In ‘The New Moats: Why Systems of Intelligence™ are the Next Defensible Business Model‘, the author Jerry Chen makes the point that traditional defensive moats around businesses are getting obsolete and that the new moat is around intelligent technology.
“Companies that focus too much on technology without putting it in context of a customer problem will be caught between a rock and a hard place?—?or as I like to say, between open source and a cloud place”
Jerry Chen goes on explaining that he believes the new competition defences will be built around systems of intelligence that can combine several data sources to create substantial value.”In all of these markets, the battle is moving from the old moats, the sources of the data, to the new moats, what you do with the data“.
Personally I agree half-way, in particular because Jerry Chen places a lot of expectations on Artificial Intelligence. It might evolve that way, but for the moment, from my experience trying to create value-added applications for organizations, it is the engagement of the users around the data that creates value. The meaning is given by the experience of the users (although this might need to be facilitated and supported to properly define those items of value).
Yes, future defences to competition will be in clever data meaning development. But let’s not forget the engagement of the people around the data-set and the softer component of value creation. Here lies the real value of the future.
