Clouds, big data, and smart assets: Ten tech- enabled business trends to watch. Watch A Patch Of Fog Online Forbes there. Advancing technologies and their swift adoption are upending traditional business models.

Senior executives need to think strategically about how to prepare their organizations for the challenging new environment. Two- and- a- half years ago, we described eight technology- enabled business trends that were profoundly reshaping strategy across a wide swath of industries. We showed how the combined effects of emerging Internet technologies, increased computing power, and fast, pervasive digital communications were spawning new ways to manage talent and assets as well as new thinking about organizational structures.

Since then, the technology landscape has continued to evolve rapidly. Facebook, in just over two short years, has quintupled in size to a network that touches more than 5. More than 4 billion people around the world now use cell phones, and for 4. Web is a fully mobile experience. The ways information technologies are deployed are changing too, as new developments such as virtualization and cloud computing reallocate technology costs and usage patterns while creating new ways for individuals to consume goods and services and for entrepreneurs and enterprises to dream up viable business models. The dizzying pace of change has affected our original eight trends, which have continued to spread (though often at a more rapid pace than we anticipated), morph in unexpected ways, and grow in number to an even ten.

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The rapidly shifting technology environment raises serious questions for executives about how to help their companies capitalize on the transformation under way. Exploiting these trends typically doesn’t fall to any one executive—and as change accelerates, the odds of missing a beat rise significantly.

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For senior executives, therefore, merely understanding the ten trends outlined here isn’t enough. They also need to think strategically about how to adapt management and organizational structures to meet these new demands. For the first six trends, which can be applied across an enterprise, it will be important to assign the responsibility for identifying the specific implications of each issue to functional groups and business units. The impact of these six trends—distributed cocreation, networks as organizations, deeper collaboration, the Internet of Things, experimentation with big data, and wiring for a sustainable world—often will vary considerably in different parts of the organization and should be managed accordingly. But local accountability won’t be sufficient.

Because some of the most powerful applications of these trends will cut across traditional organizational boundaries, senior leaders should catalyze regular collisions among teams in different corners of the company that are wrestling with similar issues. Three of the trends—anything- as- a- service, multisided business models, and innovation from the bottom of the pyramid—augur far- reaching changes in the business environment that could require radical shifts in strategy.

CEOs and their immediate senior teams need to grapple with these issues; otherwise it will be too difficult to generate the interdisciplinary, enterprise- wide insights needed to exploit these trends fully. Once opportunities start emerging, senior executives also need to turn their organizations into laboratories capable of quickly testing and learning on a small scale and then expand successes quickly.

And finally the tenth trend, using technology to improve communities and generate societal benefits by linking citizens, requires action by not just senior business executives but also leaders in government, nongovernmental organizations, and citizens. Across the board, the stakes are high.

Consider the results of a recent Mc. Kinsey Quarterly survey of global executives on the impact of participatory Web 2. The survey found that deploying these technologies to create networked organizations that foster innovative collaboration among employees, customers, and business partners is highly correlated with market share gains.

That’s just one example of how these trends transcend technology and provide a map of the terrain for creating value and competing effectively in these challenging and uncertain times. Distributed cocreation moves into the mainstream. In the past few years, the ability to organize communities of Web participants to develop, market, and support products and services has moved from the margins of business practice to the mainstream. Wikipedia and a handful of open- source software developers were the pioneers. But in signs of the steady march forward, 7.

Web communities. Similarly, more than 6. Watch Wildlike Online Free 2016. Intuit is among the companies that use the Web to extend their reach and lower the cost of serving customers. For example, it hosts customer support communities for its financial and tax return products, where more experienced customers give advice and support to those who need help.

The most significant contributors become visible to the community by showing the number of questions they have answered and the number of “thanks” they have received from other users. By our estimates, when customer communities handle an issue, the per- contact cost can be as low as 1. Other companies are extending their reach by using the Web for word- of- mouth marketing. P& G’s Vocalpoint network of influential mothers is a leading example. Mothers share their experiences using P& G’s new products with members of their social circle, typically 2.

In markets where Vocalpoint influencers are active, product revenues have reached twice those without a Vocalpoint network. Facebook has marshaled its community for product development.

The leading social network recently recruited 3. French- language site took just one day. The community continues to translate updates and new modules. Yet for every success in tapping communities to create value, there are still many failures. Some companies neglect the up- front research needed to identify potential participants who have the right skill sets and will be motivated to participate over the longer term. Since cocreation is a two- way process, companies must also provide feedback to stimulate continuing participation and commitment. Getting incentives right is important as well: cocreators often value reputation more than money.

Finally, an organization must gain a high level of trust within a Web community to earn the engagement of top participants. Further reading: Jacques Bughin, Michael Chui, and Brad Johnson, “The next step in open innovation,” Mc. Kinsey Quarterly, 2. Number 3. Michael Chui, Andy Miller, and Roger P.

Roberts, “Six ways to make Web 2. Mc. Kinsey Quarterly, 2. Number 2. Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li, Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, first edition, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2. Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, reprint edition, New York, NY: Penguin, 2. Making the network the organization. In earlier research, we noted that the Web was starting to force open the boundaries of organizations, allowing nonemployees to offer their expertise in novel ways. We called this phenomenon “tapping into a world of talent.” Now many companies are pushing substantially beyond that starting point, building and managing flexible networks that extend across internal and often even external borders.

The recession underscored the value of such flexibility in managing volatility. We believe that the more porous, networked organizations of the future will need to organize work around critical tasks rather than molding it to constraints imposed by corporate structures. At one global energy services company, geographic and business unit boundaries prevented managers from accessing the best talent across the organization to solve clients’ technical problems.