Sample Keynote Lecture Topic Delivered by Mr. Knoke

"How to Manage in the Technological Age"

When conditions do not change (technology, competitors, prices), businesses can do things as they always have, and continue to prosper.  In his keynote address on Technology, Mr. Knoke unveils how the accelerating pace of technological change is shattering nearly all paradigms within corporations and the industries in which they operate.

In Mr. Knoke’s address, one learns the pitfalls of navigating in this new minefield, and emerges with energizing ideas in how to avoid them.

The Information Age has ushered operating rules much different from the “Manufacturing Age” that preceded it.  The problems begin with the ease with which the main ingredient to wealth can be copied:  information.  When one is producing a physical device (like a steel beam) the cost of duplicating that beam is about the same for everyone (roughly materials plus labor).  However, information is intrinsically different in that, once it is produced, it can be duplicated at near-zero cost.  As a consequence, the innovators of technology bear the brunt of developmental risks without always capturing the full benefit.  Examples include business processes, marketing ideas, training personnel, product designs, patents…. all of which can be mimicked.

Much of the solution lies in speed as an asset:  speed in developing new concepts and getting them quickly into full implementation.  This dynamic is driving the frenzy for outsourcing, joint ventures and global alliances and mergers.  It is also driving wholesale reorganization of even our most stable enterprises.

But there is risk even in speed.  As the corporate giants are “fine tuning” their existing businesses, upstarts are finding new opportunities seemingly from nowhere, often creating new industries.  Harvard Professor Clay Christensen terms this “innovative dilemma” wherein established companies do everything “right” to fortify their existing bulwarks, but in so doing miss fresh opportunities outside the castle walls.  In reaction, many companies are decentralizing and nurturing innovative in-house skunk works.  They even fund competitive startups to have first access to nascent technologies.

Mr. Knoke believes that once companies have the product technology just right, the work is not yet done:  The reach of technology also touches marketing and communications.  The Information Age increases the “noise” level and creates new challenges in having customers hear the corporate message.  For instance, brand names that once offered differentiation, may rise in value in the medium term and eventually decline as other proxies for quality emerge via third-party association.

Customers are increasingly sophisticated, and demand customized solutions to their problems.  This creates opportunities to tighten linkages with them so that the barrier between “customer” and “supplier” will diminish.  In the same fashion,  “marketing” and “production” will merge, and customized quantity-of-one production will become the rule… with near-instant delivery times.

The customer-centric technological era is only just beginning, and will require a major rethinking and overhaul within each corporation, going much beyond “marketing” issues.  It will be an era giving rise to outsourcing.  It will empower the individual and tighten linkages between customers and suppliers within every industry’s supply chain.  Markets will belong to those who make the change.