Wall St. Journal Validates Prediction about the Future of the "Office"

In our annual predictions this year, we developed a list called Premature deathwatch -- a list of items that we felt would generate coverage proclaiming the death of those actual things.

For example, the Office -- not the NBC sitcom, which will go off the air this year, but the need for offices as we’ve used them. 

Last week, the Wall St. Journal ran an article, "Say Goodbye to the Office Cubicle; Walls Come Down as Many Companies Switch to Layouts Designed to Foster Collaboration," that said that one of the companies that helped "spawn the cubicle craze more than 40 years ago" is "turning a profit these days by trying to kill it off."

Is the cubicle dead yet?

According to the Journal, the trend was first seen about a decade ago and was reinforced by the recent long-term recession.

In the wake of Yahoo's announcement that it would no longer allow employees to work remotely, we're not sure that the office or the cubicle really is dead. On the other hand, we are sure that the way we work has changed, in large part because technology is changing how and where we access corporate data. 

As we wrote in our prediction: "Current technologies like cloud computing and videoconferencing do facilitate working from locations other than from an office, and we’ve seen a steady increase in telecommuting and working from home, leading to articles about tech in bed – but for a lot of jobs, an office will remain necessary." For others, we won't be able to describe them as office workers when they never actually work in an office. 

Boston Globe Validates Prediction about H1B Visas Being an Ongoing Story in 2013

As part of our annual predictions for 2013, we said that "Jobs,unemployment, and recruiting and the need for specially-trained employees forspecific industries will be a big story."

Turns out the Boston Globe agrees with us. The Globe's business editor made "Demand rockets for visas to bring in foreign workers" its lead business story today in the print edition. (You can find the article with its online headline: "H-1B visas predicted to go fast.")

Although unemployment continues to decline, and the rate is still a relatively high 7.6%, the story is that businesses, especially biotechs, continue to have trouble finding skilled employees.

This need for highly skilled employees turns into an immigration and an education story. I had lunch with a friend yesterday who is discouraged that so many schools in disadvantaged communities are not able to provide their students with the education they need to succeed in today's economy. I generally stay away from politics on this blog but we clearly need to make sure our schools produce qualified engineers because as a country, we can't stay competitive if we need to recruit from other countries. 

Boston Globe Validates Predictions about Cashless Payments and Gender Roles

In our annual predictions, we said that as part of "ongoing stories" that we expect to get a lot of coverage in 2013, we identified these two:

• Salaries paid women vs. men

         and

•  Cashless payments

Yesterday, the Boston Globe validated both of those predictions.  The "salaries paid women vs. men" stories has actually shifted already to address on women's roles in the office. Part of the reason for that shift is the result of interest in Yahoo's CEO, Marissa Mayer, who recently gave birth and returned from a brief maternity leave. More significantly, Facebook's COO, Sheryl Sandberg, has generated tons of coverage as the result of her book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. (Incidentally, "Lean In" was one of the phrases we identified last year as a candidate for most overused phrase.) The whole focus on women and the office will continue to generate buzz this year, even after buzz for Sandberg's book dissipates.

Meanwhile, check out these two front-page Globe articles, which validate our prediction about women and salaries, and were published under the banner: "Crunch hits single mothers hard": 

• Gloria Steinem’s message about gender, then and now  
• Single-mother families struggling in Mass.

(Meanwhile, taking an opposite angle, the New York Times yesterday reported, "Study of Men’s Falling Income Cites Single Parents." The point: it seems that some gender issues are taking on more significance in the media.)

As for the cashless payments predictions, the Globe also reported: "Not paying by smartphone? You soon will, many bet." While this all seems relatively new to U.S. companies, two of our international clients prefer to pay electronically; in fact, the CFO of one international client told me earlier this week that he can't remember the last time he saw a check! We said we expect cashless payments to become mainstream by 2016 but it may happen sooner (based on comments like that CFOs, since it seems Europe has already embraced cashless payments). Perhaps that time will come by 2015.

What do you think?

USA Today Validates Our "Made in the USA" Prediction

As part of our "ongoing stories" we expect to see in 2013, we said we expect that "Made in the USA," involving reporting that companies "are bringing back manufacturing jobs to the U.S."

We said, "As costs in India, China, Russia and Brazil increase, expect that the benefits out offshore outsourcing may decline enough to make it more attractive to bring some manufacturing back home. Look for stories about small manufacturers whose business is growing as a result."

Subsequently, USA Today wrote an article, "Some manufacturers say 'adios' to China." Check out the USA Today article.

We also expect that some of the coverage to manufacturing in the U.S. will discuss security concerns of doing business in China.

NYT & WSJ Validate Our Cyberattack Prediction

For the last two years, we've predicted that cybercrime, cyberattacks and cyberwarfare would be top ongoing stories.

We'd rather not be right about this. And we don't want clients to be involved -- just prepared that this is a topic that the media will cover.

Nonetheless, here are two recent New York Times and Wall St. Journal headlines that validate our predictions:

• Wall St. Journal: U.S. Official Cites Cyberattack Risks
• New York Times:  Security Leader Says U.S. Would Retaliate Against Cyberattacks

As background, in our predictions for 2013's"Ongoing stories we’ll see covered in the media," we wrote:

Cybercrime and cyberwarfare: We said this was a growing issue in 2012, and we maintain that's the case for the rest of the decade. There will be a lot of articles about China as a source for cyberespionage and policy articles about how the U.S. should protect itself from its largest creditor. Expect regular front-page coverage about the latest exploits against the U.S. and U.S. companies. A big concern: our security and intelligence agencies don't have enough trained personnel to protect against and prevent cyber attacks against the U.S. and American businesses; and they lack the resources to fully identify and prosecute cybercriminals. We also expect to see a rise in the number of stories about cyberstalking and “revenge porn,” where jilted exes post incriminating (and often false) information as a way to get back at former spouses, lovers, and friends.

Wall St. Journal Looks at iPhone vs. Galaxy

One of the tech battlegrounds we've predicted that will get a lot of media attention this year is the battle between Apple and Samsung.

More recently, I wrote an analysis that looked at the implications for this battle at least for Apple: "What Are the Implications for Apple if Samsung's Latest Smartphone Eclipses the iPhone?"

Interestingly, the next day, the Wall St. Journal reported, "Apple, on Defense, Slams Samsung."

Apple is not used to playing defense so it will be interesting to see how it responds to a serious threat to the iPhone and ultimately to its iPad supremacy.

Stay tuned (as they used to say).

Birnbach Communications' Top Predictions for 2013, Part XII

Ongoing Tech Trends we expect to continue 

• Cloud computing: This trend started in 2010 and quickly became mainstream. 
• The battle of tablets: After several years of breathless media coverage, the battle for tablet supremacy began when Apple, recognizing a vulnerability in its product line, launched the iPad Mini. Last year, we said it was a two-horse race between iPads and the Kindle Fire but expect a third player to gain traction – enter the Samsung Galaxy. This story has just begun. 
• Gaming for business:  Gaming will continue to be integrated into business and training apps to keep people engaged and entertained. 
• Big data: The media will continue to cover big data as it continues to go mainstream…until big data is supplanted by the next data trend. 
• Consumerization of enterprise apps: Enterprise apps had been hard-to-use but the mobile and BYOD trends has meant that formerly ugly enterprise apps now must be intuitive and easy to use. This push for ease of use also comes from the millennials, who expect enterprise apps to work like consumer apps. 
• Hybrid IT: Part on premise, part in the cloud: Companies need the best of both cloud computing and on-premise technology. We see this as a hot tech trends. 
• Second screens: Increasingly people watch television programs with their tablets, too, so they can comment real-time on what they’re watching. Helping customers express themselves and buy while they’re watching TV is going to be an important from a marketing perspective in the coming years. 
• Infographics: We expect companies to use infographics – visual representations of information like survey data – to make information shareable via social media but we don’t expect print media to reprint corporate inforgraphics because they typically take up too much of a user’s screen, particularly on smartphones. That doesn’t mean infographics are not worth producing, it just means B2B companies need to be realistic in terms of goals for their use.

Let us know if you agree or disagree with these or any other in our series. While this is a long list -- we could have probably broken them out into smaller individual sections , we felt that a dozen was enough -- this is not meant to be comprehensive, especially since trends pop up. For example, there's the "Harlem Shake" YouTube meme, which we haven't addressed (in part because when we created this list in January, the "Harlem Shake" hadn't gone mainstream). Or Pope Benedict's resignation and the appointment of Pope Francis -- clearly a top religion story for the year.
 
For our previous installments of our predictions, click here for Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII ("Premature Deathwatch, Part I"),  Part VIII ("Premature Deathwatch, Part II"), Part IX ("Premature Deathwatch, Part III"), Part X ("Ongoing stories, Part I") or Part XI ("Ongoing stories, Part II").