Convergence as a word in Wikipedia has 33 topics, under 9 headings. It’s a complex word.
In the context of this post, I refer to convergence in the way the online world and the offline world converge. In the way user behaviour moves seamlessly online to offline and back. And how all of that convergence adds complexity to the way companies talk to their customers and the way they present their products.
It is difficult to understand the impact of convergence on your company, your clients, and your offering, if you cannot identify its impact in your own life. Are you the same person at work as you are at home? If not, how do you manage that convergence? Is your behaviour the same when you shop online vs. when you shop offline? How about communicating, reading or travelling? The list of areas where convergence plays a role, in your own life, is endless. Now multiply that by the needs and requirements of your customers, and you’ll understand the impact it will have, or is having, on businesses and the way they interact with their customers.
Wake Up is a Strategic Intelligence Report, a quarterly publication by Omelet. You may just like the latest topic for Winter 2014. Convergence.
To quote the editor’s opening letter on convergence:
“These hotspots produce some of the most valuable brand insights and audience intelligence. And today, our world are converging at an unprecedented pace: work and pleasure, public and private, real and imagined. Collisions are, by their very nature, messy. They result in conflict, tension, and contradiction. But that is the richest vein for innovation. Because breakthroughs don’t happen without breaking something.”
Note: If you’re not already using ISSUU as a reading platform, I would highly recommend having a look. It is firstly a publishing platform, which means it has some publications you may not otherwise have been able to get your hands on. They have now also released their iOS app, which is the perfect size for my iPad mini.