McKinsey Classics: A vision of our digital future

McKinsey Classics | September 2015

A vision of our digital future

In 1997, McKinsey Quarterly published a piece titled simply “A revolution in interaction.” Examining how people and companies work together, it predicted a two- to fivefold increase in our capacity to interact—an increase driven by the expansion and falling cost of computing power and telecom networks.

The article envisioned the world we live in today. As it foresaw, businesses “benefit from the superior economics of specialized suppliers.” Customers “search exhaustively” for “the exact product of their choice at the lowest price”—which might come “from nearly anywhere in the world.” Intermediaries such as travel agents have foundered as providers go “directly to consumers via telephones and the Internet.” Web browsers “capture information about the interactions” with customers. And new techniques make it possible to transmit “music, photographs, and video in standard formats over a single electronic channel.”

Read this classic Quarterly article to learn more about today’s world—foretold nearly two decades ago.

Related reading

Read highlights from our current, months-long Raise your Digital Quotient series, about how companies can improve their digital performance:

Six building blocks for creating a high-performing digital enterprise

An executive’s guide to the Internet of Things

Changing change management

Did you miss our previous McKinsey Classics?

A digital conundrum—what business are you in?

Much has changed in the 15 years since “Unbundling the corporation” appeared in McKinsey Quarterly. Yet the article’s central thesis rings truer than ever: the evolving economics of digital networks mean that companies must continually ask themselves what business they’re in.

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