Digilogue: How to Win the Digital Minds and Analogue Hearts of Tomorrow's Customer

7: Digital diffusion of ideas

Slow and steady wins the race. Or . . . ? The centred and well-grounded Analogue Champion’s breathing is relaxed after a successful round. In this next round, things are about to speed up. We will see how digital speed can far surpass analogue focus, and why ideas can be diffused globally and locally at breathtaking speeds because of smart digital communications. We will case study how the Apple iPad became an idea virus that successfully diffused across society in a lightning fashion and created a new category of devices, which we now take for granted. And we will explore how this case study offers hope for both digital and analogue businesses selling services, solutions, ideas and products into tomorrow’s marketplace. Fight.

Diffusing ideas in a digitally disrupted era

On 27 January 2010, Steve Jobs launched the digital media tablet — the iPad — in Cupertino, California. The crowds of geeks, tech writers and Apple observers received it with love, whoops and fandemonium. Of course. Steve’s fanfare and hyperbole on stage hit new levels of amplification (and perhaps deservingly so). Steve prefaced the launch and demonstration of the iPad with the big hypothetical question — was there room for a ‘third category’ device? That is, a device that came somewhere between the smart phone and the laptop. He made Jobs-esque sweeping (yet impactful) statements, such as ‘everybody uses a smart phone and a laptop’, and invited us to consider that for there to ...