Thoughtful post by Christian@MICEpoint on the travel industry efforts to make the case for sustaining travel. NBTA report highlights importance of travel management in down economy
I think it points to a larger issue. Travel is fundamentally about human contact. An efficiency argument can be made only in some cases such as demonstration of a product. Those survive. Others fall on the chopping block. However we need to remember something.
The human contact is more about the future than present. There are two elements - information discovery and relationships. Both are very important. A bit of information may change the way you look at the customer or the market. Often the information is tacit or experiential. In order to get to it, you need immersive face-to-face conversations. Genuine relationships reduce transaction costs for everyone. In a mercenary world when trust is general low, it takes time to establish these relationships.
So the wise will make appropriate investments at the personal level and at the level of an organization. Some of that will look like travel.
Thoughts?
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Monday, August 31, 2009
Is the value for face to face communication growing?
Welcome to uEngage!
John Hagel, now with Deloitte's Center for Edge makes an interesting point in this podcast. John suggests that the increase in the flow of information in the world has paradoxically increased the need for face to face conversations.
As the amount of the public information increases, the value of tacit or experiential knowledge increases. In John's language, this would be the 'edge'. The interesting thing about the current time is that the nature, scale, and pace of discovery of these edges is only growing as the cost of learning and experimentation goes to zero.
Take a look at the Shift Index Report 2009: Measuring the Forces of Long-Term Change document from John's group. He suggests that the democratization of technology has intensified the competition in the market place, and therefore the returns on assets have dramatically dropped. What surprised me is that this is not a story from the last decade but rather a story of last 40-50 years. The report has rich commentary on how value flows are shifting in these times. Must read. Will post more later.
John Hagel, now with Deloitte's Center for Edge makes an interesting point in this podcast. John suggests that the increase in the flow of information in the world has paradoxically increased the need for face to face conversations.
As the amount of the public information increases, the value of tacit or experiential knowledge increases. In John's language, this would be the 'edge'. The interesting thing about the current time is that the nature, scale, and pace of discovery of these edges is only growing as the cost of learning and experimentation goes to zero.
Take a look at the Shift Index Report 2009: Measuring the Forces of Long-Term Change document from John's group. He suggests that the democratization of technology has intensified the competition in the market place, and therefore the returns on assets have dramatically dropped. What surprised me is that this is not a story from the last decade but rather a story of last 40-50 years. The report has rich commentary on how value flows are shifting in these times. Must read. Will post more later.
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