Methodology

 

Advocacy - The Next Wave

Op/Ed by Jack Leslie, Chairman, Weber Shandwick, published in PRWeek U.S. on March 12, 2007

It’s a story as old as innovation itself: Change is evolutionary, not revolutionary at first.

The first cars went where horses did, only quicker. The first word processors did what typewriters did, only easier. And the first wave of digital communications technology did what print and broadcast media had already done -- share information -- only faster and farther.

At first, in other words, new technologies usually enhance the performance of existing tasks -- no small feat, but not a revolutionary one, either. The real revolution comes when people use the new technologies, not to improve existing tasks, but to create new possibilities.