Megatrendy: Has Starbucks Benefited from Naisbitt’s “High Tech High Touch” Trend?

Starbucks may have come along at just the right time.  More on that in a bit.

The futurist author John Naisbitt is perhaps best known for his 1982 bestselling book Megatrends.   In this book, Naisbitt identified a set of trends, really predictions about society, with most if not all driven by technological advances following developments by William Shockley and others that led to the modern semiconductor industry, and thus the digital world we live in.  This book may have been responsible, more than any other publication, for getting thinking people to actively consider how technology was and would continue to transform society.

The 10 trends (Megatrends) Naisbitt identified were:

1. More of an information society (from an industrial one)
2. Technology pulled into use as appealing to people
3. A more global economy
4. Longer term perspectives
5. Decentralization
6. Self-help (vs. Government help)
7. More participative democracy
8. Networking (vs. hierarchy)
9. A more southwestern bias (vs. northeastern)
10. More choices

Above: The futurist author John Naisbitt discusses “high tech high touch.”

In the second of his listed trends, which discusses technology increasingly being pulled into use as it becomes increasingly appearling to people, Naisbitt makes a case for what he refers to as “high tech high touch,” the increasing search for human interaction by people as such (interaction) is otherwise reduced with increased use of technology.  In 2001 Naisbitt published a book, High Tech High Touch, that elaborated further on the topic.

Who knew that the world would become so digital? At the time Megatrends was published in 1982 so much progress was though to have already been made. There was no Google back then.  There was no iPhone. With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the PC had not even truly caught on just yet.  What most people thought he was referring to at the time was the use of computers in the workplace, the mainframe type systems that were becoming pervasive within large businesses. The advent of personal devices, effectively computers in your palm, was not on most people’s radar.  Perhaps Naisbitt was looking to the future even more than we appreciated the time.

With his “high tech high touch” concept, Naisbitt predicted that as technology became more pervasive people would do things such as go out more, to the movies, to dinner, or whatever, simply for the human interaction.  This makes some sense.  If one assumes that as humans we are social beings, and that as such we require some amount of interaction with other humans, then as this interaction is reduced in some area of activity it must be replaced in another.

Since the publishing of Megatrends the digitization of the world has become exponentially more pervasive. With the advent of the iPhone and Android devices using Google, Amazon, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, so much of what we do during the day has gone digital. Even our social life is largely conducted on the digital level.  This would seemingly increase the absence of interaction that Naisbitt referenced, setting up an environment for some activity or place to serve as a mechanism for the touch in high tech high touch.  I submit that Starbucks is that mechanism.

Consider when you walk into a Starbucks. What do you do? You look around see what people are doing, to observe how they’re interacting.  Essentially, you go to a modern version of the local square to check out what is happening in your community. Is there a budding romance in the corner? Is there any type of buzz going on? Are they discussing a business deal over there? Is that guy trying to get a job?  Think about it; even when you go by yourself, then walk in, order, and walk out, Starbucks is on some level a social experience.

So what does this mean for commercial real estate?  Well, it means that social experiences matter. It means that urban environments are preferable. In the absence of interaction through other means people want to have more social interaction in the workplace.  Watching the cows graze after work simply loses its appeal after a day on a keyboard, as otherwise you’ll just get keybored (could not resist).

Open work spaces will become increasingly popular. Could it be that the reason spaces tend to be open within IT companies has less to do with effectiveness or differences in preferences of young people than it has to do with mental health, i.e. with providing social interaction for activities that otherwise don’t (sufficiently) call for it? The rise of incubator style shared office spaces may be driven by this need for social interaction among young professionals if not all people. People think of young people preferring these types of spaces, but maybe it’s more that young people are embracing technology more.  In other words, maybe it is because the younger generation is more digital, and thus has more of a “high touch” deficiency, not that they are “different.”

Son of a gun.  Maybe people are people.

At some level, I suspect Howard Schultz knew this.  He likely felt a need for “a place,” albeit perhaps without considering why that need was there or if it was a newly developed need.  In any case, he did it, and did it well.  Kudos on that one, eh?