When thinking about the impact of digital technologies, I have the bad habit of focusing on what’s happened in vertical industries such as in music, media and retail.  In the process, I forget about how disruptive these new tools are within social and political spheres, but recent events in Egypt and the Middle East have served to remind me of this fact. 

All of this reminds me about what Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, says when he states that “group action just got easier.”  This type of affirmation is more general and includes any area of life where groups can be coordinated (not just business).   As TechCrunch mentioned, one Egyptian father was so elated at what he perceived as the power of these new social media tools to help bring about change that he named his newborn daughter, “Facebook!”

What’s clear is that the world hasn’t known a time when global communication has been so easy, inexpensive and varied.  Dropping this capability into our laps so quickly doesn’t mean that the impact is immediately clear.  In business, every day sees copy cat players, but also completely new businesses that have found yet another way to reinvent some aspect of their industry.

More and more, business people are developing new ideas and are anxious to implement these.  Sometimes, they have strong technical talent to accompany them and other times they choose to work with companies such as ours.  Either way, as the saying goes, we are living in “interesting” times.