Written by Building a website for yourself is not hard in today’s world and so as I embark on my new adventure I thought I would pull all my blog articles together into one place. Here is an article from earlier in the year.
Buzzwords
Earlier today I was emailed, with a request to take a look at an online article which was dishing out career advice for people in the travel tech industry. It featured the usual list of buzzwords (some of which I have changed to protect the innocent). We all know them, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Bots, Mobile, Quantum Computing. If your content creation, PR or thought leadership teams are not churning them out like water from a hosepipe how will you get recognise, how will your share of voice go up? How can you and your brand stand out from the crowd? I think we all need to take a long hard look at ourselves and ask the questions Why? Why am I putting this article out? Why am I at work today? and why does any of it mater? In short, how do we build trust with our customers, our employees, our stakeholders? I would argue it’s not through churning out more of the same or strongly agreeing with everyone just because it’s easy. In a world of alternative facts and increasingly polar views, it’s more important than ever that we all stand up for what we believe matters and what is important. But also recognise that the good stuff happens in the grey space between extream points of view. Not sure you agree… Take a concept like traditional architecture its looking dated based on cloud computing which is increasingly making business consider if they need architecture, in the conventional sense. Or take Big data overused as a catchphrase, business needs data science, and most importantly a need a reason to do either.
I would argue the better skills for travel tech professionals are to have is an in-depth knowledge of product management, business model’s and value proposition design so they can partner more efficiently across the business, particularly with marketing and sales.
Renaissance
These are the skill combinations that make tech professionals unstoppable. Just like the 14th – 17th-century renaissance, where people with diverse skils delivered genuinely new ideas and created a better society. It’s these skill combos and diversity that enable lateral thinking and new ideas to be created. Yes, there is a place for deep knowledge in all business but it’s in the spaces that exist between business models and industries that new ideas are formed and new growth opportunities often make themselves apparent.
As a set of buzz words, the article I reviewed covered most of them from the last few years. However, today if your a travel tech expert I would not recommend extending your skills to take on mobile or big data better use of your time would be to continue into new areas like business models, value props, lean startup thinking, where you will become an unstoppable force for change. I would recommend recent books like Blue Ocean Shift, Business Model Design, and The startup way these will give the kinds of insights, which in my view let technologies expand their skills and career prospects beyond buzz words and across the travel and technology industry.
