For the last three weeks I’ve decided to “unconnect” over the weekends and have found the change to be quite refreshing. No checking emails, no facebook updates, no blogging, no twitter, no skyping, no laptop, no blackberry, etc. It’s felt good and is a practice I plan to continue throughout the summer. But even so, when I look at my communication habits during the week day, I am definitely among the hyperconnected.
Here’s a few thoughts from the executive summary:
- Based on the number of respondents in certain clusters and then factoring in the rate of workers entering the workforce and retiring and likely adoption rates – we estimate that the 16% of the total information workforce currently “hyperconnected” may soon increase to 40%.
- The hyperconnected depend on the devices and applications that make them hyperconnected – 47% said a network outage at work would have an extreme impact on them. Technology supporting the hyperconnected has become mission critical!
- The boundary between work and personal connectivity for the hyperconnected is almost nonexistent. Two-thirds use text or instant messaging for both work and personal use. More than a third use social networking for both. The freedom to conduct work during personal time will force changes to personal use policies, business practices, training curricula, and IT support policies.
- The migration to Hyperconnectivity will create a profusion of devices, applications, and new business processes. Already, the average hyperconnected individual uses at least seven devices to access the network and nine connectivity applications. This profusion will create the need for a strategy and architecture for unified communications across the enterprise if an orderly migration is to occur.
- As baby boomers retire, businesses will find themselves competing within today’s hyperconnected base of talent. Is your company ready to compete in the emerging war for talent? Tomorrow’s workforce will increasingly expect to work in a hyperconnected communications environment and many will consider this a condition of employment.
- Connectivity tools in the hands of employees may increase productivity, but they also increase the risk of the release of sensitive information to the outside world. Already a fourth of hyperconnected respondent companies use blogs and wikis to communicate with customers and other outsiders. Obtaining the benefits and avoiding the risks of Hyperconnectivity will require unprecedented cooperation between CIOs and their business counterparts.
There’s a lot to think about within the paper’s full 16 pages. And as the “Increasingly Connected” (which BTW according to the study is 36%) migrate to “hyperconnected” status, we’re in for some profound changes.
Download your copy of the paper here: The Hyperconnected: Here They Come
PS: Thanks Chuck C. for bringing my attention to this study... very interesting and well worth getting "unconnected" to digest and read :)
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