It's time for businesses to build a 'we economy'

DO you place your phone next to you on the dinner table at a restaurant and sometimes sneak a peek between servings? Does your child watch television while simultaneously playing video games on a tablet or smartphone? Have you foregone an alarm clock, flashlight and calculator as machines of a bygone era because their functions are all in your smartphone?

Leaving aside the social etiquette issues and queries about our ability as a society to fully concentrate on any one thing anymore due to our multi-tasking obsessions, there is an undeniable truth: we live in a digital era and businesses need to be leveraging the new possibilities this enables for successful growth.

It is unlikely that any business will be able to take full advantage of the potential of digital technologies alone. Instead, they should look to partner with others to form a digital ecosystem and create what we call the "we economy". Accenture Technology Vision 2015, our annual outlook of the technology trends that we believe will have the greatest impact on enterprises during the next three to five years, notes that pioneering companies are tapping into each other's digital businesses, customers and even devices to expand their…