1616: Colin Nagy
Colin Nagy is the Executive Director of the Barbarian Group. He subscribed to FoT in October 2014.
1) What change do you want to see in the world of mobility by the end of 2016?
I’m most interested in the new “service layer” that seems to be emerging with things like Olo’s recently introduced Dispatch.
For example, Olo has built up relationships with major chain restaurants around the U.S. where they handle online and mobile ordering. Their newest product, Dispatch, lets you get your food in McLean, Virginia as easy as you do in the Lower East Side. A user orders, states they want their food for delivery, and Dispatch then bids it out automatically to whatever on-demand services sit in that ever-growing part of the transportation and logistics stack. It is a real hunger games, with Postmates fighting Uber for your business. The user gets something they couldn’t get before, in a frictionless way.
This creates a really interesting dynamic in the vaulted on-demand world, in which single brands are actually quite disintermediated.
I think there’s a growing and interesting coral reef of on demand things that are good at scratching an itch, but I really want to deal with one interface when wanting to go somewhere or get something done.
Related to my particular field of creativity and business strategy, I am interested in what this service layer looks like and how we will utilize it at the end of 2016. Will it be a messaging interface? Will it be within apps that we already use and are popular? Will it be through a human life concierge that sorts everything for you using smart technology as an enabler?
2) If you had to drop everything right now and build something that had the greatest impact on mobility, what would it be?
Tough one. But what I am passionate about has to do with mobility and people with disabilities or other communities that are underserved by technology. How do we apply these amazing springs and levers we have working in this new transportation and logistics stack and use it to take better care of people. Things like autonomous cars will be a life-changing breakthrough for many people with disabilities, granting a new measure of independence.
In short, how do we not just create products and services for the well heeled and tech savvy, and also focus on those lives could be greatly impacted by technology. In that case, it isn’t just removing friction, it is creating completely new opportunities and bettering lives.
Colin Nagy Bio
Colin Nagy is Executive Director, Media and Distribution at the Barbarian Group, a New York based creative agency.
