ForConstructionPros.com

By Dan Burrus

In the early days of cell phones, they were used merely for talking. Today, cell phones have a myriad of other applications. For many people, their cell phone is their daily organizer, music player, camera, GPS system, and news and weather device. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. In the very near future, cell phones will also be people's banks, credit card, keys, remote control, and video conferencing platform, just to name a few. Clearly, today's cell phones are much more than phones, and tomorrow's will revolutionize the business world.

In order to stay competitive and ahead of the curve, businesses need to look beyond what the cell phone is today and anticipate where it will be tomorrow. You have to ask yourself, "How is the cell phone changing my customers?" "What new service could I deliver on a mobile platform?" Or, "How are these beyond-voice-capabilities changing my customers' customers?"

The fact is that if you don't change with your customers, they won't be your customers for much longer. For most businesses, their customers are changing rapidly. Are you changing and learning as fast as your customers are? Because today's technology is rapidly evolving, you have to go beyond keeping up. Merely keeping up will cause you to always be behind. Rather, you need to jump ahead based on what you know will happen.

What do you know will happen? We know there are three driving forces that create exponential technological change: 1) Processing power doubles every 18 months as it drops in price, 2) Storage capacity doubles, and 3) We get faster speeds and higher bandwidth. Because of the processing power being faster, your cell phone can go online and perform searches faster. Phone companies are continually upgrading their network so the 3G network becomes the 4G network. In less than a year processing power, storage capability, and speed have all doubled, and next year they will double again, making the cell phone as powerful as your current desktop computer.

Additionally, businesses need to look at other countries to see what they're doing. As Americans, we tend to think we're the first with technology, but that isn't always the case (and it's definitely not the case with cell phones). Whereas we have multiple standards for cell phone technology, many other countries have one national standard so everyone's phone works the same way. As such, they can roll out new cell phone innovations much faster than we can.