Convenience Drives Conflation

Disintermediation is coming

Convenience always wins, or so the saying goes. In reality, we’re approaching what my brother calls “Peak Attention.” I believe we’ll reach that point when self-driving cars go mainstream; with the potential to unlock a surplus of 365 million hours every day in the US alone.

The point is, attention is scarce. And scarcity is a powerful force for driving behaviour (no pun intended). The less time you have, the more efficient everything needs to be.

As the number of websites increase, the average number of users per website declines, and their potential value diminishes in line with this as value is created at the point of use.

When there’s complexity in a market, there will be players that seek to cut through the noise and gain a competitive edge. They are intermediaries. They add value to the system by reducing complexity and so attract larger audiences and cumulative use than the objects they are mediating.

While behaviour drives demand, technology enables. The perfect interface is said to be no interface at all. I’m not sure when we’ll get there, but in the meantime I’ve put together a chart to show how these forces are coming together.

I’m a strategy consultant with over 10 years experience in digital and a keen interest in product strategy and business innovation. Ping me a note on here or Twitter to say hi if you’d like to chat.