We live in exciting times. Always On. Interconnected…

The old way of doing business was linear, centralized in its decision making, and involved large investments in infrastructure. The new way of doing business is On-Demand. Plug-and-Play.

Yes, the world’s largest provider of rooms does not “own” any room inventory. Yes, the world’s largest taxi-operator does not “own” a single cab. Yes, “uberization” is a word now!

Inside the enterprise, we no longer need to build everything from scratch. We need to figure out how to work with all the pieces that are out there. It’s not uncommon for a business user to swipe their credit card, buy a pay-as-you-go service online, and then inform IT that they need some help with integration to existing systems. The CIO may as well be called the Chief Integration Officer.

Outside the enterprise, the story is even more exciting. Customers have infinite choice. On every platform. And every device. And, if that’s not enough, APIs are available from most major online/mobile services, if you’re inclined to write some code and build something more relevant to your specific needs.

Let’s take just one example – Uber. It started off as a service built on a Google Maps API, connecting drivers with passengers to address a transportation need. With the success it has seen over the years, Google can now incorporate the Uber API in their search results, to make it convenient for their customers to order a cab, once they’ve figured out the route to their destination.

Business will need to keep up, or become irrelevant. We’ve heard of IBM predicting a world market of maybe five personal computers. We know that Kodak missed the bus with digital photography standards. But, the newer changes may not be so drastic. There will be a million small changes that will creep up on us. Hidden inside the connections we will soon take for granted. The innovation may not lie in inventing a whole new platform, but simply a new approach of combining something with something else, in a whole new way.

We don’t know how this will shape up in the years to come. The possibilities are too many to predict. But the Innovation is here to stay. Always On. Interconnected.