“That will be 7-10 business days.” The familiar sinking feeling and the mental calculation of business days follows. There may be some readers among who wonder what a business day even is? I was chatting with a client a few weeks ago, who I’ll leave anonymous (Murray, you can reveal yourself in the comments if you’d like) and we had a good laugh about the ridiculousness of business days in today’s world.
The idea of the dictionary of obsolescent concepts is to capture those terms that are or should be fading from use. One of the key trends driving business days into obsolescence is “just-in-time.” Basically, people are finding information and making plans on the fly, using communications device and software or apps. And as delivery systems improve, and peaking ahead, local 3D printing and distributed manufacturing grow, “business days” will look sillier and sillier, and using the concept will anoint the organization(s) using them as old-fashioned and out-of-touch. Customers are not on a business day timeline, and the will only do business on “business days” timelines if they have no other choice. (And this includes government agencies, perhaps the worst offenders)
As is always the case, there will be individuals and organizations who will continue to use the concepts in defiance of trends in the other directions. Some will be blissfully unaware, others will more consciously fight the future and mock the changes ahead, both at their own peril. Andy Hines
Danniel says
Andy, I really like the idea. Especially has it opens up an interesting perspective for research
Obsolescence, depends on many factors as market changes (culture paradigms), internal barriers (Knowledge Management), concepts that embrace more inspirational and not so much practical perspectives (Blue Ocean) etc.
Good idea keep going,
The very best,
Daniel