innovation

I am back from two days at UX STRAT 2019 — a conference that gathers an international community of design leaders and experience makers. This single-track conference offers presentations about the latest trends at the intersection of business strategy, user experience (UX), product, and service design. The three big takeaways for me this year are […]

The Benefits Of Design Thinking Are Quantifiable, And They’re Compelling By Ryan Hart (principal analyst, CX) and Benjamin Brown (senior consultant, Total Economic Impact) Design thinking has historically enjoyed “blind support” among executive leaders based on its perceived value. However, many of these same leaders now find themselves increasingly under pressure to show the return […]

Graphene will (eventually) affect all of us, whether we know it or not. I’ll explain later, but first, let’s take a step back and level-set. What is graphene? Simply put, it is one single atomic layer of carbon, produced by various methods of separating layers of material from graphite. It only existed in the theoretical […]

The recent merger of CloudBees and Electric Cloud is a sign of the times in the world of DevOps as integrated DevOps solutions come back into vogue. Not too recently, this would have been looked down upon as a step in the wrong direction when it comes to innovation and providing value to developers. But […]

On April 18th, T-Mobile officially launched its T-Mobile MONEY checking account, after a soft launch late last year. This is not the first time we’ve seen a telecommunications firm enter the banking space – it’s already been happening for years in Europe and Asia, with large telcos such as Orange and KDDI. And this isn’t T-mobile’s first foray into banking either. So should banks be worried? Watch below to learn more.

Large corporates and startups seems like a match made in heaven. The former have the customer base, budget, and scale that the latter crave. And startups bring speed and agility and can help enterprises experiment with emerging technologies and business models. There’s even a whole industry of matchmakers — platforms and accelerators that aim to […]

Consumer data misuse has lit up the headlines and eroded trust. From the ashes of these corporate scandals will rise a new industry: the anti-surveillance economy. Read what this means for companies that monetize consumer data.

As you have heard from me before, in today’s age of the customer that is driven by digital transformations, to position your company for future market leadership, you must prioritize tech-driven innovations that deliver net-new values to your customers. To best achieve this aim, you must start with a companywide mission and CX-driven ideation efforts […]

Apple and Goldman Sachs are partnering to deliver a new credit card. The industry seems to be quick to dismiss the partnership . . . but there’s an awful lot more at stake here than credit card rewards.

Change The Game By Embracing Radical CX Innovation OK, so you’ve elevated and transformed your customer experience (CX) practices over the past five (or more) years. These practices have become more professional, more analytical, and more focused on business impact. But there’s one area where many of us still fall short: innovation. I’m not talking […]

Every enterprise should be using an innovation platform to help track, drive, and evaluate its innovation efforts. However, do not limit this effort to an innovation management software solution. As noted by my colleague, Dan Bieler, you need a continuum of collaboration tools. To help address this, the leading innovation platforms today have added on […]

This morning, I came across a story about Warby Parker’s new “virtual try-on” capability. It seems the eight-year-old eCommerce company is dipping its toes back into augmented reality (AR). The rub is that the auto-magical feature is only available to people on Warby Parker’s iOS app for iPhone X or later. I guess Android and […]

The origin of the term “moonshot” — used to describe the most advanced, disruptive innovations — has returned again as an innovation focus of its own. Last week, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) disrupted its competitors, such as NASA, by landing its Chang’e-4 spacecraft on the dark side of the moon.   The CNSA’s own “moon shot” […]

Every company will face disruption from new market entrants and innovations that seek to solve some of the world’s most difficult issues. To get a sense for the potential impact of such innovation, a new Forrester report, “Disruptive Innovations Are Happening In Every Industry” by James Staten and Michele Pelino is a must-read for CIOs […]

Too many firms are heavily focused only on what their customers are looking for today. This makes sense if you are struggling to address these current, tactical needs. But if you are meeting these needs, your focus needs to shift to:  Your customers’ needs evolution. Your customers’ ultimate objectives — beyond what they use you for. […]

Nearly half of the firms we survey are prioritizing innovation as key to their business strategy. When I step back and think about it, the reason for this is easy to understand: Exponential changes such as Moore’s law in the past and Metcalfe’s law today are accelerating the pace of business. In a recent study of […]

For years now we’ve been promoting the concept of “fail fast” as if failure is awesome, something to aspire to. In many ways, it is. Thomas J. Watson Sr., the chairman of IBM in its industrial heyday, advised “If you want to succeed, double your failure rate.” I can find you a dozen similar quotes, […]

Context And Timing Is Critical For Robots And Humans To Work Well Together

Volkswagen’s recent announcement of its decision to build its automotive cloud platform on Microsoft Azure is yet another example of the types of tech-driven innovation efforts that transportation leaders are taking to position themselves as customer experience leaders. The objective of Volkswagen Automotive Cloud is to transform the company to a digital-services-driven business. While the […]