28 January 10
It’s the start of a new year and a new decade. It’s a time to reflect on the past and prepare for the future. As most people are making personal resolutions, what resolutions will you commit to for yourself professionally or for your company? Here are three to consider:
Spend More Time with the People who are Important to You (Your Customers)
Commit to getting a little closer to your customer, or consumers in general, this year. A little bit of knowledge can go a long way to understanding and addressing your customers’ needs and pain points. Are they using your product or service in ways that you wouldn’t expect? Find out by creating an Advisory Board of some of your best and most loyal customers. Or, ask the people in your company who are closest to them – your customer service team. You could also spend a day shadowing your customer to gain additional insights. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Andrew Der
1 December 09
A fellow futurethinker finally got an iPhone this past holiday weekend, bring the firm average back up to a respectable 75% adoption level. Given the latest post, Do We Really Need an App for That?, I thought I’d try to list out some apps I actually do need and use fairly often, as a starting point for the new iPhone in the office. This is in no way meant to be an exhaustive list, but merely a list of some apps I currently use that could be useful for others. Here goes:
- Remote: Great for controlling your iTunes without having to be at the computer — you just need to be connected to the same wireless network.
- Air Mouse: even better for controlling your entire computer without having to be there. Your iPhone is turned into a either a mouse or a trackpad.
- WorkSnug: For the mobile worker, the never-ending search for your ‘third place’, complete with WiFi and coffee, is over with this app that uses augmented reality. So far it only works in London, but they’re going to launch it in NYC and San Francisco soon, I hope.
- Read the rest of this entry »
2 Comments | Technology | Tagged: apple, apps, iPhone, the web | Permalink
Posted by Andrew Der
30 November 09
We live in what the Huffington Post calls an evolving “Clickocracy,” one nation, under Google, with email and viral video for all. There’s no question that the ever-expanding universe of technological innovation pushes all of us to seek out the next big innovations of our own. Some organizations, however, are better at embracing new innovations than others.
Take, for example, the now ubiquitous iPhone App. When Apple launched its App Store back in 2007, it invited pretty much anyone to submit applications for the device using a toolkit of neat technologies. Some organizations have gone on to create genuinely useful, innovation applications for this platform. Like the popular website Yelp, whose app not only allows users to easily find and read reviews of nearby brick-and-mortar business, but nudges into the world of augmented reality by allowing users to hold their iPhone cameras up to a business storefront and instantly see ratings and reviews of that location without having to type a thing. For every App like Yelp, which takes full advantage of the iPhone’s interface and feature set and adds value to Yelp’s core offering, there are ten more that are, to put it mildly, completely useless. Read the rest of this entry »
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: apple, apps, innovation, iPhone, the web | Permalink
Posted by Joshua Kutticherry
29 October 09
How are the world’s leading organizations developing their people and honing employees’ skills? What is the role of the Learning & Development function today and how will that change in the future? We set out to answer these questions in our latest survey on the future of learning and development. (Download the report HERE) Over the years, we have encountered more and more L&D professionals looking to help build innovation into their training programs. In doing this, we learned that the world of corporate education is in the midst of a transition fueled by new technologies, greater time and resource constraints, and a heightened need to provide employees with emerging skills and competencies. In short, innovation in the marketplace hasn’t necessarily translated to innovation in the world of learning and development.
Many organizations we have encountered over the years have been held back by training programs that simply didn’t evolve and adapt with the rest of the organization. While Learning & Development professionals face a wide range of issues, some of the most prominent challenges are around the practice of training itself. The big “AHA!” many are realizing is this: the reason training offerings aren’t more successful isn’t because of the people that attend them (or don’t attend them) — it’s because of the courses themselves. If L&D teams want better attendance and better ROI for their training offerings, survey respondents voiced that course offerings and presentation need to change dramatically. Read the rest of this entry »
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: eLearning, innovation, L&D, learning and development, training | Permalink
Posted by Joshua Kutticherry
29 September 09
The Clinton Global Initiative’s fifth annual meeting was held last week, bringing together business and government leaders from around the world to hash out potential solutions for some of the world’s biggest problems. Interestingly, the central theme of this year’s meeting was innovation. U.S. President Barack Obama delivered a speech highlighting the importance of innovation as a means to bringing the world’s economies safely out of our current recession. Numerous workshops and panels were held throughout the week to help leaders wrap their heads around what innovation means and how they might harness it to ensure growth and prosperity into the future.
But in reading the various re-caps and announcements coming out of the meeting, we were struck by how the conversation around innovation seems to have stagnated. Considering the collective power and stature of Clinton Global Initiative members (membership is restricted to CEOs and political leaders), there was very little ‘news’ emerging from the meeting. The problem is that very few people are thinking differently about growth and innovation. Generally speaking, we’re stuck in the past and shackled by our old notions of growth and success. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Joshua Kutticherry
2 September 09
Below is the sixth ‘prediction’ in an 8 part series on “The Future in 2049″:
Cloning, once the purview of hardcore genetic scientists, is now a mandatory course taught when becoming a food scientist. And why not? In 2021, cloning was approved as a means for improving our food capacity problem and deemed completely safe. With the population greatly increased and land at a premium as a result, it is widely accepted that cloning is a great solution to better engineering food. Like our plants and vegetables that have been genetically modified for years (pluot anyone? Brocciflower?), now meats, chicken and fish are enhanced and reproduced, to create new, healthy, protein SUPERFOODS. With the taboo of cloning long past and the fear of human clones now seen as a science fiction fear (although we do clone body PARTS for regenerative reasons, amputees, surgeries etc). Cloning is a part of food-life and seen as a smart way to manage the food supply. Like plants that can be grown bigger and become more resistant to disease, cloned protein food acts much in the same way and are grown pre-enriched with vitamins than every before.
Leave a Comment » | Food & Beverage, Foresight, Futurism | Tagged: cloning, future, future of food, futurist | Permalink
Posted by Lisa Bodell
26 August 09
Since last fall, the news has been dominated by tales of woe: companies going under, layoffs, downsizing, restructuring, billions of dollars lost. It’s no wonder that organizations today feel handcuffed to the point that innovation takes a back seat to simply staying afloat. But a few companies are bucking the trend and seem to be more focused on growth and innovation than ever before. One of these companies is Google.
In the last 3 months alone, Google has announced groundbreaking new projects such as Google Voice, the Chrome operating system, and Google Wave. These projects, which have been brewing for as many as five years now, are major growth opportunities for a company whose core search business is beginning to plateau. While some companies have chosen to stop work on major, untested new projects, Google has opted to charge forward and is planting a number of important seeds for its future. Will all of these new projects be runaway successes? Probably not. Will at least one of them take off? No one can be sure, but given Google’s track record, it’s very likely. We’ve all read the snippet about Google launching its search business during the dot-com bust in 2000. Read the rest of this entry »
1 Comment | Media & Entertainment, New Business Model, New Product or Service, Technology, Uncategorized | Tagged: google, innovating in difficult times, innovations to watch, media, Microsoft | Permalink
Posted by Andrew Der
19 August 09
As technology in the wireless age continues to bound forward, job roles between doctors and IT professionals are slowly becoming more similar. A woman was recently fitted with the first wireless pacemaker. The new pacemaker allows doctors to monitor the patient’s heart condition remotely, allowing the patient fewer visits to the doctor. At least once a day, the pacemaker will communicate with the server which will immediately notify the doctors if there are any changes in the patient’s condition. This type of remote technology could decrease the number of doctor visits a patient requires, potentially reducing healthcare costs and increasing the efficiency of healthcare.
Even for many of us not yet requiring pacemakers, the story begs many questions about the similarities between this and other mobile information tools at our fingertips today. What if I’m in a wireless dead zone? Can the pacemaker update my Facebook status? If I wanted to Twitter about my Arrhythmia, can it do that for me? Could this device, coupled with social networking, potentially be the start of a new norm for reporting personal emergencies? For instance, instead of dialing 911 when my grandmother takes a spill, I, along with the local fire department, will get a status update that she has fallen and can’t get up. Soon enough you will be able to go to the doctor/Geek Squad rep and have a “device” installed in your body that will keep you healthy, allow you to communicate with anyone, do your work for you and help you meet your significant other. Oh wait, there’s probably already an app for that.
Leave a Comment » | Healthcare, New Product or Service, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Travis Merrifield
5 August 09
The Times recently posted an interactive graph illustrating how different groups of people spend their day. It’s fascinating to toggle through the various sorts to see how different segments of the population spend their time at various hours. For instance, those with only a High School education seem to have work schedules that last throughout the night, whereas at 3am, nobody with an advanced degree is at work.
The activity I was most interested in viewing across segments was the baby blue section toward the bottom: Relaxing and Thinking. Theoretically, this pocket of time is where the most innovative ideas could be spawned. However, on average, only 1% of those employed engage in this activity throughout the day, versus 4% of those who are not in the labor force.
Obviously, there are numerous implications for these data. Identifying opportunities in the market based on various daily behaviors. If you’re targeting a specific segment of the population, it’s helpful to know how they spend their time and what, on average, they’re doing at a particular time during the day. In a simplistic example, the combination of certain activities — for instance, household cleaning and TV & Movies — could offer insights into when commercials for a Swiffer Duster should air.
4 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: consumer data, trends | Permalink
Posted by Andrew Der
