The pace of change is accelerating! Or is it?

How often have you been in a presentation which begins with something like, “The pace of change is accelerating” or similar? I was at the keynote by Google at Technology for Marketing and Advertising last week, and this was one of the key points. But is this really true?

When you have as many grey hairs as me, you remember many a pitch about the increasing pace of innovation. Back in 1999, it was all about massive transactions, tons of content, huge warehouses of customer data, dynamic personalization, etc. Sound familiar? Experience tells me that change generally happens more slowly than we would like people to believe.

In the recent HBR article on Big Bang Disruption, the authors contend that the traditional product lifecycle is being collapsed into just development, deployment and replacement. The driving forces for this are the changes to how products are developed in a world where cloud and SaaS bring customers much closer to the development process. In addition, the speed of communication has changed with the advent of social and mobile technologies.

This is the key point. I don’t think the pace of innovation has changed so much as the pace (and reach) of communications. With social and mobile, communications are getting faster and faster to a broader, more globally diverse audience. This impacts the way markets behave.

So to be competitive and to survive in this new era of socially connected, mobile customers, businesses need to expend much greater energy staying in touch with their customers, markets and competitors than ever before. By keeping pace with and listening to these new communications, you can adapt and innovate faster than your competitors. And that’s what really matters!