It seems to be increasingly important for businesses to understand how people live their lives. I recently came across this video podcast featuring Karsten Jonsen. He talked eloquently about how social change is relevant for management. He referred to the blurring of the private and public sphere through new information communication technologies as an example. This blurring of boundaries was also the topic of a seminar on Humanizing Work hosted by the Lehman Brother Centre for Women in Business. The seminar was convened by Professor Judy Wajcman who invited Professor Richard Sennett and Professor Lord Anthony Giddens to give keynote speeches.

Both of are sociologists and Stefan Stern, columnist at the FT, wrote after the event that managers can learn a great deal from sociologists. Anthony Giddens talked about addiction. There is a clear technology angle to this because Giddens referred to that when people wake up at night, they are often so addicted to their BlackBerry that they check for new emails first before going to the toilet (Stefan Stern has written about this in his column too).

Email and the internet can become like a drug which Belinda has discussed. Dr Ivan Goldberg has coined the term Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) for this phenomenon and psychologists classify IAD as a mental illness. There is of course always the danger of creating the mental illness one speaks about. What is central however is that the knowledge of how people live their lives is important to create insight into what kind of products and services people might be interested in and also in what kind of work environment they want to be.

The Telegraph featured an article on 30 May 2008 entitled ‘Feminised gadgets: An eye for the ladylike’. The article claims that women become more and more interested in gadgets. Figures seem to support this. Sony Ericsson claims that women spend more money on gadgets than on shoes (£391 per year or £17 billion in total). Based on the article two-thirds of the Nintendo DS users are female.

The article assumes that feminised technology is something new in the West yet well established in Japan. DoCoMo asked women what they want in mobile phones and subsequently produced a hugely popular, small clamshell handset with an integrated camera. At that time few people understood the value of cameras in mobile phones but that has changed of course dramatically.

Women do seem to hold the key for many design innovations in the gadget market simply because they are often not asked what they want from technology. The article also quotes Ladygeek research saying that women do not want pink products but useful, easy to use products. They want phones that are also fashion accessories and beautifully designed.

The classic example is Jonathan Ive’s iMac design which showed that computers did not have to be beige or grey boring boxes but can be design features. My first generation iBook does indeed look stunning in my room and is regularly admired by visitors.

What appeals to women often does appeal to men too. The article claims that indeed ‘gender barriers are becoming blurred’ suggesting that men and women both want beautifully designed, easy to use technology. Rather than becoming feminised it appears that technology is finally being made fit for humans rather than just a certain group of technology savvy and nerdy men.

The Internet is according to an article in BusinessWeek going to go pink because women are apparently the hottest target market for social media.

The article’s author Auren Hoffman who is CEO of Rapleaf states that Web 2.0 is all about being social. This is supposedly more appealing to women. Rapleaf and Business Week surveyed 13.2 million people and found that more women than men are using social media.

The research found that young women are much more active on social networking sites but married men over 30 do not even seem to join social networking sites. Married women between 35 and 50, on the other hand, are the largest growth segment for social media – defying the stereotype that only young people are hooked to the Internet.

The study also claims that men’s behaviour in social media is more transactional, i.e. gathering information and making introductions, while women are more relationship oriented. This sounds like a very stereotypical view of men’s and women’s behaviour but Auren Hoffman foresees that women will increasingly be hired to engage with key audiences. The future target market for Web 2.0 applications are according to the article women.

The article in The Times from 20 May entitled ‘Salesmen say this Pounds 300 pink phone with its cartoon cat loved by children is aimed at women of 30. Parents fear otherwise’ written by Lilly Peel states that the pink Hello Kitty phone produced by Sanrio is targeted not at young girls but at women in their twenties and thirties. This is based on a comment by Sanrio’s sales director Caroline Preston. I wonder what market research Sanrio has done to come to this claim. The Lady Geek research Saatchi & Saatchi has conducted last year found very clearly that only 9% of women in the UK would buy ‘pinked up’ mobile phones and technical gadgets. Pink might in the end be a better colour to attract young girls than women in the UK market.

A recent article suggests that the number of girls playing games has increased to 41% in Australia. The article argues – as we have pointed out many times in this blog – that stores selling video games and makers of video games are not set up to please female customers. It is really surprising that companies have not realised that almost half of their customers are female.

The study also highlighted that women playing video games in Australia are now on average 28 years old, up from 24 years. The trend suggests that games of the future are not only as likely to be male as female but also older.

The article suggests that one way of responding to the increasingly female audience of video games is through having more female game developers. The figure the article quotes for Australia is 5% while the international figure stands at 12%. The picture is similar in computer science courses at universities and colleges where women make up only about 10% in the US as an article in USA Today states.

This is supported by the fact that the few women who enter science and technology professions are also likely to drop out as a recent contribution of Silvia Ann Hewlett in the FT claimed (I will review her Harvard Business Review article here when it is published next month). Hewlett argues that as many as 52% of highly qualified women in science, technology and engineering drop out due to work pressures and a hostile environment.

The IT industry can ill afford training few women and losing them in disproportionate numbers later on. However with more women actively using technology and playing computer games, one can hope that the image of technology jobs might change slowly.

Last week I attended a change management course which was taught by Richard Jolly. When we talked about personal change, we discussed how the BlackBerry and other technologies transformed how we work and live.

On the one hand the BlackBerry means that boundaries between work and home life are removed. Earlier work was clearly contained by the physical space of the office. You had to work in the office and were kicked out when the offices were closed. This has changed, however. Now we can be always on and we expect other people to be always on too. If your boss sends you an email on a Sunday you better have an answer when you meet him or her the following morning or even better for your corporate brownie points, reply straightaway. Replying instantly to an email is seen as a great achievement and celebrated in society. However this constantly on phenomenon leads to that people burn out easier and work takes over all aspects of life. This all contributes to what is called hurry sickness. Hurry sickness is the feeling that everything has to be done instantly and that it cannot wait a couple of seconds.

There is the other side to it. The liberating aspect of technology. You can now answer emails while playing golf and pretend to be at work. Working mothers often celebrate that their life has become now more integrated when they are able to have a BlackBerry. They can type emails from home or while on the tube. Yes, a BlackBerry allows you to use your time more efficiently. Especially when your time is limited.

In reality, life is probably not as black and white but has many shades of grey. You have to work hard to not allow technology to take over your life.

Switch off your BlackBerry and give yourself some time! There must be times when you are just not available. Some of the most successful business people I know regularly take time for themselves when they are just not available and this time is non-negotiable. This times saves them from burn out, allows them to recharge their batteries and makes them more focused and productive when they work.

If you manage people you need to think about what kind of example you set them. If you send emails on a Sunday, your employees will work for you then. It might be wise to write emails off line and send them on a Monday morning and most things can wait.

Decelerate your life and still use the benefits of technology!