The definition of ‘transformation’ is ‘a change in nature, shape, character and form’.  The Transformation Decade therefore will be the ten years when most of humanity and its’ institutions will change nature, shape, character and form. This transformative force will sweep most along with a palpable sense of acceleration and change.  In advising companies for example, I have said that old management theories that applied in the 20^th century are no longer sufficient, that only leading from a place of transformation will keep companies current with the world around them.  To not operate with a dynamic sense of the definition of the word transformation will risk decline and obsolescence.

In the past four years, and in the three years since my book “The Shift Age” was published, I have said two things.  First, that the Great Recession of 2007-2010 is a reorganizational recession as it is the economic transition between two ages, the Information Age and the Shift Age.  Second, that we are already in the Shift Age but that the perception and acceptance of a new ...]]> 01/01/11 is the second digital New Year’s Day in a row.  A year ago it was 01/01/10, also zeros and ones, the two digits of the Information Age of computers.  That column, called “The Transformation Decade” seemed to resonate immediately as it was widely sourced in the blogosphere and retweeted globally on Twitter.  I created a presentation, “The Transformation Decade: 2010-2020” that was widely requested and delivered around the world this past year.

The definition of ‘transformation’ is ‘a change in nature, shape, character and form’.  The Transformation Decade therefore will be the ten years when most of humanity and its’ institutions will change nature, shape, character and form. This transformative force will sweep most along with a palpable sense of acceleration and change.  In advising companies for example, I have said that old management theories that applied in the 20^th century are no longer sufficient, that only leading from a place of transformation will keep companies current with the world around them.  To not operate with a dynamic sense of the definition of the word transformation will risk decline and obsolescence.

In the past four years, and in the three years since my book “The Shift Age” was published, I have said two things.  First, that the Great Recession of 2007-2010 is a reorganizational recession as it is the economic transition between two ages, the Information Age and the Shift Age.  Second, that we are already in the Shift Age but that the perception and acceptance of a new age in the general population always lags behind the true beginning of that age.

The Information Age is generally thought to have begun in the mid-1970s but it wasn’t until the 1980s, with the widespread introduction of personal computers, fax machines, cable television, communications satellites and cell phones that humanity perceived and accepted that a new age had begun.  I think that the Shift Age has already begun and that 2011 will be the year when an ever increasing percentage of humanity will in fact, sense that a new age has begun.

Marshall McLuhan famously said that  most people drive on the freeway of life, looking in the rear view mirror.  Everyone can speak to their past, their stories, their viewpoints which are all part of their past/present context.  This New Year will pull an ever increasing number of people into the present acceptance of the change that a new age initiates.

The pace has quickened, the rules are rapidly changing, our electronic connectedness has not only recast how we communicate but is both a force of transformation and a new environment in which we now live.

We are moving into a new age where:

-         Our hand held devices are becoming appendages and portals to our selective and connected worlds.  The devices we carry in our pockets and hands trump the computing power of all the Mercury and Apollo spacecrafts.

-  The words “job” and “employment” are undergoing transformation as significant as the transition from the Agricultural Age to the Industrial Age.  We are moving back toward being individual artisans, similar to where we were prior to the centralization of the Industrial Age employment model. (This is a topic I will address extensively in 2011) .

-         The global stage of human evolution has begun.  Nation states and the major structures of nations are giving way to an accelerating interconnectivity of global entities and collective thinking.

-         Human migration will be greater than in any other time in human history, both in total numbers and percentages

-          The speed of change has become environmental.  We now live in an environment of change.

-         The synaptic cyberspace of the Neurosphere is becoming a  technologically connected model for a probable evolutionary step up to a new level of consciousness

We have entered the Shift Age.  More of us will see this every day.  We have entered the Transformation Decade.  More of us will feel this transformative energy than ever before.  The first two decades of this decade are digital years in that, on a six digit writing there are many dates of just zeros and ones.  While that in and of itself is not important, 2011 is the last year until 2100 that will be digital in this manner.  This numerological fact points to the significance of the time we are in.  It will be 90 years until this happens again.  Future historians will look at the next ten years as when the shaping of the 21^st century truly began.

Welcome to 2011!  Happy New Year!  Happy New Decade!  Happy New Age!

“Cable television subscriptions will experience noticeable percentage declines in the next three to five years.”

Last week it was announced that for the first time in history paid television subscriptions dropped 216,000 with cable taking the greatest hit.

The conventional wisdom of course is that this is due to the bad economic conditions of today.  Of course that is a factor, but the times have been bad for the past two years.  The new dynamic is what I touched upon in last year’s column; that the video viewing marketplace is fundamentally changing, that disintermediation is entering the living room with televisions with internet connectivity and that people have become increasingly comfortable with alternative screens.  In addition, people have come to accept paying for what they watch.  The cable television model is based upon having people pay for all the channels they don’t watch.  Why would people who willingly pay for what they watch any longer except paying for channels they don’t watch?

Of course, a decline of 216,000 subscribers is nowhere near a “noticeable percentage decline”, but I believe that this first ever downturn will be looked back upon as the early indicator of the trend I forecast last year.  As for the rest of that forecast from last years’ column:

“This decline will only be slowed if they [cable operators] accept unbundling and price per channel. This will cause a variety ...]]> Last November, I wrote a column here about the future of cable television.  In that column from last November I forecast:

“Cable television subscriptions will experience noticeable percentage declines in the next three to five years.”

Last week it was announced that for the first time in history paid television subscriptions dropped 216,000 with cable taking the greatest hit.

The conventional wisdom of course is that this is due to the bad economic conditions of today.  Of course that is a factor, but the times have been bad for the past two years.  The new dynamic is what I touched upon in last year’s column; that the video viewing marketplace is fundamentally changing, that disintermediation is entering the living room with televisions with internet connectivity and that people have become increasingly comfortable with alternative screens.  In addition, people have come to accept paying for what they watch.  The cable television model is based upon having people pay for all the channels they don’t watch.  Why would people who willingly pay for what they watch any longer except paying for channels they don’t watch?

Of course, a decline of 216,000 subscribers is nowhere near a “noticeable percentage decline”, but I believe that this first ever downturn will be looked back upon as the early indicator of the trend I forecast last year.  As for the rest of that forecast from last years’ column:

“This decline will only be slowed if they [cable operators] accept unbundling and price per channel. This will cause a variety of cascading problems for all those reliant upon cable television distribution.”

This part of the forecast will take a few years to become fully realized.

In conclusion, there might be an occasional uptick in cable television subscriptions ahead, but the long term trend of declining subscriptions has just begun.

The Big Three auto companies had an insular culture that didn’t pay attention to outside forces.  They only focused on the fact that they could make $1,500-2,000 profit per SUV and pick-up trucks, so they just kept making them hoping – not thinking that is for sure – it would all continue.  We know where that led.

Conde Nast took pride in its’ high level extravagant culture.  Bright and shiny and expensive always worked in the past, so hey, we’ll be ok in the future.   Whoops! It looks like we have to shut down some new and iconic titles as they are no longer viable businesses.

Business Week, one of the iconic business publications of the last half century was sold for $5 million.  Sounds like what was a good revenue week three years ago.  Who bought them?  The well diversified, global, multi-media, multi-revenue stream Bloomberg.  Just think about an on-line and video, global weekly news and feature product called Business Week, served up on consoles and ...]]> To many, the absolute collapse of the magazine industry in 2009 may seem stunning.  What is stunning to me is that the industry didn’t see it coming and take steps to avert this collapse.  Once again, another industry can only see a year ahead and thinks that a down year – 2008 – would be followed by a flat or up year. Historically in the advertising business that has been the career experience of the senior executives, so why not look to the past for reassurance?

The Big Three auto companies had an insular culture that didn’t pay attention to outside forces.  They only focused on the fact that they could make $1,500-2,000 profit per SUV and pick-up trucks, so they just kept making them hoping – not thinking that is for sure – it would all continue.  We know where that led.

Conde Nast took pride in its’ high level extravagant culture.  Bright and shiny and expensive always worked in the past, so hey, we’ll be ok in the future.   Whoops! It looks like we have to shut down some new and iconic titles as they are no longer viable businesses.

Business Week, one of the iconic business publications of the last half century was sold for $5 million.  Sounds like what was a good revenue week three years ago.  Who bought them?  The well diversified, global, multi-media, multi-revenue stream Bloomberg.  Just think about an on-line and video, global weekly news and feature product called Business Week, served up on consoles and computers around the world.

The Land of OZ is the reality, Kansas is gone.

It has been more than a year since I first wrote that the current recession would be a reorganizational recession for the media and advertising industry.  I forecast that it would last for at least two years and that when the single digit “recovery” occurred, many familiar faces would be gone.

In the current Shift Age Trend Report [see end of this column for how to get a free download of this Volume 1] I wrote:

“The current ‘reorganizational recession’ continues to eviscerate media properties with many magazines, newspapers and even radio and TV stations closing their doors. “

and

“The media and advertising businesses of the 20th century are disintegrating and dissolving in this recession. The 21st century versions of both are soon to be formed. That is why this is a historic, reorganizational advertising recession.”

That is an easy metaphor to understand what is going on.  There was the 20^th century media business and there will be the 21^st century media business.  The people who have been running the media companies that thrived in the 20^th century did not see that the new century is and will be different.  They clearly didn’t see the end of the Information Age and the beginning of the Shift Age.  Why is it called the Shift Age?  Because everything is in a state of shift

In this same Trend Report, I wrote:

“We are in an age of great transformation. It is often not enough just to “reengineer”,“search for excellence” or try to be “good to great”.  Those terms are either motivational or mechanical. We are not only moving into new century, we are moving into a new age. The Shift Age is and will be a time of greattransformation. This means that many companies, to succeed, grow and prosper inthe 21st century, must under go a transformation to face forward in this new age.”

The top executives running all media companies need to realize that if they are not in a state of transformation, they may not survive.

To the publishers of magazines that have ceased to exist I ask the question:

Dorothy knew she was no longer in Kansas, why didn’t you?

[To obtain a free download of Volume 1 of the Shift Age Trend Report, quoted above, please go to the pass word protected web site: www.theshiftagetrendreport.com and type in Username: DavidHoule and Password: ShiftAge [no space, case sensitive].  In the top of the download is a promotional code allowing readers of this column to get a $50 subscription discount.]

Those of you who have either read “The Shift Age” or have heard me speak about the Shift Age, know that the accelerating global electronic connectedness is one of the three forces that has, is and will continue to reshape our world.  There are now 4 billion cell phone subscribers in the world.  Facebook has more that 200 million users.  Twitter is approaching 20 million users and all these numbers are increasing every day.

There is no longer any time, distance or place in human communication. That both transforms reality and creates new realities and opportunities.  It is as though human communication is completely fluid and like water, can flow anywhere without boundaries, channels or hierarchies.  Humans can interact with other humans in ways never before experienced in history.  Our connectedness is a force in and of itself.

What has occurred these past few weeks in Iran will be regarded as one of the events in the geopolitical world that is both a confirmation of this new force and a signpost to our future global orientation.

Even a month ago, it would have seemed hard for most people to imagine that Twitter tweets would be used as news sources about a major event in the New York Times, ...]]> [Note:  This is a column reprinted from the current "Shift Age Newsletter" as it is very timely and has already received a lot of positive comment.  If you are not yet a subscriber of the newsletter, please go here and click on FREE subscription]

Those of you who have either read “The Shift Age” or have heard me speak about the Shift Age, know that the accelerating global electronic connectedness is one of the three forces that has, is and will continue to reshape our world.  There are now 4 billion cell phone subscribers in the world.  Facebook has more that 200 million users.  Twitter is approaching 20 million users and all these numbers are increasing every day.

There is no longer any time, distance or place in human communication. That both transforms reality and creates new realities and opportunities.  It is as though human communication is completely fluid and like water, can flow anywhere without boundaries, channels or hierarchies.  Humans can interact with other humans in ways never before experienced in history.  Our connectedness is a force in and of itself.

What has occurred these past few weeks in Iran will be regarded as one of the events in the geopolitical world that is both a confirmation of this new force and a signpost to our future global orientation.

Even a month ago, it would have seemed hard for most people to imagine that Twitter tweets would be used as news sources about a major event in the New York Times, The Globe and Mail and on CNN and other news channels.  This has now happened with the Iranian crisis.  The autocratic theocrats of Iran sent journalists packing – and beat them if they didn’t, jammed broadcast signals, and tried to shut down web sites.  They were largely successful in these efforts.  However, due to twitter, facebook, cell phone videos and email the world has been kept informed of the brutality that is going on in Iran.  Here the water metaphor is perfect as it always finds the cracks, the holes in the dyke, the weak spot in the levee, the porous part of the structure and flows through it.

I have several followers from Iran on Twitter.  I did my part by tweeting that the world was in fact watching, that their messages were getting out and that their struggles were known and supported. It was interesting how often such tweets, both mine and others, were RT (retweeted).  This is another new unique experience, people feeling participatory in a struggle half a world away through personal communications.

It is clear what lies ahead for Iran.  Autocratic governmental power and centralized authority kept in place through brutality, misinformation, xenophobia and false prophets will ultimately collapse.  This is particularly true when the educated, the young and the affluent are the ones in the streets being beaten.  As long as the current leaders are in power in Iran there will be an exodus of the best and brightest out of the country – if they are allowed to leave.  These leaders are so insular and consumed with maintaining their power that they do not realize the new reality of global electronic connectedness on a personal level.

If internal political upheaval does not bring these leaders down, the tidal waves of personal communications due to this electronic and immediate connectedness will.  The nation state structure cannot defend against it anymore.

We have all lived through a lifetime of technology changing the media and content landscape.  Satellites allowed cable television and later satellite television to erode and then eviscerate the traditional broadcast network business model.  Then the analog to digital transition eliminated the physicality of the product in the music industry.  Then the universal, immediate and free availability of news and information on the Internet has pushed news magazines and newspapers to the edge of the abyss.

It is now cable television’s turn to face the disintermediating power of the Internet and technology.  This is a trend I have forecast for the past two years.

Cable television has long had a strangle hold on the American household as it has been the “last 30 feet” of connectivity into the home.  Owning this connection has allowed cable television MSOs and operators to control a great deal of the media access to the home and, in many cases such as customer service and pricing, act as a monopoly.  First was the connectivity to the world of cable television.  This was followed by ...]]>

We have all lived through a lifetime of technology changing the media and content landscape.  Satellites allowed cable television and later satellite television to erode and then eviscerate the traditional broadcast network business model.  Then the analog to digital transition eliminated the physicality of the product in the music industry.  Then the universal, immediate and free availability of news and information on the Internet has pushed news magazines and newspapers to the edge of the abyss.

It is now cable television’s turn to face the disintermediating power of the Internet and technology.  This is a trend I have forecast for the past two years.

Cable television has long had a strangle hold on the American household as it has been the “last 30 feet” of connectivity into the home.  Owning this connection has allowed cable television MSOs and operators to control a great deal of the media access to the home and, in many cases such as customer service and pricing, act as a monopoly.  First was the connectivity to the world of cable television.  This was followed by high speed internet connections and then land line phones.  This created the “triple play” of cable.

Two of these three are now going to decline. There are more cellular only homes than land line only homes and the number of land line homes is decreasing.  The big news is that the cable television connection is now not only threatened but will start to decline in total numbers.  The one, vital and secure business is the high speed Internet connection.

This first became apparent to me last August.  My son, having just returned to his off campus apartment for his senior year of college called me up one evening to say that he had just saved me $60 a month.  After thanking him I asked how.  He said that when the cable company came to connect his cable television and high speed internet connection he had them just connect the latter.  He said that it was his senior year, that he would be writing a lot of papers and would be doing a lot of reading.  He went on to say that when he had the TV on, it was usually for games or DVDs.  He decided that any TV shows he wanted to watch he could do so on his laptop via the Internet – and on demand when he wanted to watch. [In addition, being in his early twenties, he only had need for his cell phone]  Look to the young to see the future.

This got me to do some research.  I found that one percent of households used high speed internet connections to watch TV programming only on computer.  As most TV networks cable and broadcast, upload their content to web sites, this is not difficult to do.  Granted, six months ago it was only one percent, but at some point in time cable had a one percent penetration, one percent of people who listen to music downloaded it from the Internet and one percent of the population had cell phones.  Add on to this the fact that since last fall, practically every household is making dramatic cuts in spending and the direction is clear.

In addition to this trend, there are going to be some technological breakthroughs that will disintermediate the living room.  What I mean by this is that in 2009 and 2010, companies will introduce technologies that will make connecting the Internet to the big flat screen TV in the living room a very easy thing to do.  When the entire video inventory of the Internet is available on the TV screen and there is easy navigation via remote control, many households will simply not subscribe to the traditional cable TV service and the expensive hardware that comes with it.  Everything will be available on demand, including movies and all content that the viewer wants to save can be stored on a hard drive.

Cable TV companies will be the first to feel this pain as their primary revenue stream will shrink.  Raising prices will only accelerate the trend, so that will not be a long term option.  The cable networks will suffer revenue decline as subscription revenue falls.  This will ultimately be replaced to a degree when the coming technologies will allow highly targeted, interactive advertising with resultant higher CPMs  for  viewing on-line – now on big flat screen TVs –  to be better monetized than it is currently.

When viewed from the highest level, this is just a continuation of the devaluation of distribution channels.  People view content and do not particularly care how they receive it as long as it is of good quality and available on demand when they want it.

2009 will be the year that the cable TV bill will begin to be viewed as a discretionary rather than a necessary expenditure.