2. Don't you hear my call though you're many years away
Don't you hear me calling you
Write your letters in the sand
For the day I take your hand
In the land that our grandchildren knew.
“
“
- Queen, ’39, (1975)
Physicists call it the “Twin Paradox”. It states that two identical twin brothers live on earth, until one
of them travels to outer space. They both carry the exact same watch and set the exact same time
and date.
The brother traveling stays in outer space for one year. When he comes back, he finds that his
brother has grown a lot older than he has. Perhaps two years, or five, or fifty. Had the former stayed
longer in space, his brother could have died of natural causes. Time passed differently for each of
them.
All is relative.
Relativity states that if Charlie - the brother sent to space- travels at 90% the speed of light (aka ‘c’,
hence ‘Charlie’) his watch, his inner clock, his body, even his synaptic connections will tick 44%
slower than Sebastian’s (the ‘staying’ one). If Charlie is sent at 99% of the speed of light, his time will
tick 14% slower than Sebastian’s (the staying brother). Finally, at 99.9% of the speed of light, his
clock will tick 4.5% slower than his brother’s. In this last scenario, 'when the second brother comes
back, he will have aged 5 year whereas the first will have aged 110 years.’ (1 - Neil deGrasse
Thyson)
Why is that? Due to gravity and velocity. The closer to one of these forces an object is, relativity
states, the slower times passes on through it. And the stronger gravity or velocity are, the more
profound the effect.
This is explained by Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity and Lorent’z Postulate of Time
Transformation: a moving watch will experience a slower passing of time in relation to a
stationary one.
So, the brother aboard the spaceship and the brother on earth will experience different (or relative)
time spans. The one traveling -or moving- undergoes a slower lapse, which has a much softer
impact on him. The one staying on earth -or staying still- will endure a harder impact.
The former, on the move, will age more slowly and enjoy a prolonged youth. The latter, motionless,
will go through that process faster, perishing at a relative earlier stage.
The same occurs when exposed to a gravity field. The bigger the field and stronger the gravity, the
slower the time passage.
3. If we metaphorically extrapolate physics to other areas of life, standing still will translate as growing
old, languishing, dying. On the contrary, moving or exposing oneself to stronger forces will mean
staying younger, enduring, living.
The Physics of Businesses.
The laws of physics can not be applied directly to companies and brands. Nevertheless, they create
an excellent analogy to explain some of the phenomena experienced in arenas such as business,
management and marketing resulting from the introduction of new technologies.
Brands and companies have a lifecycle: they are born, grow, get strong, grow old, decay and in most
cases, disappear. Time affects them.
Let’s imagine that competing enterprises are twin brothers. One of them travels in space (in our
metaphor, it moves) and the other stays on earth (it stays still).
Time, like space, is a relative magnitude. But unlike the latter, time can not be traveled forward or
backwards. 'Time can be bent or squeezed, but it can't run backwards’. (2 - Interstellar, 2015.)
Similarly, a company gets going through space, but not through time. It can, for example, make the
decision during its first quarter of the year to penetrate a different niche, develop a new product,
or adopt a new technology.
Whether the strategy is -or is not correct- the firm can always
go forward, backwards or sideways: leave the market, go
deeper into the niche, invest heavier on technology. What the
company is not able to do however, is go back in time, and at
the closing of the fiscal year say: "Let's return to Q1 and
disregard investing on this technology".
Time passes and space coordinates vary. The first gives no
options but the second does.
In physics, time can not be modified, but its effects can be
altered by managing velocity or proximity to a gravity field. That general principle is applicable to
clocks, spaceships or people. Again, it is an analogy to what happens to companies.
In space, the faster one goes ahead, or the closer to a gravitational field one is, the more sluggish
the elapse, the younger one stays, and the more relevant one remains.
The same applies to brands and businesses. Only that gravitational forces do not appear when
nearing the speed of light, bigger planets or blackholes.
They come when the company -or brand- face different circumstances that heavily impact on them:
changes in consumer trends, capital issues, market shifts, regulatory matters or technological
innovations.
Coming from wherever they might, these events always have something in common: weight. For
they sort of gravitate in a companies' life. Hence, this weight is often referred to as 'gravity'. The
more ‘gravity’ an event or situation has, the broader its impact.
A company gets
going through
space, but not
through time.
4. Over the last years, companies have encountered technological innovations as one of their
toughest and most disruptive challenges ever.
Technology Fields.
Like giant blackholes, new technologies have appeared mostly unforeseen and have impacted
companies, markets and businesses alike. Some were sucked in, some destroyed and torn apart;
and while some contracted, others expanded. Whatever the case, the event horizon pulled them,
and their business were accelerated or sent to a different dimension.
Over the last decade, thanks to the massive digitalization of society and businesses, corporations
have come near a new form of gravity fields, which we will call Technological Fields.
Varied in form and size, these technological fields imply different advances, happening
silently,iteration after iteration, before they explode in one singular event that alters the landscape
around it forever.
Technological Fields have, since the inception of the contemporary digital world in the 1950’s,
elevated or buried firms, as well as created and transformed markets. Think of the personal
computer, the internet, the world wide web,
the graphical user interfase, social networks,
blogs, digital photography, search engines,
emails, smartphones, tablets, cloud services, e
-commerce, software as a service, smart TVs,
mobile apps, digital entertainment stores or
streaming services.
All of these tech fields have had their impact.
Uber, for example, car riding app, is taking on
the taxi consortium; Amazon, an online retailer
is eating brick and mortar retail stores; Google,
born as a web search engine, defies the status
quo of advertising and media purchasing;
iTunes, a digital entertainment store created
the conditions to bring physical stores to a
closing; and Netflix -a streaming service and
content producer- competed against DVD
rental stores and beat them.
Tech Fields do not always have an easy genesis to spot. Often, they are of such magnitude, that
is impossible to avoid, escape or deflect them, even from their very humble beginnings. And what
brands are facing today -and being pulled towards- is a new technological domain, a gigantic
uncertainty of an immense force called
“Wearable Technology”.
Wearables come in many forms: bracelets, smartglasses, clothing, GPS watches, activity trackers and
many others. So far, enterprises have managed to stay in a relatively safe orbit, just out of its gravity
pull. But with the surge and massification of smartwatches and the introduction of the Apple Watch
in particular, the event horizon is quickly approaching, and its gravitational pull will become ‘so great
as to make escape impossible’. (3) Neil DeGrase Thyson
There are three key elements smartwatches possess to create such a gravitational effect:
multi-usage; health tracking and body proximity.
Technological Fields
have, since the inception
of the contemporary
digital world in the
1950’s, elevated or
buried firms, as well as
created and transformed
markets.
5. As a general principle, smartwatches allow people to perform mostly all the technological hand
interactions right from their wrists: controlling the home’s thermostat, moving through a
presentation’s slides, responding to an SMS, turning on the lights, etc.
While smartwatches are not presented -for the time
being- as replacements for smartphones, they allow
their users to let go of their devices for some time
during the day, just as they do with their computers.
Besides, as batteries become longer lasting, and
smartwatches resist better the exposure to the
elements (water resistance, etc…), they slinger
attached to their users’ wrist. Eventually, they will
become a regular part of the person’s ecosystem and
fully synergize with their daily lives.
As industry analyst and blogger John Gruber recounts on his podcast The Talk Show (Episode #118
- "Sloppy on the side”, may 2015), it is now common at Apple’s HQ to have people getting up from
their chairs in the middle of a meeting, standing for a minute or two. Why is that so? Because it
commonplace now to have their smartwatches tell them to get up and do some exercise.
If such levels of interaction have been reached only months after the introduction of a product, the
devices’ use penetration into a person’s life will soon become exponential.
Smartwatches will not bend time for their users, but they will for brands.
Keep Moving.
Time being relative, it will not run exactly the same for all of them. As in interstellar travel, time will
run more sluggishly for those accepting, approaching and adopting the technology. The brand’s
clock will run slower on them, and the effects of the passing of time will be more gentle.
On the contrary, for those companies staying on the surface, and avoiding the event horizon, time
will seem to dash. At the end of the day they will become older, long before the brands accepting
the challenge.
As time bends in the new technological arena, the former businesses will prove efficient in
stretching it, remaining young, healthy, close to their users. They will survive. The latter will, hard
as they may try, perish.
Biology, psychology and physiology evidence that when a person moves -be it by migration, heading
emotionally or psychologically towards or from an event, or exercising their bodies-, they avoid
getting involved in a lethargic time passing. The key to staying young is “Moving”.
Technological fields are showing that going forward is the only path for an enterprise to stay young.
With smartwatches, this is more visible than ever. And as the event horizon gets closer, managers
will learn that while business and economics laws can be altered or avoided, the laws of physics
definitely can not.
Catalina Bergmann and Gustavo Gonzalez contributed to this paper.
(c) Patricio Cavalli - Quadion Technologies. 2015.
The more ‘gravity’ an
event or situation has
over a company, the
broader its impact.
