Tuesday, April 19, 2011

The false divide of Enterprise and Consumer

These days consumerization of the enterprise is so oft-discussed it is almost passé; clearly enterprise software is borrowing tricks from the consumer web to the point where, in certain cases, they are becoming indistinguishable.

Yet people continue to think of companies as either consumer or enterprise. Isn't that itself old fashioned?

Let's tease apart what most people mean by this distinction when they ask:




I maintain that things have fundamentally shifted. When starting a company you can basically pick and choose the attributes you want, and you're an idiot if you choose too many from the Enterprise column.

Similarly, the people you assemble for the company need to come from background suited to the attribute, not the antiquated enterprise vs. consumer divide.

Here are the attributes for a couple of the opportunities I am looking at.



So I'm thinking the right question isn't enterprise or consumer. It is disruptive or disrupted. And I feel like there has never been a better time to be disruptive.

1 comment:

  1. Completely agree! The distinction is moot - unless you are trying to execute with classic 'enterprise' baggage. You know this well - the processes, mindsets and technology that ensures glacial pace. Yes, we must and will change that - so choose well ;-)

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