Question: On May 18, 2012, Facebook went public at a valuation of $104 billion. On May 19, 2013, exactly a year after Facebook's problematic initial public offering (IPO), OLAP product provider Tableau Software raised $254 million in its IPO. The shares opened at $31 and closed $20 higher at $51. Marketo, a cloudbased marketing company, had its IPO that same day, and its stock closed 78 percent above its opening price. Tech is hot. What's next? What's the Next_Big_Thing? If you knew, you could identify the next Tableau or Marketo for investment or employment or perhaps start it yourself. Of course, no one knows for certain, but let's apply knowledge you already have as a guide. Figure 1 casts the history of the computer industry into the frame of the five components of an information system. IBM led the hardware era; hardware customers focused on writing their own software to accomplish some function, payroll and other accounting functions were common. Next came the software era that Microsoft led with Windows, but companies like Oracle and SAP contributed to making software licensing a reality.
The focus of software customers is creating data. Data, really BigData, is the focus of the current era. Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn are data companies. As evidence, Facebook created Cassandra and Hadoop and gave them away to open source. Clearly, it perceives its value as data and not software. The focus of the data era is to influence behavior. And what era is next? What is the focus of the Procedures era? Answering that question is key to the Next_Big_Thing. Note that at each stage, the customer focus pointed to the next component. Hardware customer focus was on software. Software focus was on data. Data focus is on behavior, or procedures. Will the procedure focus be on people? Work with your group and answer the following questions
1. Discuss the meaning of "At each stage, the customer focus has pointed to the next component." Restate this phrase in the words of your own group.
2. Do you agree that the focus of the BigData era is to influence behavior? What other focus interpretations of today's era are possible?
3. Assume the next era computer industry will concern procedures and that the focus will be on people. One possible focus is to Eliminate Jobs. If that is the focus, what does it mean for business? For the economy? For you? Discuss your answers among your group and report your conclusions to the rest of the class.
4. Rather than Eliminate Jobs, another possible focus of the procedural component is to Enhance Human Life. Discuss ways in which that might happen. If it does, what opportunities will it create for you? Discuss your answers among your group and report your conclusions to the rest of the class.
5. Working with your group, identify two or three other procedural focus statements other than Eliminate Jobs or Enhance Human Life.
6. Of all the focus statements you've considered, choose the one you think is most likely. Explain your choice. Using that statement, describe three business opportunities that could lead to the Next_Big_Thing
7. One important question is what happens after the People-component-era? Where does the arrow on the far right go? Ray Kurzweil developed a concept he calls the Singularity,8 which is the point at which computer systems become sophisticated enough that they can adapt and create their own software and hence adapt their behavior without human assistance. At that point, he claims that clouds of myriad computers working 24/7 will accelerate away from humanity and humans will become, well, what? Work with your team and state what you think the consequences of the singularity might be.
8. Given all of this, if there is a more exciting, important, and potentially rewarding field than MIS today, state what it is.