Boston Globe
Emily Nagle Green is president and chief executive of Yankee Group, the Cambridge technology research firm. She is also the author of the recently published book, “Anywhere: How Global Connectivity Is Revolutionizing the Way We Do Business.’’ She recently spoke with D.C. Denison of the Globe staff.
Will the mobile revolution be bigger than the Internet? Yes, I think so. Over a 10-year period, the Internet connected about a billion people. This revolution will touch 5 billion people, but more importantly, it will probably touch a trillion things. And once you do that, you create a structure that will support the building of a lot of value on top of that.
What kinds of things will be connected? A pill bottle is a good example. I have one that was developed right here in the Boston tech hub by a company called Vitality. It’s connected to the Internet, and it communicates when it is opened and closed. The value is that other people, like family members, can keep track of how well I’m doing in taking my medicine. But there are many other things that are also getting connected: pianos, pallets in factories, vending machines, miners’ helmets — all sorts of objects can now report where they are, whether they are full or empty, wet or dry, running smoothly or broken. The ability to send that kind of information to the network in real time is important. These things are better, more useful, because they are connected.
Will the next Google be a mobile firm? Could well be, and it could even be Google, because Google recently said that they’re now putting mobile first in their business.
Has the growth of mobile been accelerated because executives are fascinated by these gadgets and the connectivity? You’re half right. It’s being accelerated by enthusiasm, but not just executive enthusiasm. It’s the enthusiasm of incoming employees and workers. We’ve all gotten quite savvy as individual consumers, and we’re taking that into the workplace. The millennials are bringing a much savvier sense of technology into the workplace. It’s that energy that’s pushing businesses toward the anywhere revolution.
Is all this connectivity going to benefit developing countries more than people in the United States, Europe, Japan, etc.? There’s a whole different set of benefits emerging in those developing markets. In the Boston area, for example, mobile experiences are supplementing experiences we already have access to, like banking and health care. But the mobile benefits that are emerging in places like India are often their first opportunity to get access to health care or banking. So it’s completely transformational for them: It’s contributing to changes like increased literacy and longer lifespan.
Is there anything that could derail this mobile revolution? There are a whole set of threats. I don’t think anything could stop it completely. But the wrong kind of regulation could slow it down.
What is the most recent connected device that you’re now using in your home? It’s a cool thing called a Chumby. It looks a little like an alarm clock, and it’s taken the place of the alarm clock on my night stand, but it’s much more than that because it’s connected via Wi-Fi to the Internet and it rotates through a series of widgets according to how I set it up. Mine displays the time, but it also wakes me up to Pandora Internet Radio in the morning, shows me headlines from The New York Times and The Boston Globe, and displays feeds from Twitter and Flickr. It’s a new path to me as a consumer. It’s a path beyond the computer, radio, phone, and TV.
What was the last mobile app you downloaded? RedSox.com. I like to have latest stats available in real time on my mobile device.
Do you try to plan and protect offline time? I do, but I’m not always successful in keeping my promises. We have a summer house in Pennsylvania, and one virtue it has is that the connectivity there is really poor. My daughter finds that annoying, but it does make it a place where it’s pretty easy to keep my promise to stay offline.
Will the mobile revolution be bigger than the Internet? Yes, I think so. Over a 10-year period, the Internet connected about a billion people. This revolution will touch 5 billion people, but more importantly, it will probably touch a trillion things. And once you do that, you create a structure that will support the building of a lot of value on top of that.
What kinds of things will be connected? A pill bottle is a good example. I have one that was developed right here in the Boston tech hub by a company called Vitality. It’s connected to the Internet, and it communicates when it is opened and closed. The value is that other people, like family members, can keep track of how well I’m doing in taking my medicine. But there are many other things that are also getting connected: pianos, pallets in factories, vending machines, miners’ helmets — all sorts of objects can now report where they are, whether they are full or empty, wet or dry, running smoothly or broken. The ability to send that kind of information to the network in real time is important. These things are better, more useful, because they are connected.
Will the next Google be a mobile firm? Could well be, and it could even be Google, because Google recently said that they’re now putting mobile first in their business.
Has the growth of mobile been accelerated because executives are fascinated by these gadgets and the connectivity? You’re half right. It’s being accelerated by enthusiasm, but not just executive enthusiasm. It’s the enthusiasm of incoming employees and workers. We’ve all gotten quite savvy as individual consumers, and we’re taking that into the workplace. The millennials are bringing a much savvier sense of technology into the workplace. It’s that energy that’s pushing businesses toward the anywhere revolution.
Is all this connectivity going to benefit developing countries more than people in the United States, Europe, Japan, etc.? There’s a whole different set of benefits emerging in those developing markets. In the Boston area, for example, mobile experiences are supplementing experiences we already have access to, like banking and health care. But the mobile benefits that are emerging in places like India are often their first opportunity to get access to health care or banking. So it’s completely transformational for them: It’s contributing to changes like increased literacy and longer lifespan.
Is there anything that could derail this mobile revolution? There are a whole set of threats. I don’t think anything could stop it completely. But the wrong kind of regulation could slow it down.
What is the most recent connected device that you’re now using in your home? It’s a cool thing called a Chumby. It looks a little like an alarm clock, and it’s taken the place of the alarm clock on my night stand, but it’s much more than that because it’s connected via Wi-Fi to the Internet and it rotates through a series of widgets according to how I set it up. Mine displays the time, but it also wakes me up to Pandora Internet Radio in the morning, shows me headlines from The New York Times and The Boston Globe, and displays feeds from Twitter and Flickr. It’s a new path to me as a consumer. It’s a path beyond the computer, radio, phone, and TV.
What was the last mobile app you downloaded? RedSox.com. I like to have latest stats available in real time on my mobile device.
Do you try to plan and protect offline time? I do, but I’m not always successful in keeping my promises. We have a summer house in Pennsylvania, and one virtue it has is that the connectivity there is really poor. My daughter finds that annoying, but it does make it a place where it’s pretty easy to keep my promise to stay offline.
