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No Job Is Safe
In the early days of the internet;
“If you can deliver your work, value, ideas, product … through the internet - so too can your competitors.”
… and graphic artists, developers, writers, accountants, designers … ‘all of a sudden’ had a world of opportunity matched by a world of competition that for most resulted in a fierce race to the bottom pricing model.
It didn’t all go away … but the key was differentiation.
Of course , if it was a physical product you were safe ….
…. and then came Amazon
It didn’t all go away … but the key was differentiation.
Of course if the service required your physical presence, you were safe, so taxi drivers, truck drivers, house cleaners, electricians, construction workers were spared ….
… and then came Uber and Lyft
… and will come self driving cars and trucks
It won’t all go away, for a while …. but the key will be differentiation.
Now, as the various countries of the world are all starting to try to return to work, to return to normalacy, I am taken by how much focus on hair dressers there have been. I get it - a personal service, close proximity - how do you get around that?
Often juxtaposed in the news about people retuning to work, we see tantalizing news items about leaps in medical technologies. Telemedicine is being touted as the new future. We see images of highly qualified doctors using telemedicine to dispense advice and opinion to their remote patients. Then the camera jumps to operations - brain surgeons operating remotely as they open up skulls and perform brain surgery.
If a brain surgeon is going to be able to us (actually is using) robotics - and can apply those robotics to patients on the other side of the world, hands up if you think that the job of the hairdresser wont be automated?
It won’t all go away, for a while …. but the key will be differentiation.
Stand by for the polarization of services and products and be very clear which space you are in.