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Your Future & Communication Technologies

August E. Grant, Ph.D.*

This book has introduced you to a range of ideas on how to study communication technologies, given you the history of communication technologies, and detailed the latest developments in about two dozen technologies. Along the way, the authors have told stories about successes and failures, legal battles and regulatory limitations, and changes in lifestyle for the end user. Authors have also offered tips on how you can get a job working with that technology.

So what can you do with this information? If you’re entrepreneurial, you can use it to figure out how to get rich. If you’re academically-inclined, you can use it to inform research and analysis of the next generation of communication technology. If you’re planning a career in the media industries, you can use it to help choose the organizations where you might work, or to find new opportunities for your employer or for yourself.

More importantly, whether you are in any of those groups or not, you are going to be surrounded by new media for the rest of your life. The cycle of innovation, introduction, and maturity of media almost always includes a cycle of decline as well. As new communication technologies are introduced and older ones disappear, your media use habits will change. What you’ve learned from this book should help you make decisions on when to adopt a new technology or drop an old one. Of course, those decisions depend upon your personal goals—which might be to be an innovator, to make the most efficient use of your personal resources (time and money), or to have the most relaxing lifestyle.

This chapter explores a few ways you can apply this information to improve your ability to use and understand these technologies—or simply to profit from them.

Researching Communication Technologies

The speed of change in the communication industries makes the study of the technologies discussed in this text kind of a “spectator sport,” where anyone willing to pay the price of admission (simple Internet access) can watch the “game,” predicting winners and losers and identifying the “stars” who help lead their teams to success. There are numerous career opportunities in researching these technologies, ranging from technology journalist and professor to stock market analyst and government regulator.

As detailed in Chapter 3, there are many ways to conduct this type of research. The most basic is to provide descriptive statistics regarding users of a technology, along with statistics on how and when the technology is used.

But greater insight can usually be obtained by applying one or more theories to help understand WHY the technology is being used by those doing so. Diffusion theory helps you understand how an innovation is adopted over time among members of a social system. Effects theories help you understand how and why a technology impacts the lives of individuals, the organizations involved in the production and distribution of the technology, and the impact on social systems.

In order to do this type of research successfully, you need three sets of knowledge:

•History of communication technologies
•Understanding of major theories of technology adoption, use, and effects
•Ability to apply appropriate quantitative and qualitative research methods

With these three, you will be prepared for any of the careers mentioned above, and you will have the chance to enjoy observing the competition as you would any other game that has so much at stake with some of the most interesting players in the world!

Making Money from Communication Technologies

You have the potential to get rich from the next generation of technologies. Just conduct an analysis of a few emerging technologies using the tools in the “Fundamentals” section of the book; choose the one that has the best potential to meet an unmet demand (one that people will pay for); then create a business plan that demonstrates how your revenues will exceed your expenses from creating, producing, or distributing the technology.

Regardless of the industry you want to work in, there are five simple steps to creating a business plan:

1)Idea: Every new business starts with an idea for a new product or service, or a new way to provide or enhance an existing business model. Many people assume that having a good idea is the most important part of a business plan, but nothing could be further from the truth. The idea is just the first step in the process. Sometimes the most successful ideas are the most innovative, but other times the greatest success goes to the team that makes a minor improvement on someone else’s idea that enables a simpler or less expensive option. Applying Roger’s five attributes of an innovation (compatibility, complexity, relative advantage, trialability, and observability, discussed in Chapter 3) can help you understand how innovative your idea is.
2)Team: Bringing together the right group of people to execute the idea is the next step in the process. The most important consideration in putting together a team is creating a list of competencies needed in your organization, and then making sure the management team includes one expert in each area. Make sure that you include experts in marketing and sales as well as production and engineering. The biggest misstep in creating a team is bringing together a group of people who have the same background and similar experiences. At this stage you’re looking for diversity in knowledge and experience. Once you’ve identified the key members of the team, you can create the organizational structure, identifying the departments and divisions within each department (if applicable) and providing descriptions for each department and responsibilities for each department head. It is also critical to estimate the number of employees in each position.
3)Competitive Analysis: The next step is describing your new company’s primary competition, detailing the current strengths and weaknesses of competing companies and their product or service offerings. Consider the resources and management team, and agility of the company as factors that will influence how they will compete with you. In the process, this analysis needs to identify the challenges and opportunities they present for your company.
4)Finance: The most challenging part of most business plans is the creation of a spreadsheet that details how and where revenues will be generated, including projections for revenues during the first few years of operation. These revenues are balanced in the spreadsheet with estimates of the expected expenses (e.g., personnel, technology, facilities, and marketing). This part of your business plan also has to detail how the initial “start-up” costs will be financed. Some entrepreneurs choose to start with personal loans and assets, growing a business slowly and using initial revenues to finance growth—a process known as “bootstrapping.” Others choose to attract financing from venture capitalists and angel investors who receive a substantial ownership stake in the company in return for their investment. The bootstrapping model allows an entrepreneur to keep control—and a greater share of profits—but the cost is much slower growth and more limited financial resources. Once the initial plan is created, study every expense and every revenue source to refine the plan for profitability.
5)Marketing Plan: The final step is creating a marketing plan for the new company that discusses the target market and how you will let those in the target know about your product or service. The marketing plan must identify the marketing and promotional strategies that will be utilized to attract consumers/audiences/users to your product or service, as well as the costs of the plan and any related sales costs. Don’t forget to discuss how both traditional and new media will be employed to enhance the visibility and use of your product, then follow through with a plan for how the product or service will be distributed and priced.

Conceptually, this five-step process is deceptively easy. The difficult part is putting in the hours needed to plan for every contingency, solve problems as they crop up (or before they do), make the contacts you need in order to bring in all of the pieces to make your plan work, and then distribute the product or service to the end users. If the lessons in this book are any indication, two factors will be more important than all the others: the interpersonal relationships that lead to organizational connections—and a lot of luck!

Here are a few guidelines distilled from 30-plus years of working, studying, and consulting in the communication technology industries that might help you become an entrepreneur:

•Ideas are not as important as execution. If you have a good idea, chances are others will have the same idea. The ones who succeed are the ones who have the tools, vision, and willingness to work long and hard to put the ideas into action.
•Protect your ideas. The time and effort needed to get a patent, copyright, or even a simple nondisclosure agreement will pay off handsomely if your ideas succeed.
•There is no substitute for hard work. Entrepreneurs don’t work 40-hour weeks, and they always have a tool nearby to record ideas and keep track of contacts.
•There is no substitute for time away from work. Taking one day a week away from the job gives you perspective, letting you step back and see the big picture. Plus, some of the best ideas come from bringing in completely unrelated content, so make sure you are always scanning the world around you for developments in the arts, technology, business, regulation, and culture.
•Who you know is more important than what you know. You can’t succeed as a solo act in the communication technology field. You have to a) find and partner with or hire people who are better than you in the skill sets you don’t have, and b) make contacts with people in organizations that can help your business succeed.
•Keep learning. Study your field, but also study the world. The technologies that you will be working with have the potential to provide you access to more information than any entrepreneur in the past has had. Use the tools to continue growing.
•Create a set of realistic goals. Don’t limit yourself to just one goal, but don’t have too many. As you achieve your goals, take time to celebrate your success.
•Give back. You can’t be a success without relying upon the efforts of those who came before you and those who helped you out along the way. The best way to pay it back is to pay it forward.

This list was created to help entrepreneurs, but it may be equally relevant to any type of career. Just as the communication technologies explored in this book have applications that permeate industries and institutions throughout society, the tools and techniques explored in this book can be equally useful regardless of where you are or where you are going.

Keep in mind along the way that working with and studying communication technologies is not simply a means to an end, but rather a process that can provide fulfillment, insight, monetary rewards, and pure joy. Those people who have the fortune to work in the communication technology industries rarely have a chance to become bored, as there is always a new player in the game, a new device to try, and a great chance to discuss and predict the future.

In the process, be mindful of all of the factors in the communication technology ecosystem—it’s not the hardware that makes the biggest difference, but all of the other elements of the communication technology ecosystem that together define this ecosystem.

The one constant you will encounter is change, and that change will be found most often at the organizational level and in the application of system-level factors that impact your business. As discussed in the first chapter of this book, new, basic technologies that have the potential to change the field come along infrequently, perhaps once every ten or twenty years. But new opportunities to apply and refine these technologies come along every day. The key is training yourself to spot those opportunities and committing yourself to the effort needed to make your ideas a success.

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* J. Rion McKissick Professor of Journalism, School of Journalism and Mass Communications, University of South Carolina (Columbia, South Carolina).

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