By Morf Morford

Tacoma Daily Index

Way back in the 20th Century (specifically the 1980s and ‘90s) a core theme of business, particularly marketing, was the idea of “branding” – identifying and building on brand loyalty.

Industries, from cars to televisions to shoes coalesced around a dominant – and trusted – brand.

As in so many areas, that was then, and this is now.

Good-bye to fiercely independent brands, and hello to virtual and physical systems of manufacturing where companies, facilities and contractors globally cooperate with each other in flexible, even improvisational ways.

This enables the absolute customization of products and the creation of new operating models and responses to crises. COVID is only one example of this cross-branding resulting in faster and more comprehensive vaccine and treatment responses.

And long gone are assumptions about competitiveness, market share or life-time careers.

The tools of the trade for our era are gene sequencing, nanotechnology, recycling and renewables and quantum computing as well as crypto-currencies and other aspects and features that would make a previous generation’s eyes glaze over.

But, as with a children’s game from an idealized age put it, ready or not, here it comes.

To put it mildly, the benefits (and costs) of progress are not evenly distributed. The extent to which any given society embraces technological innovation is a major determinant of progress – and economic, if not political dominance.

Government and public institutions, as well as the private business sector, need to do their part, but it is also essential that individual citizens see the long-term benefits.

Resistance to progress is a constant. From electricity to indoor plumbing to flu vaccines to automobile seatbelts, corporations, governments and individuals have opposed every innovation since the wheel (for your amusement, I recommend looking up opposition to the fork or to the use of zero).

Innovation is, almost by definition, disruptive if not threatening to livelihoods, personal and community and individual identity and roles or opportunities that lie before us.

Today’s disruptors – already so embedded in our conversations that we barely notice them; Airbnb, Uber, Alibaba, Tesla and many more – now household names – were essentially unknown just a few years ago.

The iPhone we see in virtually every hand, and few of us, for better or worse, could imagine living without, was first launched in 2007.

By the end of 2015 there were about 2 billion smart phones in use around the world. Keep in mind that world population of human beings in 2021 is a bit under 8 billion – so more than five years ago, more than one in four of us world-wide had the same device- within less than ten years of its creation.

This is a depth and range and speed of change humanity has never encountered before.

And we are in the midst of a level of intrusion like humans have never seen before. Our devices will, or already have become an increasing part of our personal ecosystem, listening to us, anticipating our needs, and helping us when required – even when not beckoned – or welcomed.

Inequality, in benefits or burdens, a constant of human history, will become even more intractable and obvious.

Wealth and opportunity, from health care to higher education, will tilt toward the innovators, investors, and shareholders, and away from those who depend on their own labor.

Every advanced society can count on the disillusionment among an increasing number of workers, convinced that their real income may not increase over their lifetime and that their children may not have a better life and more opportunities than they had.

And where does all this change, all these transactions take place?

All the markers of corporate identity have evaporated or become inverted; corporate headquarters? Who needs it? Office space? Why? Inventory? How 1990s.

Full-time employees? Meh….

Pensions and retirement programs? Ha!

As media strategist Tom Goodwin wrote in a TechCrunch article in March 2015: “Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate.” (https://techcrunch.com/2015/03/03/in-the-age-of-disintermediation-the-battle-is-all-for-the-customer-interface/)

Again, that was over five years ago. That’s ancient history in an Uber economy.

Virtually all of those companies barely existed five years before that. And the biggest companies of five years from now barely register on our economic radar today.

And every aspect of the economy, from work to pay to definitions of employment seem to be up in the air – are Uber drivers employees or sub-contractors for example. How do homes used occasionally as Airbnbs fit into standard zoning guidelines?

Now we have companies, like GameStop, that may, or may not, be worth a fortune. Or nothing.

It’s all in how we slice and dice, and interpret what’s going on.

I have a friend who is an engineer who sent me the phrase “it’s all in the nature of raster and vector data.”

To put it simply, vector and raster images differ in their resolution, the amount of detail they contain, and where they are used. (https://drawtify.com/blog/he-difference-between-vector-and-raster-images/)

To put it another way, vector and raster are “engineer-speak” for perspective or point of view.

Depending on the situation or expectation, do we need fine-print analysis or the big picture? Do we need to know where we are or where we are going?

Yes, who or what or where we have been is defining and foundational, but does it need to define us from this point forward?

Or even, given the variables of 2020, even if we wanted to keep traces and elements of the past (or so-called ‘normal’) could we?

So yes, those brand names, those classic late 20th Century names, from Sony to General Motors barely exist, or have changed markets, product lines and business strategies to such a degree that they are unrecognizable.

And in their place we have global value chains – cars and computers, and everything else, “manufactured” in one place, “assembled” in another and marketed in (or for) yet another.

As the economy and technology erases national borders, COVID guidelines enforce them.

Every aspect of employment and investment, from interest rates to the stock market seems to be going in two, or even three directions at once.

In a rare act of synchronicity, we had a pandemic almost exactly a century after one that killed millions around the world.

Maybe the second act of that drama will a re-play of the “Roaring twenties” of the past century.

From what I’ve seen so far, the slogan of our times should be “Welcome to the 2020s – hear me roar!”