers buys and votes with their finger and feet.

Thought is about the processing time, but it’s more from prospective of customers, employees, voters than for companies and countries.

Remember, companies react to customer data mining and secondary market studies to review, rebuild, refine, or refresh.

Today, the customer CPU is faster and they, especially via peer review, are more punishing via abandonment or negative comment.

When viewers do not become users, and when users do not become active users, then ‘control+delete+alt,’ or reset, often does not work, because of a sub-optimal user journey.

Query: Is the CEO a loyal product customer of the company he/she runs, especially after leaves or retires?

Thus, business may drive technology (enabler), but the customer (facilitator) drives business to ‘red (loss) or black (profitable).’ Eventually startup funding will need to become revenue, free cash flow and profits.

It does not matter if it's a ‘clicks or bricks’ economy company, as all must be customer centric because it impacts margins or results in margin compression. It’s a binary play: either you toast or become toast for others roast.

Its eventually comes down to enlightenment: fusion of the practical (existing) combined with the potential (expectation) to produce a new actual (call to action).

The “older new” needs to become the “newer new”, and this must continuously cycle periodically.

5/1 minutes ahead

Most of us in the hot-seat, top management, need to continuously monitor the radar and be five minutes ahead of our competitors and (typically and hopefully) one minute behind customers for both those within the industry and those coming into the industry.

So, there must be vigilant monitoring, before monetising, competitors, actual and potential, and customers, as the former are driven by the latter.

The information in/about industries is generally commoditized, hence, the analysis, blue-print, (digital) marketing and execution must be, at one level, in real time to fit for customer purpose.

Put differently, company processing time must align itself to customer processing time, as the disconnect digital divide becomes KPI metric to monitor closely.

The sharing economy

The internet of things, IOT, has started and expanded the conversation of the sharing economy. It’s not just about people building and developing communities for conversation and call to action, but machine connectivity conversation for efficiency (in theory), notwithstanding cybersecurity challenges.

Thus, the sharing economy has thrown nearly all the case-studies on landscape mapping out the business school window, as information intermediation, data mining, and innovation, through lens of humanity and humility, has found a new electronic bar.

This bar (consumer sentiment) moves in real time, and reaction (by companies) must be in real time just to maintain the equilibrium.

Furthermore, the ‘speed of thought’ process has been accelerated by customer smart phones and downloaded apps, Twitter, Facebook campaigns, etc.

Their loyalty is becoming more towards immediate-gratification over a brand as time has become as expensive as a New York City penthouse view of central park.

The traditional media combined with the sought after, steroid induced (via funding and valuations) growing social media has produced an “intolerant” customer, i.e., as judge, jury and executioner.

One of the biggest fears of any company is a negative peer review, especially if done by one with large following, going viral.

It can impact company’s stock price and even result in change at the top, if not handled properly to regain public (customer) trust and confidence.

The leadership of the company must continually ask itself the following question: what customer problem are we solving efficiently and effectively during present life-cycle of the product?

Thus, there must continuous innovation with each product invention to fit the dynamic market place needs.

Darwin consumerism

Today, the virtual (actual) customer has choices, as competitors and comparable stores are (or coming) on the grid, and digital marketing, from SEO, display ads to SEM, is directing traffic to content.

Thus, a company cannot just rely on its website or open digital store-fronts on trusted e-commerce marketplace platforms, as its too passive.

The active engagement and understanding of buyers/users, who are the “speed of thought customers”, are today’s Darwinism.

To survive, one must understand the consumer cycle of access, stimuli, and experiences, as it directly impacts the duration of the product cycle.

To thrive, active engagement must address consumer expectations, built virally and reinforced actually by the social media stakeholders. – April 29, 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.