Network Based Organizations using Human Server-Human Browser
Forecaster Harry Dent sees a roaring home office boom affecting everyone.
Answers from the expert on how to prosper in the home-business era. Below is an interview from Braodband Magazine. This mode of thinking...the Human Browser paradigm combined with working from anywhere at anytime will change the face of Real Estate as we know it and user in a lifestyle and abundance for brokers that have the vision. I strongly recommend reading not only The Roaring 2000's, but also The Great Boom Ahead and Great Jobs in the Future. All by Harry S. Dent
Now that clients are swamped with information from the Internet, what they need is another browser--a "human browser." And brokers are perfect for the role.
So says Harry S. Dent Jr. in his best-selling book, "The Roaring 2000's." A human browser is "an expert filter, giving clients the few, excellent choices that meet their needs, while shielding them from the overwhelming volume of options that aren't suitable," Dent writes.
Dent foresees a profound re-engineering of organizational structures to make them "operate from the customer back, not the top down." This is what Dent calls the new "network organizational model."
In this model, financial advisers become the browsers that search the "servers" (the providers of investment products and services). Advisers can "find just the right pieces from the servers to put together the puzzle, or solution, for the customer."
He predicts that financial service companies will find it "increasingly difficult [to] sell their own investment funds" because clients will perceive that as "biased." Clients will want their advisers to "consider every pertinent option in an objective manner." That means a greater, not a lesser, role for individual financial advisers.
"In a complex world of nearly infinite choices, customers increasingly need a new middle-person to fit a broad array of products and/or services into a customized solution," Dent writes.
"By the end of 2008, we'll see 70 to 90 percent of households with high bandwidth Internet connections with video capacity," he predicts. "This provides people 100 times our current speed accessing the Internet. And video capability adds the personal touch. Imagine having a question and a real person comes on your computer screen and answers it!"
Dent is a believer in the human touch. "Most people don't want to deal with data," he says. "They want to deal with people they can see and trust. With broadband and video, the Internet becomes a very humanized place rather than a giant data bank. I want to go in there and push a button and get the right person on the screen."
Meanwhile, Dent is fortunate enough to have Eva and his two investment managers surfing the Web for him.
"Technology will give us all more freedom," notes Dent. "So why not structure your life and work so that they complement each other? First, ask yourself, 'Where would I live if I could?' Then, design your own lifestyle around your preferences. There's never been an easier time, so why not start thinking about it now?"
Dent has definitely thought about it. As he writes in his best seller, The Roaring 2000's, "I have achieved the lifestyle I wanted, not from daydreams but from vision, patience, and understanding long-term trends that I determined were inevitable."
Investors, brokers, and business decision-makers all hang on his words. That's why House of Business went to Dent for the answers on how to prosper in the new era of home business.
HOB: For decades the economy has been fragmenting, with big corporations giving way to smaller, nimbler, more creative businesses. Is it now feasible for the household unit to become a potent player?
DENT: The home-based business gives the lowest in overhead and also the highest in convenience. You don't waste time commuting. That's what I do - live and work at home. I have a substantial company and I don't have to put on a suit.
My goal is to have sophisticated videoconferences from my vacation home in the Caribbean - sitting on my island delivering addresses rather than dashing around the country on planes. As the technology revolution advances, lots of people will work part-time or full-time through video.
You also won't be able to tell the difference between a home-based business and a corporation. Small units in a corporation will work just like home-based businesses. We'll have to work in small units to be competitive.
HOB: You say that key technologies will fundamentally change how we work and live. Which ones relate to the home-office boom?
DENT: We see three levels to the Internet - three very different delivery systems. First, typical PCs will be for serious uses - business-to-business - and eventually will be used for sophisticated shopping. That's one Internet.
A second dimension, a different Internet, is entertainment - and it won't be on a PC. You're going to have big-screen, high-definition television with stereo and movies. This will be a place to be entertained and educated through a distance learning system. This is yet a different Internet.
The third Internet is wireless. It's a phone, it's e-mail, it's stock quotes. You don't need a big screen. You might be able to see someone, but it's not critical. What's important is getting data, keeping up with things while you're mobile.
Companies small and large will specialize in one of these three networks.
HOB: What opportunities do you see for home businesses?
DENT: Every day we sit around here and ask, "Why isn't there a 1-800-HANDYMAN for home offices?" There's an opportunity for someone to go to home-based businesses and help them set up and maintain their equipment. It's inherently local but then you turn around and say, "Wow, this could be national."
Then there's the Human Browser model - an independent consultant who helps consumers find what they need. This is the model of the New Economy, and the need here didn't really exist before the Internet. But in a world of choice, we need experts to help sort out the choices - to customize them and narrow them down.
The human browser is the greatest opportunity for a home-based business. It's someone who says, "I'm your browser. I'm going to represent you. I will go out and find the best for you and only you. I will only work with small business entrepreneurs and home-based businesses because you have unique problems. And do you know why I deal with people like you? Because I built my own business from scratch. I know your kind of people and what they're like." If you're a browser, you specialize by customers. You can also be a server - which provides a specific product or service. What's your message to your customer if you're a server? It's this: If you're a small business and go to mainstream firms dealing with large businesses, you're not going to get the service or information you need.
HOB: Why do you say working out of the home will give rise to a resurgence of individualism?
DENT: Just look back to the Bob Hope generation. Everyone did the same thing in the same houses on the same suburban blocks and drove the same cars. It was an assembly-line life, and you had to fit into the system.
The system did not fit you. But Baby Boomers never liked conforming. They wanted to do their own thing and did not trust authority. They said, "Let's have businesses cater to us rather than us to them. Give me what I want and put it on my doorstep and save me time."
Now this economy we're in favors individuals. Everyone can design their own life and business to their own temperament and needs. With information technology, things work from the bottom up and around the individual worker. You're not just a worker but a business within a network - or you are your own business in a network outside the corporation.
To me, it's the best of both worlds - operate primarily out of your own home but spend a day or a two in the office to work with customers or colleagues face to face. It certainly makes sense to handle research, invoices, and paperwork at home. Why sit in expensive offices and spend half a day getting back and forth? We live in a world of choice, in a world of customized economy and individualistic lifestyle.
I live and work where I want. And I save money in not having an expensive office. But mostly I say: Why go in? I get up, put on my bathrobe, and I'm ready to work.
HOB: In The Roaring 2000s, you say, "In the new network economy, there won't be jobs, only businesses. We will all become entrepreneurs." Seriously?
DENT: One way or the other, sooner or later you're going to become an entrepreneur. That doesn't always mean starting a high-risk business in the garage. But you will run your own business, make your own decisions - whether you are a "front-line browser" who specializes in customers or a "back-line server" who fixes the computers.
Before the industrial revolution, people worked in their own shops or homes or on farms. Then it became normal to work in a factory and then in a large corporation. Now it's going the other way. Home-based workers are still a minority, but the new S curves are taking over the old ones. (Dent explains that an S-curve trend grows very slowly at first, but when a phenomenon hits a critical mass of 10 percent of the population, it explodes into the mainstream at an accelerated rate.)
HOB: Can you describe the new "network organizations" you see emerging?
DENT: In that kind of organization, you break into smaller companies of browsers and servers. You have more autonomy. You decide how to organize, how to serve customers, what technology to use - and that means you can work at home.
Operating from home is the best lifestyle for many people - there's no office manager to ask for permission, and there's lower overhead and more flexibility for the organization. In 10 to 20 years, most people will be working from homes or satellite offices where certain groups can cluster. You get office interaction without commuting an hour. It's closer to home, and you have access to both strong technology and childcare.
Instead of operating from the top down, a network model operates from the customers up. It is self-organized, self-managed -and it needs entrepreneurs at all levels who don't wait around to be told what to do.
This is a flexible, entrepreneurial system in which everybody makes their own decisions in their own realms. That's the key. Bureaucracy once told everyone what to do, but now people at the top don't decide strategy for the whole corporation.
HOB: In writing about the New American Dream, you refer to a possible return to small-town living you call "penturbia." You say it could be "the next great population migration in our country . . ."
DENT: It's just like the shift from cities to suburbs in the last revolution. You couldn't have done it without cars and electricity and phones. The technology allowed us to commute. Now with video-capable Internet, we can increasingly live anywhere.
In four years - after broadband is available and our last child is out of high school - I may start living 60 percent of the time on an island and make it my primary residence. Most of my communications could be through videoconferencing. Imagine receiving a personal newsletter from me where I talk to you over your computer. I could do live speeches and updates while I sit in the Caribbean. This technology is going to make a big difference in the lifestyles of many people.
The new ethic is to live where you vacation and to vacation where you used to live. You can get everything over broadband Internet.
But remember - life itself is live. You can't go to great restaurants or to Broadway shows on the Internet. So if you live on an island paradise, you also take time off and go to the city.
For me, a balanced life would be a month in the Caribbean completing research, then a month in San Francisco for public speaking and working with my key employees.
In the city, I dine and go to jazz clubs. In the Caribbean, I swim in the ocean, take hikes, and have creative time.
The point is to live in an economy of choice, to have the best of both. If you want to spend your time on a golf course, a beach, a ski slope - or an island - why don't you live there and design your work around your lifestyle?
Never before have people been able to work to any sizable degree out of a resort area. Now there are tons of things that you can do from a resort area - and many people would rather live and work there than in a congested city where you have to make restaurant reservations four weeks in advance.
HOB: What other forces are fueling the home-office boom?
DENT: The increased number of women in the work force - and the fact that women are more likely to have home-based businesses than men.
They have an even greater need than men do to integrate home and business - and it's much easier to do that in a home-based business.
If you work at home, the kids come home at 3, and you spend an hour with them and go back to work.
But you have to be professional - you can't have kids screaming in the background or on your lap while you're working or answering the phone. And, always remember, you've got to have good technology.
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