Hybrid People…Not Cars

The term hybrid is now commonly associated with cars like the Prius. But really the term just means merging two separate things together to create something better. I believe the market is going to see a lot of hybridization over the coming years. Things come together either because they create something better or because the complexity or challenge of one of the things requires the other one. In academia, we’ve seen different fields come together. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky brought together psychology and economics when they realized that to understand human behavior for economic purposes you need to understand human psychology. Law and economics from my alma mater came together a long time ago. Similarly, technology and professional services are coming together because while technology brings amazing new capabilities it also brings complexity that makes it much harder for a lot of technologies to be used DIY. The good news….I don’t think professional services are going away. They are just going to have to evolve. When spreadsheets emerged, the accounting industry didn’t go away. It just evolved.