Where Will We Be In 52 Mondays?
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I appreciate everyone in this community, and I believe in you. Not the version of you reading this post today. I believe in the December 5th, 2023 version, the one who spent the next 12 months doing fantastic work.
It’s prediction season again, but this one is very different. In 2019 and 2020, I talked about a reckoning for technology and our field. Businesses would begin to expect results, and we would be challenged to deliver. That’s in full swing now. In 2023, technical strategy will be defined and gain traction. Until now, all the talk has been fuzzy, but someone will finally write the book that launches technical strategy into the mainstream.
I talked about the challenges to come for Google’s business model, and those are materializing. Challengers will become more apparent and bolder in 2023. Big Tech companies have matured into incumbents, and the 2020s versions of themselves will disrupt the former disruptors.
I frequently said businesses keep their most advanced models and capabilities under wraps. Watch how quickly Big Tech companies unveil their versions of each major release we see from OpenAI or academia. Some are a couple of years old. Big Tech struggles with when to release these models to the public as much as they struggle to monetize their capabilities.
OpenAI is looked at as a potential Big Tech disruptor, but I haven’t decided if they are more like Facebook or Myspace. OpenAI is focused on hiring more data scientists and researchers, but they should be focused on their technical strategy. Today, OpenAI’s primary value proposition is interesting social media posts. Microsoft has monetized CoPilot, but OpenAI rarely talks about revenue-generating applications.
Their current GTM (Go To Market) releases cool models and lets the community define use cases and value propositions. A competitor with similar products and a firm grasp on customer needs will brush them aside if they don’t improve their GTM.
I poke a lot of fun at chatbots. “What do we want? Chatbots! When do we want them? I’m sorry, I don’t understand your question.” Now they seem within reach, and their applications are bigger than simple Q&A systems. We’re about to see what happens when models can generate conversation, images, and videos based on our natural inputs. DALL-E2 prompt: ‘Me with Thor’s Abs.’ Here’s ChatGPT’s assessment of my chances of actually getting Thor’s abs.
Harsh reality delivered by a computer.
This wave’s applications will be pretty mundane compared to the fantastical predictions, but the impacts will be impressive. ChatGPT can replace Wikipedia, some informational Google searches, and even some Stack Overflow searches. Companies can replace most data and knowledge search tasks with ChatGPT trained on their internal documentation.
Video games are about to get a lot more immersive and configurable. OpenAI should be showcasing a reference implementation with a highly interactive character. Outside of video games, online support would be much more engaging with a character like this, replacing the bland chat box.
Ads will be designed in real-time to be much more effective. We should see examples of ad content, images, text, and video, generated and served in real-time. The ability to interact with an ad is a game changer. Partnering with Twitter to produce interactive ads in the timeline would be groundbreaking.
OpenAI needs to begin telling these stories and showcasing business applications vs. technical implementations. They have captured our attention, but that will be lost instantly if someone else shows a customer-centric vision.
If you see a technical strategist show up at OpenAI, figure out how to invest. If you see one show up at a competitor, start predicting OpenAI’s decline. The recession we are going through will be relatively mild compared with the Great Recession and Dot Com Bust. The competition between tech companies and startups will be quite the opposite.
There are trillions of dollars in market share up for grabs. Meta and Alphabet look vulnerable. Amazon Prime and Tesla look shaky too. The titans will be challenged. OpenAI feels like it has an open field, but it’s only running on the technology front. As Alphabet and Meta have proven, being an innovator isn’t enough. Revenue doesn’t just magically appear.
I have learned something from my past predictions and the times I was wrong. There’s one way to be an amazing predictor. Predict what you’re going to build and then execute.
I’m writing the book on technical strategy. Challengers to Big Tech and leading-edge startups will emerge because I will define the blueprint for those challengers to succeed.
How can Tesla be dethroned? I wrote about Elon’s leadership style and how it can be challenged. Coalitions can challenge his community and will. Execute better and with higher quality to challenge his substance. Out engineer Elon to distract him from evangelizing his vision and purpose.
Don’t go after his ability to sell investors on value. Elon’s very successful at defining the value proposition other tech leaders struggle with. His implementation of technical strategy relies on vision and purpose. He’s working to implement both into an actionable strategy, but he hasn’t figured that part of what I do out yet.
How can Meta be dethroned? I wrote about social media’s business model flaws. Zuckerberg hasn’t successfully sold investors on Meta’s story and the metaverse’s value proposition. Their early demos focus on all the wrong things. Headsets are a barrier to adoption instead of an enabler.
Meta has a traditional strategy that’s disconnected from its technology. Monetization won’t happen until those connect, and that’s the opportunity for competitors to step in. The company that builds a compelling value proposition for the metaverse and aligns it with its technology roadmap will brush Meta aside.
I hold Disney’s implementation of an incremental metaverse up as the blueprint to follow. I also discuss the boring use cases that will bring Web3 into the mainstream. Zuckerberg hasn’t figured out how to transition from legacy to modern strategy. He still believes that technology and strategy are separated. Meta won’t succeed until they learn how technical strategists bridge the divide.
Did I just compare myself to Zuckerberg and Musk? No, I compared them to me, their approaches to mine. That’s probably my spiciest prediction to date. I know technical strategy works because I’ve seen it work. I know my frameworks generalize because my students have also had success with them.
I don’t have to sell the need as I did between 2014 and 2020. I have success selling the solution. The timing is right because the market understands its needs. No one is ready to adopt a solution until the problem impacts them.
I am finally ready to write the book because I believe in its content, and the target audiences are looking for it. The first sale you make is always yourself, and I am sold.
Am I trying to sell you my book? Not yet. I want to sell you my approach to predicting next year’s trends. I want you to take the same approach. Predict the future you’re about to make, and don’t be afraid of lofty goals.
Data science is a field of innovators and pioneers with a connection to execution. The combination of science, technology, and engineering is the recipe for disruption. You can build what has never existed before.
Marcus Aurelius talked a lot about how short our lives are. His intention was not to instill fear but to fill people with purpose and urgency. Don’t wait until 2024 to do what you could start right now. Be more afraid of never getting the chance to achieve your dream than you are of trying and failing.
Everything is crazy until someone makes it real. The sound of people ridiculing your ideas is an innovator’s theme music.
I started the Monday posts almost 11 months ago with the theme of gratitude. In 2023, I am adding a second theme, belief. I appreciate you, and I believe in you. What is the basis for my belief?
I have achieved some amazing things and am nowhere near the smartest person in this community. If I can do this, what can you do? Predict next year by talking about your impact. What will you have built by today in 2023?
The power of causal knowledge is its ability to give you information from the future. If you know what causes events, you know how to predict them. You are the causal feature in who you are at this time next year. Make decisions with that future knowledge. How did you get to where you are in 2023? How did you overcome the setbacks you faced on your way to who you became?
You are a future builder. I’m starting the conversation with your CEOs and teaching them how valuable you are. I will lay out the blueprint for you to monetize and turn innovation into tangible value. I provide the tools to compete against whoever you decide to take on with the technology you build.
If you are a leader, strategist, researcher, or technical practitioner, I moved some of the barriers out of 2023 you’s way. I won’t get to build with those tools or compete with those titans. That’s you now, and I can’t wait to see what you do. I wouldn’t have done all that if I didn’t believe you built a better future than I ever could.
If it feels like I’m talking to someone else, you’re right. I’m talking past you to 2023 you. I believe they listened.
Vin