Adapting to Digital Transformation

A big digital influencer from Brazil - Casimiro, created a YouTube World Record for a Live Stream (6 Million views simultaneously) when airing Brazil’s Quarter-final Match against Croatia. On the other hand Globo Communications, Brazil’s Media Giant, suffered severe losses from broadcasting the World Cup and Disney had to change its CEO due to losses reported all over the company.

How we communicate is changing again. 

Before Agricultural Revolution, there was only written Communication. Before Industrial Revolution, there was Gutenberg’s Press. Now, for the Digital Revolution to happen, there are computer and the internet.

The cascaded effects of digital revolution are abundance of information, increase in storage of information, reduction or elimination of intermediaries – media or press; all this resulting in societal revolutions and hierarchical changes.

Protestant reform and scientific revolutions were triggered after Gutenberg’s press and that drove industrial revolution, French revolution and American revolutions. Many kings were dethroned, great institutions fell, and new management models emerged.

We are again at a similar threshold with the Digital Revolution, witnessing a transformation in communication from Wolves like to Ants like.

Wolves are amazing. They move in packs, have a clear hierarchy and communication model. We have been using their leadership style as an inspiration for us, so far.

Ants are amazing too, but in another way. They store food in the summer to prepare for the winter and create massive civilizations. The biggest difference, though is that they don’t have a Leader, which led them to create a different communication system, a trail-based communication.

Now, for the first time in history, we have the tools that can allow us to move toward leaderless management or permission-less structure. The lack of curation, or rather, an algorithmic-based curation has an amazing upside, we now have a voice without having to rely on advertisements by big companies, media or retailers to tell us what we should consume. Talents are emerging from anywhere, expensive products are becoming democratized, and we can now deeply connect with local cultures through Airbnb stays.

The ant-like transformed communication would need appropriate changes in User Interfaces that may revolutionize user experience. Some of these are:  

• Share

You find a Share button now in Prime Video, and also a Watch Party button, a community fostering UI tweak. Sharing is now a integral part of your experience. 

• Co-creation > Personalization

It’s nice to choose which video to watch with my 21-year-old at any given moment. But it’s even cooler to upload her videos in action, buy a handmade Madhubani painting directly from a remote artisan in North Bihar, or offer our rooms to others so that we don’t feel lonely.

That’s the difference between watching the World Cup from Globo, where everything fits a “Wolf-defined” script vs Casimiro’s broadcast. People were talking to him in real-time, and his whole content creation was co-creation. The more a spark of an idea grows within the community, the bigger the chance for a new solution emerges. The “ants” define the script, in this case. It could be a new product, a new service, or whatever.

In terms of UI, this means have an Upload Button. Otherwise, you are just moving your current model into digital instead of becoming a platform for creativity.