The new year is here and some are predicting that the platform revolution has arrived in full force. As Greg Satell writes on Forbes in “Every Business Will Be Disrupted By Open Technology“:

Technology is now transforming human experience at an extremely visceral level. If you are competing with the plumbing company across town—or a startup across the world—you now have the same capabilities as the world’s largest corporations at your beck and call. But then again, so does everybody else and that’s why 2014 will be the year of the ecosystem.

This is no longer the stuff of gadget-crazed millennials and slick conference presentations of “thought leaders,” but is beginning to permeate every aspect of society and commerce.

In a word, amen.

Simon Says

Technology is now transforming human experience at an extremely visceral level.

You’ll get no argument from me. I’ve been singing the mantra on contemporary business platforms for three years now. Sure, there are still plenty of hollow bromides from CXOs and marketing bigwigs about platforms. The very type of disruption and innovation that I describe in the book, however, is picking up force. Case in point: IBM opening up Watson as a platform.

Lip service to platforms and platform thinking isn’t going anywhere. Here’s to 2014 being a year of greater substance in this critical business area.