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IDC defines Web3 as a collection of open technologies and protocols supporting the trustless use and storage of decentralized data, knowledge, and value.  Content is decentralized on DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations), with control and value retained by users. 

Blockchains, NFTs, and smart contracts will play a critical role in establishing immutable transaction, communication, and collaboration that is seamless and does not have to be validated every time. Without needing validation it becomes “trustless”.  This decentralized, interconnected foundation for industry ecosystems can also serve as the enabling force of the metaverse which is a collection of 3D virtual assets, content, knowledge, and places where people can communicate, collaborate, and transact.     

We think as industry ecosystems evolve to include a varied set of partners, customers, suppliers, service providers, and public entities, that Web3 will be leveraged as a complement to classic enterprise business networks. This evolution will provide new sources of data, innovation, applications, and expertise. 

Our 2022 Future of Industry Ecosystems Global Survey (July 2022) and Future Enterprise Resiliency Survey (FERS, October 2022) shows that although interest in Web3, as well as DAOs and Metaverse, is strong, IT investments have not followed suit.  While it is still the early, experimental days, organizations see how Web3 can provide a foundation that can assure trust, enable innovation, and, perhaps most importantly, scale and/or enhance activity as needed.

How can the Metaverse fit into an Enterprise and Ecosystem Strategy?

Metaverse has been a hot topic over the past year, and although the initial buzz has faded a bit, the question remains: how beneficial can this be for enterprises? We think the answer is very, if implemented in a complementary way across domains and processes in the organization.  Experimentation with the metaverse is now predominantly driven by B2C companies such as retailers and banks that are looking for new ways to engage with existing and new customers.  As one CEO of a digital bank said: “Metaverse technology, while still evolving, could also fundamentally change the way banks interact with customers and communities”. 

The fact is that most organizations are still figuring out the best way to implement it, and many of their experiments will initially fail which is a normal part of the process.  But there are many opportunities for every enterprise to incorporate metaverse as a complement to their existing way of working:

Speeding product development – a place to view, create, and enhance new or existing products in context, through VR and simulation technologies; this could be with internal colleagues, or external ecosystem partners.
Delivering products and services digitally, wherever the end customer, citizen, consumer, or patient wants – i.e. achieving that ultimate blend of digital and physical experiences.
Improving ongoing customer engagement and experience and providing another data feed into demand sensing and planning models.
To the last point, complementing ecommerce opportunities and activities, which many retailers and consumer brands are already exploring.

DAOs as Future Enterprises? 

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are token enabled, self-organizing, Web3 communities that are based on distributed ledgers and run with a decentralized protocol, so are not dependent on any one contributor. 

Members contribute code, data, knowledge, and IP to enhance the DAO. DAOs, much like industry ecosystems, are driven by missions and solving common problems. They are natural extensions and complements to industry ecosystem strategy. While we do not think DAOs will be future enterprises per se, we do think that DAOs present an opportunity for existing, Web2-centric organizations to complement and enhance their operations. 

In our recent 2023 Future of Industry Ecosystems FutureScape, we predicted: By 2028, consortium-based DAOs will be the de facto standard for complex industry ecosystem ventures that involve a combination of process, application, and data sharing for new revenue growth.

Industry ecosystem ventures are complex, typically involving multiple participants, large data models, and shared applications not within the same system. Consortium DAOs can be a unifying, digital place for initiatives, data, and applications.  There are already many DAOs in existence today that span finance, healthcare, consumer products, entertainment, and smart cities. Data and knowledge is shared, and applications are created and shared within these environments.  Which is exactly what we see happening within industry ecosystems today – DAOs can build off of this evolution by encouraging constant innovation, as well as application, data, and knowledge sharing.

Concluding Thoughts

As organizations share data and insights, processes, applications, and expertise within diverse industry ecosystems that will begin to include participants outside of the core industry, Web3 use cases and related IT investment will evolve.  We expect organizations to consider, or reconsider, distributed ledgers, smart contracts, and NFTs, as part of a Web3 strategy that empowers trusted industry ecosystems.

We asked in a recent Future Enterprise Resiliency Survey, what technology is your organization currently using in support of sharing data and insights, shared applications, and shared operations & expertise among your Industry Ecosystem partners?  Top answers: cybersecurity, cloud applications/infrastructure, customer data platform (CDP), and IoT.  Where did decentralized computing tech fall globally? At the bottom of the list: DAOs (11%), Blockchain (9%), Web3 (9%); Metaverse, based on our 2022 Future of Industry Ecosystems global survey, is also being considered, but not yet invested in extensively.

IT investments for industry ecosystems are still very fundamental at this point. This reflects the early-stage maturity of most organizations, according to our recent 2023 Future of Industry Ecosystems MaturityScape Benchmark survey – report forthcoming. Experiments will continue with Web3 and decentralized computing.  Organizations see the value in finding the optimal use cases across industry that complement the current Web2 approach of centralized control of data and applications.  We think there are multiple domains, processes, and use cases within organizations in every industry and across their ecosystems that are ripe for this decentralized, complementary approach.

Understanding your total addressable market (TAM) is crucial for the growth of your business. It helps to determine the size and scope of your potential customer base and allows you to set realistic goals and objectives. It also aids with making informed decisions about marketing and product development strategies as well as pricing and distribution.  

Defining your market today and understanding where your opportunities lie in the future helps your team focus on the right customers and competitors at the right time.  

An economic downturn can make this exercise difficult. Inflation, rising costs, global conflicts, and the still-felt effects of the pandemic have led to budget reallocations and cuts.  

Luckily, there are actions you can take today to grow your market and your business. 

Become More Visible 

When economic times are hard and budgets are tight, the gut reaction of many companies is to slash advertising spend. But reducing ad spend is associated with declining sales and weakened performance in the long run.  

We are moving into the next era of digital business. Maintaining a prioritized investment in marketing will separate out the market leaders from the rest of the pack. 

Laurie Buczek, Vice President, CMO Advisory Practice, IDC  

Try to maintain your share of voice by using affordable online advertising like Pay per Click (PPC) and display as well as social ads, and include some of these strategies to increase visibility when budgets are tight: 

Develop a strong digital presence by optimizing your website and social media accounts.  
Use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to optimize your website and online content to rank higher in search engine results. 

Leverage social media. Platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook can help you reach a wider audience and increase brand awareness. 
Build your relationship with existing consumers through relevant and impactful messaging and thought leadership. Third-party content, for example, analyst briefs and whitepapers, will establish you as a leader in your field and give you instant credibility. 
Network with other businesses at industry events and local business associations to expand your reach. 

Be Customer-Centric 

Even though the first instinctive action in an economic downturn often is to cut spending, this can be a flawed approach. Now more than ever you should take a data-driven approach to understanding your customer.   

Connecting with consumers in an empathetic and insight-driven way is key. Buyers want to see the impact your products or services are making on their business. 

Take these steps to better understand your customer:  

Analyze your data: Analyzing customer data such as purchase history, demographics, and online behaviors can help you gain insight into your customers’ preferences. This can help you identify trends and patterns that can allow you to tailor marketing activities to different segments. 
Create buyer personas: By creating personas, you can better understand your customers’ needs, preferences, and behaviors, and tailor your marketing, sales, and tone of voice accordingly. 

Use customer feedback: Feedback can easily be gathered through surveys, reviews, or customer support, and will help you to improve your products and services and address any issues or concerns. 

Use Data to Investigate New Markets 

If your current market is saturated or unable to commit to purchasing, it’s a good idea to branch out to other markets or regions, or even demographics to remain competitive.   

When Walmart founder Sam Walton was asked what he thought about the recession, he famously said “I thought about it and decided not to take part.” 

If you, like Mr. Walton, want to outsmart the potential recession, you should use a data-driven approach to research potential markets and define your new niche instead of trying to compete with everyone in your current market to stand out and appeal to a more specific audience.  

Then, analyze customer behavior to understand how potential customers in the new market currently behave, what products or services they already use, and what factors influence their decision-making process. 

Finally, develop a market entry strategy based on the insights you have gathered, and remember to stay focused on your goals, continually improve your offerings, and differentiate yourself from your competitors. 

Leverage Digital Marketing 

During an economic downturn, many businesses rely more than ever on digital marketing to reach a larger audience and increase their TAM at an affordable price. IDC’s Marketing Investment Planner for 2023 identified digital as the predominant type of programming, with display ads at its highest spend over the past 11 years. 

Advances in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and the shift of the consumerization of B2B buyer behavior have heightened the need to move beyond the classic marketing playbook of database and email marketing. Budgets for content syndication, search engine marketing (SEM), and building customer intelligence and analytics have grown, and the marketing mix has shifted towards the digital-first buyer. 

Your digital playbook could include some of these strategies: 

Use social media and assets like IDC’s social tile to reach a larger audience to expand your TAM, drive brand awareness, and attract new customers. 
Optimize your website or organic search with search engine marketing (SEM) techniques like keyword research, content optimization, and link building. This can help to broaden your TAM by driving more organic search traffic to your website. 
Use visually attractive assets like videos to generate new leads and stand out from the competition. 

While you can’t change the fact that some consumers are tightening their purse strings, you do have a choice about how to pivot your business accordingly. In fact, with proper planning, resource allocation, and strategy shifts, smart brands not only can stay afloat during turbulent times but can increase their market share. 

Partnering with the right analyst firm can help you reach your goals in a much shorter time and within budget. Find out how IDC’s Emerging Vendor Solutions will help you grow your business today. 

I recently had the opportunity to fly on a Delta Airlines flight for a conference and was offered a rather welcome feature that, as customers, we take for granted on the ground, but isn’t yet common in the air – “Free WiFi”!

What is notable about this service is that, at a time when most airlines continue to charge for an on-board internet connection, Delta was offering customers WiFi as a “free service”. Such a service could certainly be viewed as a value-add to the onboard customer experience (CX). To avail of the service, one is required to register or sign in (existing members) to the airline’s frequent flyer (loyalty) program.

Further interesting was when a day later, Ed Bastion, CEO of Delta Airlines, highlighted this very same point during an on-stage discussion with the CEO of the firm hosting the conference. This point was discussed in conjunction with how Delta Airlines incorporates customer experience insights gleaned from their voice of the customer efforts as a way to improve different elements of their customer experience.

As a long time CX thought leader and practitioner, I am constantly listening to, or observing for, “CX-related signals”. In the Delta example, there really are two elements at play. On one hand, by encouraging customers to sign up (or login) for their loyalty program, Delta gains firsthand information about their flyers in the form of zero- and first-party data. On the other hand, in exchange for sharing that information, customers benefit from being able to access the internet for the duration of the flight. A quick note on zero- and first-party data:

First-party data is the data that brands acquire from customers directly. It also includes analytics data that brands might derive from customer behavior signals and customer propensity insights. For example, but not limited to, segmentation analysis, cohorts, personas, or propensity for loyalty, advocacy, and churn that brands are laying over on top of the initial data that is gathered from customers.
Zero-party data is a special category of first-party data that customers explicitly provide to brands. The difference between zero-party data and first-party data is that customers know that they’ve explicitly given zero-party data. For instance, if a customer wants to order something online, they provide their name and address, credit card information, and billing information if it’s different from shipping address. All of which customers expect to provide because that information is directly related to fulfilling a customer need.

With so much of the value exchange between customers and enterprises hinged on customer data, CX insights can enhance and optimize empathetic experience outcomes when applied in a trusted manner. From a CX standpoint, Delta’s inflight WiFi service is a good example wherein Delta attempted to offer an equitable value exchange when customers engage with the company. IDC has previously discussed how enterprises can deliver value parity for their customers and improve the perception of customer empathy based on the experience they deliver. Establishing customer value parity is crucial since an imbalance can lead to poor customer sentiment and often results in customer attrition.

With zero- and first-party data, a company now has the ability to operate with unique customer insights – i.e., insights that their competitors don’t have access to. With an active portfolio of customer intelligence, enterprises can offer more contextualized offers, products, services, and work across their ecosystem of partners (in the example noted earlier, based on browsing behavior) to amplify the value exchange for both customer and brand.

Now, fundamental in the above narrative, is the ability to engender customer trust. In a deeply connected society, digital trust is the currency that facilitates future innovation and prosperity. For example, sharing CX insights between a brand’s ecosystem partners should occur via a trusted data exchange mechanism. Further, enterprises must recognize that every time a journey or a micro-moment is personalized for a customer, the company reveals that they know something about the customer. To this end, enterprises have an unequivocal responsibility to ensure they don’t fall into the trap of surveillance capitalism where customer data is considered a commercial entitlement.

To achieve customer empathy at scale, customer data must be treated as a currency and thus, a fiduciary responsibility of the brand. In the above example, the airline must not only gain customer consent for capturing data, but also be transparent and adhere to promises made about why customer data is being asked, the purpose for which it will be used, and the duration for which it will be stored.

At a time when enterprises are facing greater uncertainty in a tough economic environment whilst also facing increasing pressure to differentiate with their customers, experiences are the tip of the spear to innovate. Owned customer insights based on zero-and first-party data enable organizations to do so in a profitable manner.

Visit our Future of Customer Experience website to learn more about achieving customer empathy at scale and get more insights on our thought leadership for how CX can drive profitable growth.

Eight years ago, IDC initiated its research on digital transformation, tracking early enterprise innovation and experimentation that typically focused on solving problems within siloes. Unfortunately, this focus on silos often resulted in disconnected islands of digital innovation where success didn’t always scale, and ROI wasn’t always clear. As digital transformation initiatives matured, enterprises increased their spending on digital technologies and associated services while focusing on achieving positive financial impact.

Now, IDC’s extensive digital transformation research has identified another important milestone – the digital business era. After iterations of transformation, business leaders and investors are now looking for sustainable growth built on digital-first strategies. The C-suite recognizes that at some point, transformation must yield to a bigger and more purposeful long-term goal – business outcomes built on a digital foundation. Our recent survey data reveals that 48% of organizations now consider themselves a digital business; the rest are pretty close behind.

Organizations increasingly recognize that requirements for operating their new digital businesses at scale are different from the digital transformation requirements required to build those digital businesses. Business must figure out how to grow revenue while clamping down on technology, labor, and customer acquisition costs and avoiding delayed decision making associated with new digital sovereignty requirements.

IDC defines a digital business as an organization where value creation is based on the use of digital technologies, including internal and external processes; how an organization engages with customers, citizens, suppliers, and partners; how it attracts, manages, and retains employees; and what products, services, and experiences it provides.

To run their digital businesses at scale, organizations must successfully operate five levers:

Technology Investments

Organizations will need to optimize technology investments, particularly around cloud. IDC estimates that 42% of core IT spending is now related to the cloud.

With cloud as the backbone of their digital businesses, organizations are seeing their cloud costs grow at the same rate as their revenue and utilization – and that’s not good for them. To address that, organizations will pivot their focus from building cloud-first businesses to the economics associated with running a cloud-first business. One area of investment we expect to see is FinOps – still an emerging function in many organizations – as a way to bring together finance, business, and engineering organizations.

As FinOps matures, businesses will move beyond simply forecasting and tagging costs to enforcing cloud expenditure policies and making strategic architecture and workload placement decisions.

Labor Utilization

IDC’s recent survey of tech decision makers reveals that labor shortages still rank as a top three risk factor in 2023. And, while organizations will continue to try and attract and retain talent, they will increasingly recognize that simply throwing bodies at the problem is not scalable. They must pivot to a focus on leveraging their existing talent, which means they will need to leverage more automation.

Whether it’s AIOps, value stream management, or RPA, automation is used in many enterprises today. But it’s still early days for automation. IDC’s data shows that while a third of organizations have automation initiatives, only one out of 10 are mature. There are islands of automation within enterprises, but business will not really be able to solve the labor utilization issue until they harness these efforts under an enterprise automation strategy, presenting opportunities for tech vendors that can help connect and orchestrate activity across the organization.

Customer Acquisition Costs

Despite the pivot toward digital, customer acquisition costs continue to grow because consumers are looking for more personalized, immersive, and real-time experiences across channels and devices, while simultaneously demanding greater data protection. Today, most businesses are not doing a great job of leveraging customer data across the enterprise. IDC’s latest study shows that only 12 percent of organizations connect the data between departments.

Going forward, we expect to see businesses shift their investment focus to customer data management, with the goal of enhancing customer experience. That means we will, in turn, see more investment in customer data platforms, which, to date, have played a minor role. Over the next year, however, IDC predicts they will evolve into enterprise customer data services that use data streams and AI to improve customer interactions

Decision Making

Despite spending $290 billion globally on technology and services to increase decision velocity, 42% of enterprises report that data is underutilized in their organizations.

Why?

Simply put, they are drowning in data. IDC’s Global Data Sphere predicts that by 2026, seven petabytes of data will be created every second. Organizations are trying to harness that data, glean insights, and get it into the hands of frontline decision makers. And, in their efforts to speed that process up, they will shift their investment focus from data generation to decision velocity. They will invest in enterprise data architectures to help reduce the time it takes to turn that data into value generating decisions and they will invest in efforts to bring their business, IT, and data teams together to reduce complexity.

Technology Ecosystems

Trust is at the heart of the digital business – almost 80% of technology decision makers report that trust programs are a priority. However, as more countries put laws and policies in place around digital sovereignty, particularly as it relates to data in the cloud, a new dimension of trust is emerging. An IDC Europe study shows that 71% of decision makers expect digital sovereignty will increase their costs of doing business.

To help address these new trust requirements, organizations will look for additional help from their technology suppliers, essentially “partnering” with them as part of new – and essential – trusted technology ecosystems.

These are the critical business agenda items that businesses must focus on in the coming year. And, technology suppliers must engage with their customers to identify where they can provide additional strategic, technology, and business value. Interested in learning more about the transition to the digital business era? Read IDC’s eBook, Beyond Digital Transformation: What Comes Next?

An organization’s management, both executives and board, need to view cybersecurity as not just a cost center but a way to enable the business to move forward at a faster pace, instead of slowing it down. Managing risk exposures with proactive cybersecurity tools and platforms should be a mindset, not a technology requiring investment. Since good risk management is the foundation of trust, organizations that do it well achieve the trust outcomes mentioned in our framework, benefiting themselves as well as partners and customers. Engendering trust within and outside an organization helps build loyalty; it only takes one lapse in the management of cyber-risk exposure to tear down what took time to build.

IDC’s expanded view of risk exposures includes:

Unknown IT assets, including cloud assets, which are left unprotected by endpoint security tools
Open ports that can be accessed by attackers from outside the organization
End-of-life software because discovered issues are no longer being fixed
Unsupported/antiquated devices that lack innate protections such as printers or IoT/OT assets
Forgotten/unused/unauthorized applications, including SaaS applications, because the security team is not paying attention to vulnerability issues in that software, nor the data that is being stored in and transferred to or shared through that application, and nor misconfigurations in user access policies or password policies
Remote desktop protocol (RDP) open to the internet
Misconfigurations in cloud access policies
Unknown domains/subdomains and forgotten subsidiaries
Data in the cloud that is inadvertently exposed to cloud administrators through improper cryptographic key management
Sensitive or confidential data that is stored improperly with a “trusted” third party
Expired certificates because the browser cannot tell whether the website is authentic (If the users do connect, they cannot be assured that their communications with the website are secure and not through someone in the middle rerouting their traffic.)
Unknown application programming interfaces (APIs) since APIs are being used to share information between applications (The APIs may be created by the organization or a third party to share information or integrate with partner applications.)
Vulnerabilities in the code and applications the organization writes or assembles from open source
Data exposed through lazy backup practices such as information stored in public folders during routine backup maintenance
Hardcoded credentials/secrets such as API keys stored where they are accessible to attackers

The search and discovery of risk exposures needs to be continuous; there should be continuous scanning to enable continuous discovery and monitoring for continuous assessment and analysis of the data. Environments have grown complex with hybrid work, hybrid cloud, ephemeral workloads, and no traditional perimeter that can be protected by a firewall, so point-in-time data is not good enough. The days of monolithic software applications that are updated twice a year on a planned cadence have passed, replaced with a reality of a CI/CD-fueled microservices software architecture that experiences up to thousands of code drops daily. Today much of the code is open source as opposed to being developed internally.

In addition to new types of exposures, the sheer number of common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) is growing as more are being identified and they are also being weaponized more quickly. Security teams need help to make sense of what is important.

Today, many point security products identify and report on these exposures including attack surface management (ASM), cloud workload protection, application security orchestration and correlation (ASOC), SaaS security, API security, certificate management, and vulnerability management. The data may come from various types of sensors: passive sensors, network scanners, internet scanners, agents, virtual scanners, secrets scanners, cloud connectors, APIs, and SaaS connectors. Each point product has its own reporting system and possible integrations with other platforms, making it harder, if not impossible, to correlate the data.

Ideally, all risk exposures should flow into a singular system, no matter how they are discovered, to ensure they can be comprehensively prioritized so the security team can direct their efforts accordingly and ensure it is maximizing cyber-risk reduction across the organization. The risk exposures need to be assessed, measured, and risk weighted based on a singular, homogeneous scoring criteria instead of individual security tools each measuring risk in its own unique fashion. Then the risk score is a comprehensive measure of cyber-risk that can then be integrated into the ultimate assessment — business risk.

Consolidation of point solutions provides a view of risk that, when combined with threat intelligence, provides a reality context weighted view. For example, a vulnerability that is recognized to have a known rootkit being leveraged within your market vertical and geography has a higher risk, all other things being equal, than one that does not. Other benefits may include a reduction of agents, simplicity in implementing automation, volume-based pricing available from a single vendor, and potential tool consolidation because fewer vendors require less time to manage.

In the meantime, some organizations could take even smaller steps towards better proactive cybersecurity by improving the percentage of assets scanned or scanning for vulnerabilities more frequently. According to IDC’s December 2022 Security Operations Center Survey, though device vulnerability management/scanning solutions are used by 82% of U.S. organizations with more than 500 employees, only 34% scan at least weekly. Only 26% report scanning 85% or more of their known IT assets. And that is the known assets; organizations may find around 30% more assets in their shadow IT that is unknown until an external scan is done.

In conclusion, cybersecurity risk management is not an end goal but a journey because the threat environment is continuously evolving, as is the organization. Being proactive means understanding the risk, determining what risk exposures are acceptable and remediating those that are not. Trust is an outcome of successful risk management.

Thinking and management of risk exposures needs to be more broad than traditional vulnerability management.
Visibility into the IT environment is key to proactive cybersecurity because a security team cannot protect the unknown, whether that is assets or applications.
Proactive cybersecurity focuses on controlling the controllables, not just reacting to an attack.
Recommended Actions:
Monitor the environment continuously for previously unknown risk exposures because cyber attackers are doing the same.
Investigate holistic risk exposure platforms in order to use standardized risk scoring to report on cyber risk from all parts of the IT environment.
Remediate the risk exposures as soon as possible using automated workflows when feasible because attackers are moving faster than ever before.
Share the risk data throughout the organization to make good cyber hygiene part of everyone’s job.

“With IT environments growing more complex and potential risk exposures more numerous, organizations need to think about using a holistic proactive cybersecurity management platform that brings all cyber-risk exposures to one place, so they are scored in the same manner. One management platform also simplifies prioritization and reporting.“

Michelle Abraham, research director, Security and Trust, IDC

Many organizations do not work in a shared, co-innovative way with industry ecosystem partners.  They may have limited or no sharing and collaboration other than the day-to-day connection with suppliers or service providers.  For some, that may be enough. 

We think, however, that every organization can benefit from expanding the breadth and type of industry ecosystem partners, from a variety of industries.  In fact, our global Future of Industry Ecosystems survey showed that by the end of 2023, almost 60% will be expanding the number of partners they work with outside of their core industry.  This is the ultimate state of an industry ecosystem, but accessible to any size organization, even for a specific short-term project, initiative, or use case. 

However, it could be that extending outside of a core industry is not feasible or desired for an organization, so the goal is to establish a diverse industry ecosystem of partners within the core industry that support and enhance decision velocity within, and outside, their organization.

The maturity of an industry ecosystem will vary from organization to organization – and may change from a simple, short list of organizations working on a specific project or venture, to a complex, multi-participant ecosystem. 

In February 2023, we set out to determine the current state of industry ecosystems by fielding the Future of Industry Ecosystems MaturityScape Benchmark survey (report forthcoming). The survey asks respondents to self-rank themselves based on the IDC Future of Industry Ecosystems maturity curve (full report here: IDC MaturityScape: Future of Industry Ecosystems 1.0). The majority of respondents see their organizations as having a dynamic value chain in place, well beyond an ad hoc or opportunistic approach. 30% of respondents feel they have a broad range of partners that constitutes an industry, or business, network.  While under 20% of respondents note that they are actively and regularly working with partners outside of their core industry. 

While many organizations have a standard value chain in place, half of respondents do not have a multi-faceted, expanded industry network to support their business operations.  We know from our Future of Industry Ecosystems 2023 survey data that there is indeed a focus on this expansion, both inside and outside the organization’s core industry.  Partnering outside of the core industry is a nascent approach, although desired in the future, as organizations consider the use cases for the various functions within their businesses that could benefit.  This would be in addition to the standard industry network partnerships that are in place. 

Organizations are expanding their industry ecosystems to include a vast array of different participants, so that they are complemented by a varied set of knowledge, skills, capability, or capacity that they may not possess.  These participants may be classical design and supply chain partners, but also the customer, end consumer, citizen, and patient which can provide input on products, processes, and quality.  Competitors are joining forces to address common challenges or team up for innovation that benefits and progresses an entire industry – we have seen this, for example, in the oil & gas, automotive, and transportation industries.  Maturing industry ecosystems to this approach is the goal for organizations that want an on-demand, flexible approach to running their businesses – whether there is disruption to address, or opportunity to pursue.

IDC defines industry ecosystems as including a set of partners, customers, suppliers, service providers, industry organizations, governmental entities, experts, and competitors within and outside your industry that you can dynamically collaborate and innovate with as necessary. This could include industry clouds, business networks, consortia, expert forums, industry and governmental (public) organizations, supply chains, cloud platform services, consulting and systems integrators (SIs), and the end user — customers, consumers, citizens, and patients. 

As our Future of Industry Ecosystems MaturityScape Benchmark survey research shows, the first steps have been taken by many organizations to expand their industry ecosystems, establishing a network of capability, capacity, support, expertise, and knowledge that can be scaled up and down as required. The next step, according to IDC’s 2022 Future of Industry Ecosystems Global Survey as well as this MaturityScape Benchmark analysis, is to incorporate partners from outside the core industry, learn best practices, and add assets, resources, and knowledge that may not be present within their core industry.

We will continue to watch, analyze, and predict this evolution as part of our Future of Industry Ecosystems research practice, in 2023 and beyond. 

It’s practically impossible to avoid the buzz about the latest artificial intelligence (AI) tool, ChatGPT. Since its launch in 2022, people have praised its many advantages. These include boosting productivity, content creation, and conversational interaction.

There’s no doubt that ChatGPT and other AI language tools can be hugely beneficial to companies. But amidst the buzz, there are still many questions to be answered.

What exactly is ChatGPT?

I am ChatGPT, a large language model created by OpenAI. I have been trained on a vast amount of data and can perform a variety of natural language processing tasks, such as answering questions, generating text, and translating languages. My purpose is to assist and provide information to those who interact with me.

Source: ChatGPT

ChatGPT is a language tool that is based on the concept of “generative pretraining”, a type of unsupervised machine learning technique that involves training a neural network to generate new data that is similar to a training set of existing data.

Machine learning enables computers to learn from large amounts of text data, such as web pages and books. This training data is used to generate new text with a similar style and content. The result: a powerful tool for businesses that rely on content marketing and sales to drive their digital commerce.

What are its current limitations?

The research interface for ChatGPT includes three major disclaimers, as follows verbatim:

May occasionally generate incorrect information
May occasionally produce harmful instructions or biased content
Limited knowledge of the world and events after 2021

How can I use ChatGPT for business?

Customer Support

ChatGPT and other chatbots offer immense potential for e-commerce. By leveraging browsing history, purchase records, and other metrics related to a user’s behavior, these chatbot technologies may soon become integral components of personalization engines for e-commerce sites.

Automate tasks and workflows

ChatGPT can manage time-consuming tasks like scheduling meetings, generating event reminders, and responding to emails and reviews.

Search Engine

Although ChatGPT isn’t specifically designed to be used as a search engine, it can be a good tool to start research on a project or generate ideas. It’s important to take into account that ChatGPT is limited to the information it has been trained on, unlike search engines like Google or Bing, which are specifically designed to crawl the web and index information.

Content creation

ChatGPT is a great tool for generating ideas and creating short-form content, including copy for social media posts. Ryan Reynolds, actor and owner of Mint Mobile, recently used ChatGPT to write a script for a commercial using just a few phrases. He called the outcome compelling and mildly terrifying.

Employee training

Employees can use natural language to engage with ChatGPT to get quickly educated on a product or service that they do not fully understand or to get guidance on a unique situation by simply providing some of the key issues they are facing.

What should we look out for next?

Open AI launched GPT-4 on 3/14, 2023. This next generation of GPT may be better at preventing hallucinations, the phenomenon of generating extremely authoritative-sounding misinformation at a rapid pace. The new GPT is a multimodal model and is able to accept both text and image inputs.

What actions do you recommend we take right now?

Optimize your in-house content creation with GPT-3. GPT-3 is designed to augment the content marketing industry and is good at writing compelling short-form ad copy, even though everything it writes will be derived from content already existing online.
Do not replace existing content teams with ChatGPT technology. Even though it can do incredible things, it is still in essence an elevated form of autocomplete.
Plan for the future of online customer service today. ChatGPT was designed to disrupt the customer service industry.
Realize that GPT-3 and ChatGPT cannot currently disrupt the digital personalization and paid search industries. ChatGPT is currently limited to the analysis of public web content published prior to 2021, but the possibility for disruption of the paid search industry certainly exists in the future.