Digital Darwinism. It’s something I’ve recently discovered as a business term; I’ve searched for it on Twitter and found only 3 uses of the term so far (as a hash tag). This is something I feel quite strongly about so I think I’ll be using it a lot more from now on!
What does it mean? It’s fairly obvious really, it’s a 21st century version of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution which references (in the way I intend to use it) the way you use data in your company / business. Several of my posts so far have suggested – in fairly frank terms – that the success or otherwise will come down to how well you use data. Your company can be a master of your craft, but if you’re not using technology and the resulting data to inform the outcome or target the correct clients/ customers etc, you’ll soon find yourself slipping behind the competition, losing customers or staff and ultimately obsolete.
The rate at which technology is moving is astonishing and this is coming from me, a tech advocate who is embracing as many forms of technology as I can! The access that free online software, or apps now provide to detailed data should be used to your advantage at every opportunity. The resulting data is often provided back the the lay-person as graphical feedback, easy to understand and apply to their needs.
Ideally, data should be only produced in one place (per item of data) drawn upon by other systems; a single source of truth for multiple uses. This removes the opportunity for errors to creep in and eliminates the double handling of information.
During very early research for BIM-related presentations, I came across a quote from General Eric Shinseki of the US Army that I initially though was quite harsh:
“If you dislike change, you’re going to dislike irrelevance even more.”
More and more now I see how true that is; I (and most other BIM advocates) have pretty much given up trying to convince the non-believers. If BIM didn’t work, the industry would have thrown it out long ago…
Digital Darwinism obviously doesn’t only apply to BIM, to quote Brian Solis:
“Once ‘too big to fail’ businesses such as Borders, Tower Records and Blockbuster are now gone. Each business is a victim of Digital Darwinism, the evolution of consumer behaviour when society and technology evolve faster than the ability to exploit it. Digital Darwinism does not discriminate. Every business is threatened.”
It doesn’t matter which of the original ‘evolution’ Darwin-isms you favour they’re all relevant to the point I’m making, if you don’t make use of the digital tools or data and turn them into something positive for your company, you will soon find yourself obsolete.
…Oh and if you think you’re too ‘robust’ to fall for this, 46% of people think that Facebook will disappear by 2017… think again.
#DigitalDarwin – Look out for it and use the hashtag, make people aware of the dangers of not using data.
The CASE for BIM 