A barrier-breaking presidential election, a new commitment to ending global warming, a cry for increased regulation from investment bankers, and a business model I call the Mobility Enterprise. This year will be a big chapter in the history books.

The election of President Obama was the result of events and trends that occurred long before 2008. Capital markets’ merciless decline are a consequence of bad decisions and desires before 2008. Geopolitical pressures and military actions are based on policies enacted well before this year. And the underpinnings of the country’s new focus on environmental stress and clean energy were set in motion decades ago.

…Not even the Philadelphia Phillies’ World Series championship occurred entirely within 2008.  It was a complex series of events that one could argue began with drafting Ryan Howard and ended with the acquisition of Brad Lidge. 

Back to the Mobility Enterprise, since it is my area of expertise.  (Can’t really say that about baseball after my predictions this year.)

Every company now uses some sort of mobile technology. Could be a laptop, mobile phone, pager – doesn’t matter.  In fact, some companies only use mobile devices.  A combination of the Internet, wireless devices, and hosted (cloud-based) applications continues to be a hallmark of our daily work-life. 

How did we get here? We can all take some of the blame. The Internet was led by consumer demand.

Remember the original mobile phone from 20 years ago?  It was bigger than my Beta tape player and weighed more than my current laptop.  It’s laughable now.  Those “cutting-edge” phones have been abandoned in favor of something that could fit in Barbie’s handbag.  The adoption rate has been incredible: everyone has at least one.

But unlike the nation’s adoption of green energy and racial equality, we as business leaders have not embraced the mobility movement. There is still a massive amount of unrealized productivity yet to be unlocked with a mobilized workforce.

There isn’t a section in the annual business plan for mobility enablement as a strategic investment.  The corner office, the HR department and the legal department (mobility has risks!) still haven’t teamed with the business units, the IT departments and security departments to build a mobility infrastructure.  As a result, they’re all losing – time, money and productivity.

At best, an enterprise’s focus on mobility is usually considered an IT responsibility – managing laptops and sourcing Blackberries. The legal department issues guidance on retention, dissemination and data protection.  Not only is this inadequate, it’s harmful.  Today’s businesses need a model for mobility that is not segmented by compartment or department, a model that works for the enterprise as a whole. 

The Internet has been so disruptive because of the universality of its impact; it runs like water finding every path to a person where there is a connection. We need to transform our mobility operations mindset into an actual mobility operations model. A new operational model for business and all things communicative for a transaction of some sort.

That’s what I call the Mobility Enterprise.

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