Innovator Profiles

Id Summary Bio Answer 1 Answer 2 Answer 3 Answer 4 Answer 5 Leader Actions
55  <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Helen Simpson is Head of Innovation at Ikabo an online collaboration and innovation platform based in Australia. Helen holds a joint honours degree in Business finance and economics and a postgraduate diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing and has undertaken extensive training in creativity and innovation. Helen is responsible for brand positioning and communication, customer centric strategic planning, a customer driven product development pipeline and onboarding and training new clients.<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Prior to joining Ikabo, Helen worked for Squiz in a business transformation role helping organisations better leverage digital technology to achieve innovation and growth. Prior to this, she has worked in customer insights and customer driven product innovation for some of the world's leading corporates in domestic, regional and global roles. She has led global teams to develop new products, insights programmes and innovation and communication strategies.<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Ikabo is an online innovation platform which crowd sources insight and ideas to help problem solve, collaborate and co-create at scale. This results in the best ideas progressing, whilst dramatically increasing engagement and sustaining a culture of innovation and transformation.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Ikabo is an important digital tool for modern organisations who want to empower teams to transform the way they work and drive a culture of creative problem solving and innovation.<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Helen is passionate about helping organizations drive innovation and positive change by engaging &amp; harnessing their people&rsquo;s talent. Ikabo works with business leaders to optimise employee engagement, amplify their innovation efforts and collaborate and co create solutions at scale.<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.ikabo.com/">Ikabo</a></span><span class="s1"> is growing through taking a collaborative approach to innovation and growth and harnessing its ecosystem of partners to help solve client problems.<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span></span></p>  <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Ikabo is an online collaboration and innovation platform based in Australia. Ikabo&rsquo;s unique point of difference is that we don't just on board and train a new customer on to our platform, but we fully support clients on their first project, from framing the challenge to final selection of concepts to implement. Ikabo has also developed a fully automated customisable method of evaluating concepts into a rated and ranked order in order to help leaders make objective and democratic decisions.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Ikabo partners its clients to create a path to innovation success by working with senior leaders to ensure the vision and strategic intent of the organisation is aligned to the challenges that are posted on the platform.</span></p>  <p class="p1"><span class="s1">The ideas management sector has developed and matured over the last 15 years or so and there are many new innovations taking place in the form of features and functions and pricing models being adopted. Artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions are also being explored to improve the customer experience in how ideas are converged and developed with limited human effort.</span>&nbsp;</p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">New innovations are delivered through new product releases, I think one of the biggest challenges as in most product development, is feature overload, how to balance a myriad of client needs and wants with an optimal customer experience that remains simple and easy to use. Many of our clients have come from other innovation platforms that offer all the &lsquo;bells and whistles&rsquo;, so much so they tell us they literally don't know how to get started, because there are too many options to choose from. Keeping a simple user friendly interface that is beautiful and delivers a seamless experience, is always front and centre in our minds.</span></p>  <p class="p1"><span class="s1">When Ikabo was first established the founding team was involved in the co-creation of the product, the positioning, the go to market strategy and in lead generation and sales demonstrations. The team works in a low hierarchical, fast moving and agile way, there is high psychological safety and everyone can be involved in open discussions on key strategic decisions. Ideas and openly shared and discussed about how we might grow the business and how we can continually improve what we do - the customer is at the heart of everything we do at Ikabo. We actively and continually engage our customers in feedback both formally and informally, so that our product pipeline and new product releases are delivering customer relevant improvements that surprise and delight our customers.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">One of our values is &lsquo;better together&rsquo; (&lsquo;If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together&rsquo; - African proverb) and we truly believe (and know) a cognitively diverse team solves problems better and faster, and we apply this when we solve client problems, and how we approach the growth of our company. Ikabo has grown through taking a collaborative approach and harnessing our ecosystem of partners to raise awareness of our offer and collaborate on client problems together.</span></p>  <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I think we will continue to see artificial intelligence and machine learning being explored to improve the customer experience on innovation platforms, I think we will see different products being developed to meet market and price needs of different clients.</span>&nbsp;</p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I think we will see clients putting a stronger emphasises on outcomes of innovation not just engagement, which in turn will encourage vendors to look at the entire range of innovation programs and products that organisations are using and consider how an ideas management platform can work more effectively and integrate with current activities to deliver improved outcomes overall. Gone are the days when organisations can employ different innovation programs and products, for example design thinking programme, to skunkworks, skills training and innovation labs and hackathons as discrete activities. Organisations at the highest level need to build a shared understanding of their common innovation goals so they can all work and make meaningful progress, together.</span></p>  <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I have been inspired by public sector reforms in Australia and some of the amazing work government agencies have been achieving. Bureaucracy, hierarchy, a challenging culture, limited resources and the machinations of Government all prove to provide a compelling reason for innovation and change NOT to thrive. However despite this, we are privileged to be working with &nbsp;a number of small teams who against the odds, come together and drive amazing change one project at a time.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Transport for NSW is an interesting case study, they are constantly trying to disrupt themselves and are putting the customer at the centre of what they do. They are looking at what it is that the customer really needs, and releasing real time public transport data was a huge step first step for them &ndash; they took a test and learn approach. They opened the market and a raft of start-ups got involved via a hackathon, and now we have a number of apps which provide customers with real time information to make their trip a whole lot easier. The latest initiative has been establishing the Smart Innovation Centre is NSW&rsquo;s which is a hub for collaborative research and development of safe and efficient emerging transport technology. One key project they are working on is to partner with industry to conduct trails on autonomous vehicles.</span></p>  Helen Simpson View Edit Delete
15  <p class="p1">Innovation and creativity are at the core of Sam's practice and view of the legal profession, and he has for some time now been involved in projects which seek to use technology to change the way in which legal services are delivered and purchased. Sam is the founder of the pioneering online legal advice platforms,&nbsp;<a href="http:// www.virtuallawdirect.com">VirtualLawDirect</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.svperbar.com/"><span class="s1">SvPerbar</span></a>&nbsp;which use technology to make lawyers, legal advice and pricing more accessible, transparent and efficient, with an emphasis on standardizing legal advice and providing access to flat-fee legal products.</p>  <p class="p1">This is not an easy prospect by any means, particularly when working within an established and age-old profession. Change is seen as a threat to existing stakeholders in many cases, but law firms are beginning to realize that through pure market forces alone they will eventually be required to innovate in order to compete. I have found that having an international perspective on how things are done helps to instill a desire for change, not only in seeing how different work cultures operate, but also in appreciating the broad inter-connectivity that we now all experience, &nbsp;the need to keep ahead of the pack to serve clients' more diverse and ever more challenging expectations, and to compete effectively. Giving employees and partners the&nbsp;latitude&nbsp;to experiment with ideas and, perhaps more importantly instilling a culture of respect for different ideas and initiatives is a key element which law firms have traditionally struggled with given their&nbsp;hierarchical structures. To innovate, I believe that you need to &nbsp;instill&nbsp;a framework for acceptance of differing and new ideas and the creative potential of your people. This &nbsp;is a fundamental cornerstone, particularly for the legal profession, for building organizations which can successfully embrace change.</p>  <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I think it is traditional&nbsp;hierarchical,&nbsp;</span>command and control type management structures. &nbsp;It is the ability to instill a culture of acceptance and validation which largely produces growth and vitality: giving employees a feeling that they are valued and can make a difference to the firm, the work that it produces and to its clients leads to a 'buy-in' to the companies goals and objectives, and gives people the latitude to create and to produce efficiently. Stifling employees' creative visions by instilling fear, judgement and autocratic work structures and styles does not augur well for making and retaining creative and exceptional lawyers, particularly &nbsp;when the potential and tools for individual expression have never been more accessible.</p>  <p class="p1">There have been a number of changes within the legal profession, but lawyers are always few among early adopters. There has been a move to a more inclusive management style, but the profession still has the aura of authority which stifles the production and contribution capacity of newer entrants to the profession. It is not uncommon for associates in a law firm to feel isolated and directionless in what they are doing, which forces them to be less engaging or productive. A number of the potentially disruptive start-ups in the online legal space have provided an outlet for young associates &nbsp;to express their creativity by challenging the very structures that they studied for years to join. However, the profession &nbsp;itself remains tied to historical ways of doing things, preserved to a large extent by protective regulation, which restricts a lot of creativity in not only the way that legal services are offered, priced or accessed, but also in the way that law firms can grow and be funded. On the technology side, &nbsp;particularly the legal support or back office function, there has been a considerable degree of innovation, ranging from outsourcing more mundane or repetitive tasks such as due diligence and discovery, to document production and client access.</p>  <p class="p1">I would say mobile, and cloud infrastructures and systems, &nbsp;artificial intelligence and standardization technology. The latter two are particularly important in my profession, as they will serve to create &nbsp;extensive opportunities to limit the costs of legal services and to create more certainty in legal outcomes.</p>  <p class="p1">I don't believe that any one or more organizations&nbsp;have more of an innovation mindset than others. I think it is the people and their beliefs that are relevant here. &nbsp;Living in California today, you feel the innovation buzz all around you, whether it be in Silicon Beach &nbsp;or Valley, regardless of the enterprise or industry. There is a thirst for innovation which is hardly replicated elsewhere (with few exceptions, for example Israel). As an immigrant to the US, this is even more so apparent to me. A culture has been instilled and technology structures laid down allowing almost anyone to be a potential innovator if they put their minds to it, and which removes the older generation&nbsp;hierarchical structures which were premised upon limiting inclusiveness and a fear of failure. I believe that it is the fundamental American belief in freedom of expression and respect for the rights, and equal treatment of its people, mixed with access to technology, which has eventually resulted &nbsp;in such a fertile ground for innovation.&nbsp;</p>  Sam Miller View Edit Delete
21  <p>Diana Stepner is the VP of Innovation Partnerships &amp; Developer Relations at Pearson - a company which has been innovating since the Industrial Revolution. She helps business units accelerate digital innovation, drives global partnerships with startups, builds relationships with developer communities- including incubators and start ups- and runs the Pearson Catalyst for Education accelerator program. Diana's passion is to bring innovative user experiences, products, and partnerships to life by applying technologies that are not always ready for primetime.&nbsp;</p>  <p class="p1">We help teams across Pearson gain insight into emerging trends - what we call developments &ldquo;on the fringe.&rdquo; &nbsp;For example, over the last few years we have witnessed the consumerization of education. Students, teachers, and learners, for example, have similar expectations and behaviors in the classroom as they do outside. &nbsp;As a result, they crave rich digital experiences and believe learning can take place anywhere and at any time.&nbsp;</p> <p class="p1">Acknowledging that technology is helping to drive change in education to deliver on the expectations of learners and teachers. We have been able to quickly identify and connect Pearson teams with startups - particularly through connections with incubators and accelerators (<a href="http://rocket-space.com/"><span class="s1">RocketSpace</span></a>, <a href="http://www.1871.com/"><span class="s1">1871</span></a>, <a href="http://1776dc.com/"><span class="s1">1776</span></a>, <a href="http://www.marsdd.com/"><span class="s1">MaRS</span></a> and <a href="http://learnlaunch.com/"><span class="s1">LearnLaunch</span></a>). Then via <a href="http://catalyst.pearson.com/"><span class="s1">Catalyst</span></a>, Pearson&rsquo;s accelerator, we&rsquo;re able to build pilots collaboratively with the startups &ndash; all the while providing mentoring and insight that will help them grow and scale effectively.&nbsp; We&rsquo;re also championing the next wave of creators and makers by being involved with maker spaces where learners of all ages gain hands-on skills, whether it be in electronics, arts, science, or beyond. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p>  <p class="p1">It&rsquo;s human nature to gravitate towards the familiar - things that have already shown they are effective and work from a business perspective. But education is becoming increasingly consumerized, therefore, we need to deliver experiences that match the ones learners have outside of the classroom. This requires education companies to innovate more quickly, like other technology companies, while also ensuring that all products are delivering the expected outcomes.</p>  <p class="p1">Pearson has a history of innovation. The company&rsquo;s origins were in the construction business during the Industrial Revolution. In fact, the story goes&hellip; &ldquo;Pearson became one of the world's largest building contractors at a time when the industry controlled development of the transportation, trade and communication links that fuelled world economies.&rdquo; Pearson had a similar forward-thinking approach when deciding to focus on education, especially the shift to digital, recognizing that technology was changing the way people learn.&nbsp;</p> <p class="p2">We started a Future Technologies team in 2011 to explore emerging technological developments and create prototypes that could be shared across the business.&nbsp; A network of 150 digital thought leaders, called Champions, was created to help promote the sharing of best practices and increase visibility into new platforms and products across the business. &nbsp;</p> <p class="p2">We also introduced a developer platform to enable developers both inside and outside Pearson to experiment with our content.&nbsp; In 2012, the Pearson Catalyst accelerator program was introduced. It is an open innovation program that enables anyone from across the company to submit a real business challenge.&nbsp; We then make a selection of those challenges and publish them so that startups can apply to be part of the program. The startup most capable to address each challenge is selected and works alongside a Pearson team to build a pilot solution. &nbsp;Each of these initiatives encourages open innovation. The focus is on collaboration and sharing; breaking down the corporate walls. &nbsp;</p> <p class="p2">Other innovation activities also include a new product lifecycle program to help the company adopt agile product development methodologies and a corporate-wide efficacy statement.</p>  <p class="p1">I&rsquo;m actually hoping technology is going to take more of a back seat over the next two years. &nbsp;I don&rsquo;t mean that technology will lose importance. It will remain a critical factor. But it will become invisible and serve as an enabler. We&rsquo;re already seeing the emergence of this trend with the Internet of Things and the rise of data science.</p> <p class="p2">On business models, open and free is always going to be a contender &ndash; especially as quality continues to rise. Yet it&rsquo;s <em>how</em> the information is presented that will be the differentiator. In education, the increasing focus is on personalized and adaptive learning - that means ensuring the right content is presented to you at the right time and being able to quickly filter through the content to find the relevant information you need.&nbsp; I also don&rsquo;t think we&rsquo;re close to the end of the sharing economy.</p> <p class="p2">More on the &ldquo;fringe,&rdquo; I am intrigued to see how the bitcoin blockchain is applied in new ways, including in education.</p> <p class="p2">We are seeing the rise of competency-based learning, which introduces more flexibility and a focus on learning practical skills or competencies, especially those that apply in the 21<span class="s1">st</span> century.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s also important to have a global outlook. Mobile developments in Africa, digital experiences in China, and creative approaches to learning in Australia cannot be overlooked.</p>  <p class="p1">I&rsquo;m a big fan of Rallyteam. &nbsp;The company launched at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco back in September 2014. The focus is on employee empowerment.&nbsp; Most companies have valuable side projects that don&rsquo;t get done simply because of lack of resources, funds, visibility or all three.&nbsp; With Rallyteam, a marketplace of projects is created.&nbsp; People in a company can submit a project or indicate they want to work on a specific type of project.&nbsp; Employees are able to gain and apply new skills all the while completing real, tangible projects for their employer.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s a really exciting model - one that can help keep employees engaged and enable learning.&nbsp;</p>  Diana Stepner View Edit Delete
17  <p>Steven Bowman is a noted author and business advisor.&nbsp;He&nbsp;has an extensive background in the nonprofit arena. He is one of the world&rsquo;s leading governance and senior executive team specialists, having previously held positions as national executive director of the Australasian Institute of Banking and Finance, CEO of the Finance and Treasury Association, general manager of ExpoHire (Australia) Pty Ltd, assistant director of the Australian Society of CPAs, and director of the American College of Health Care Administrators.</p>  <p class="p1">Your own personal leadership is essential. From our point of view, leadership is about strategic awareness, where you are willing to be aware of the future possibilities, are nimble enough to turn to advantage any of these possibilities, and wise enough to know that your personal points of view are what creates your reality. Leadership and innovation do not come from policies, procedures or structures. It all starts with you. In the case of any organization, the culture of innovation and change starts with the CEO. If the CEO thinks they can train innovation by external advisors, workshops, incentives and rah rah talks, and the CEO does not choose this him or herself, then the culture of innovation cannot be created. And the hallmark of any really good CEO is their willingness to be strategically aware.</p>  <p class="p1">The main reason why organizations and cultures do not embrace innovation and change is because they have already decided what innovation and change is and is not. They have already defined the elements of innovation and change, even if those definitions begin with &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how to innovate and I don&rsquo;t like change.&rdquo; These are just definitions. There is extensive misunderstanding and misapplication about what innovation is. Most think it is about the new and the funky. Rather, it should be more about a state of being, a constant state of curiosity. It is actually about being aware and being willing to be the change that is required. It is about being the question from a sense of intense curiosity, not as a business imperative. Innovation is just a point of view. A fixed point of view about having already got it right in terms of market share, services, products and innovation leads to examples such as HMV, Kodak and Blockbuster. Any enterprise that thinks it has got something right, and is not willing to see different possibilities, is destined for the same fate.</p>  <p class="p1">We have chosen to function from no definition of what innovation is. We look for possibility in everything. We don&rsquo;t just look for the now, we also look for the future. It is about sustainable future and sustainable reality. Over last few years we have started to embrace the philosophy of being Pragmatic Futurists. A Pragmatic Futurist is about creating future potential possibilities (<a href="http://nomorebusinessasusual.com/pragmatic-futurist/"><span class="s1">http://nomorebusinessasusual.com/pragmatic-futurist/</span></a>). Being a Pragmatic Futurist and expanding the power to shape your future is more important than ever in our world of accelerating transformation. We keep ourselves aware of the changes that are coming and how they will affect us and our business, as well as our clients' businesses. We develop strategies to thrive in the coming new environment. Our business now has a global reputation for being innovative and inspirational, when in fact we are being the question and being curious. Another innovation process we have been developing very recently has been the philosophy behind Benevolent Capitalism, where we put our attention on maximising possibility, not just maximizing profit. This has had a huge impact on growing our businesses and our profitability/wealth.</p>  <p class="p1">3D printing. 3D printing &ndash; also known as additive manufacturing &ndash; is part of a rapidly growing market whereby a print head deposits very thin layers of resin on top of each other in a specified fashion to create a 3D object based on a digital model.&nbsp;3D printers are already in use among many businesses, from manufacturing to pharmaceuticals to consumers goods, and have generated a diverse set of use cases.</p>  <p class="p1">It is always tempting to use iconic global organizations such as Apple, Virgin, etc. However, we often find that some of the most innovative organizations tend to fly under the rdar. I would nominate Bill Strickland, President and CEO of Manchester Bidwell Corporation and its subsidiaries, Manchester Craftsmen's Guild (MCG), and Bidwell Training Center (BTC). Strickland is nationally recognized as a visionary leader who authentically delivers educational and cultural opportunities to students and adults within an organizational culture that fosters innovation, creativity, responsibility and integrity.</p>  Steven Bowman View Edit Delete
14  <p class="p1">Robert David is Director of Corporate and Professional Programs at the University of California, Berkeley - UC Berkeley Extension. He has more than 20 years in key sales and business development operational roles inside several technology companies. He specializes in helping HR and Learning &amp; Development professionals bring Berkeley-quality curricula to their companies through custom on-site training, sponsored tuition enrollments and intensive course program development.</p>  <p class="p1">Within UC Berkeley Extension, education innovation is highly valued. We tend to look for examples outside the organization and compare those with opportunities inside the organization, and then try to create an innovative approach to solving our objectives.&nbsp; Then communicate the value internally and embrace the change. But that's all very theoretical until you consciously try to do new things or do the same things in a different, more efficient or more effective way. It's very important to work at it. We tend to do 'pilot projects' to prove the concept and see what the outcomes are from both a financial and student satisfaction perspective.</p> <p class="p1">It's also very important to recognize and encourage ideas for innovation from all levels of an organization. These ideas can be simple changes to business processes to large shifts in strategy involving relationships to customers or vendors. Don't underestimate the value of simple changes--in empowering the people who come up with them and in keeping the organization agile and welcome to change. We also like to use successful models or processes in one academic program area and try to apply it to completely different academic areas to see if it will work as a controlled experiment.&nbsp; Our Dean likes to share examples of how we innovate, or how we focus on quality of student experience, or work more collaboratively in all-staff meetings to inspire staff to bring about change.</p>  <p class="p1">Often it's fear of the unfamiliar or values that don't really welcome and encourage change. However, in today's economy, change and the need to innovate is practically a given.&nbsp;Given the shifts in communication technology that we have all experienced with cell phones, apps, social media, big data...it's hard to dodge the new. It's a way of life now and in many respects, that's an advantage. In higher education, business as usual mentality, highly bureaucratic processes, antiquated systems, risk adverse culture.&nbsp; In many cases, too, lower level staff often do not feel empowered to suggest changes, or to work across functional departments to streamline a process, or to do things differently.&nbsp;</p>  <p class="p1">My role was newly created last year, so basically everything I tackle requires the organization to respond in new ways. Sometimes it requires some arm-wrestling, but we're making good headway. &nbsp;Also, I work in education and it's a field that's experiencing tremendous innovation as we explore the opportunities and drawbacks of online corporate learning in all its various forms. &nbsp;&nbsp;Because we are getting real-time feedback from employers about workforce development needs, our organization is prioritizing the development of innovative 'intensive workshops' to spearhead new program development efforts.&nbsp;</p>  <p class="p1">We are at just the beginning of a wave of new technologies that will help people learn more, faster, and better. &nbsp; Mobile is a technology that educators are beginning to embrace as part of an overall blended learning experience for both traditional education as well as professional development and corporate training. &nbsp;It's hard to project what that will look like from here, but it is exciting. Data analytics will help to provide more real-time and better information to facilitate decision-making about course development and offerings.</p>  <p class="p1">Outside the field of education, firms in the biotech and high tech areas tend to best embody the innovation mindset. For higher ed, we can see big changes coming in corporate online education.&nbsp; The jury is still out as far as what the right business model should be, but we are clearly pushing the envelope as far as the use of online courses and flexibility of the delivery platform.&nbsp;</p>  Robert David View Edit Delete
61  <p>Dhrupad Trivedi, president and chief executive officer of A10 Networks, brings global leadership experience across multiple businesses and is passionate about driving leading technology businesses to win by creating value for customers.</p>  <p>I would say one of the keys to building an innovation culture is having people within your organization and on your teams that continuously challenge the status quo and have the ability to think about the biggest problems and challenges customers and markets are trying to solve and how your company can evolve to address them. Typically, that is going to require you to look at things from multiple points of view. You have to think about it from a technology point of view; you have to think about it from a user point of view; and you have to think about it from a structural and macro trend point of view. So, when I think about this, I think about organizations and cultures that are continuously connecting what they do with how they can help their customers and markets achieve value. This may include breakthrough technology, doing something no one else can do, but it is always about connecting what you do with your customers and markets. It may be your customers don&rsquo;t really know the solutions they need, but still you need a culture that is always focused on solving the customer&rsquo;s problem.</p>  <p>One of the biggest impediments is being anchored to what has worked in the past. Too many technology companies begin by doing something great, but they fail to understand what the next great thing should be. Where can I continued to innovate? The second factor, which is related to that, is inside-out thinking rather than outside-in. Companies can spend too much time thinking about what they do without bridging that to what their customers really need. Companies may have important technology and expertise that their customers don&rsquo;t have, but they still need to make that relatable to the customer and ultimately deliver solutions that improve the customer experience and deliver better business outcomes. Now there are some innovations that you may build that never translate into customer success, and that&rsquo;s okay. However, it&rsquo;s critical that you keep thinking about where your customers and markets are going and how you can help them get there.</p>  <p>One of the things that drives innovation is creating a problem-solving culture. You need to create a culture of examining the biggest problems your market faces and figuring out how you can help solve them. The problem might not be the product itself. It might be that you need to make the product easier to use and consume. Maybe it&rsquo;s a technology problem. Maybe it&rsquo;s a usability problem, or maybe it&rsquo;s a customer interface problem. But being clear on the problem you&rsquo;re trying to solve is essential. It takes an analytical mindset in which you are always being driven by the problem you&rsquo;re trying to solve. You are trying to solve a problem in a new and different way, and there is always the chance that that won&rsquo;t be the right way. There is always an executional risk. But an analytical mindset will help you understand that risk, along with the invention side of the equation. It guides you in a more structured way and helps you understand why you are trying to do something and what success will look like.</p>  <p>There are many. One of the really big trends in our industry has to do with the Internet of Things and Industry 4.0. More sensors and objects are being connected and are collecting and generating more data. And all of that runs through networks and into applications. All of it needs to be efficiently and flexibly managed and that represents a major opportunity and challenge for our industry. The second thing that affects our business is that, as all of this gets connected, it creates a naturally attractive target for cyber criminals and attacks. A10 Networks brings a deep understanding of networks, but also an understanding of the nature and structure of those attacks with the technical expertise to detect them and remediate them. I don&rsquo;t expect cybersecurity to become less of a problem over the coming years, especially as connectivity becomes more and more important. A third big trend is the continued adoption of the cloud for storage and compute. This is a huge trend for the industry and also for us. How do we support our customers as they continue to move into the hybrid environment of public and private clouds and on-premises systems? All of these trends are also creating a major skills gap, so it&rsquo;s incumbent on us to continually create greater customer ease of use.</p>  <p>Achieving alignment across the organization and all of your teams&mdash;commercial teams, engineering teams, product teams, marketing teams&mdash;on why you are doing things is really a strategic imperative. And then you need to connect all of that to the customer. As I&rsquo;ve said before, not everything you try is going to work. But if you can create a much more inclusive conversation on why you are doing something, it really helps you get there. Now I think it&rsquo;s true that if you do everything the customer tells you to do, you will not be very successful because the customer doesn&rsquo;t know what he or she doesn&rsquo;t know. But if you understand their underlying problems, you can be far more effective as an innovator. What we are trying to do at A10 Networks is to create a shorter closed loop between sales, engineering and product management, so that we can function as one team focused on solving problems for our customers, whether that is a new product or a new consumption model, for example. Another strategic requirement for A10 is always focusing part of our development efforts on breakthrough ideas and solutions. They may have a low probability of success, but if we are successful, we will solve major challenges for our customers.</p>  Dhrupad Trivedi View Edit Delete
48  <p>Digital marketing entrepreneur and strategy innovator Sean Shoffstall is pioneering a more relevant and measurable approach to messaging in today&rsquo;s multi-channel world of engagement. Shoffstall formerly delivered data-driven marketing strategies for Fortune 500 brands at Teradata. Now, he is a prominent speaker and thought leader who is widely credited for successfully leveraging the &ldquo;Quantifiable Creativity&rdquo; marketing approach.</p> <p>Despite the emergence of numerous new marketing technologies, Shoffstall told BPI he sees the state of innovation in digital marketing as stagnant, with training that lags the landscape, and marketers who spend too much time mastering complex technologies and too little time on messaging and strategy.&nbsp;</p> <p>Sean founded his own company, Crave Metrics, which will serve as the host for a software product with game changing potential. Having decoded both B2B and B2C customer brand engagement within growing channels, data and devices, Shoffstall is writing the code that he believes will automatically cut to the relevant numbers.</p> <p>Sean tells BPI: &ldquo;My ultimate goal is to benefit the marketer and the end consumer. The marketer wanting to create an awareness campaign should be able to log into our platform Crave Metrics, and find the top five awareness campaigns that have run in the last six months. The marketer can then find the right marketing mix that is perfect for a given audience and truly considers how to help the end consumer. If we start messaging customers with the right marketing message mix, then we can send fewer messages to consumers." He adds &ldquo;Our goal is to have an alpha out at the end of June, and we have already identified a few key customers to be working on that pilot with. We will hopefully have an open beta in mid-September.&rdquo;</p> <p>Shoffstall says the past seven years has seen a significant consolidation of platforms. Marketers are spending more time on technology than on messaging. He believes we need to bring the power of the marketing message back, leveraged by the power of platforms.</p>  <p>I started Crave Metrics to focus on customer journey analytics. We are trying to solve misleading data with Crave Metrics by giving people a broader view of their campaign&rsquo;s effectiveness across all their channels, because many marketers do not realize every campaign drives brand awareness and the end value that it creates.</p> <p>Marketers look at a campaign and might see the click-through rate and the open rate, but they are not instantly able to see how it compares against other similar campaigns, or against their company's benchmarks.</p> <p>Our platform will allow customers that review a campaign to not only see what their score is against the Crave Metrics key marketing measures, but also to see how it&nbsp;performs against the company benchmarks, and against&nbsp;similar campaign benchmarks. This answers the marketer&rsquo;s question that many platforms miss today, I&rsquo;ve got a metric but what does it mean?</p>  <p>There is an influx of so much new technology. Companies must constantly go from Paid Search, to Twitter, to Facebook, to Email, to Instagram, and be prepared to adapt and market to any and all other digital marketing technologies that develop popular user platforms. Current digital marketing technologies are complicated and ever changing: this leads to siloed information and messaging, and can lead to paralysis for marketing teams who get stuck with basic batch and blast marketing.</p> <p>In spite of all this, universities and colleges are still primarily teaching traditional marketing strategies. Companies then hire young people simply because they know how to use certain media platforms or marketing tools, which can be problematic on its own. New educational and training systems will be vital to success in coming years to help bridge the talent gap.&nbsp;</p>  <p>The leadership of a given team drives its innovation. One thing I have always done with my teams whenever someone new joins us,&nbsp;is bring up the top three to five trends I am seeing succeed with our customers or elsewhere, and ask them questions about its success, which opens the door for them to bring their own ideas to the conversation.&nbsp;</p> <p>At the same time, I am willing to pilot certain ideas. I am willing to invest 8 percent, 10 percent, 12 percent of my team&rsquo;s time to pilot one of these ideas. We cannot always go after the newest platforms, but we can test new platforms on campaigns. If a campaign fails, at least we learn something. &nbsp;</p> <p>I have also seen mid to large size companies create a sandbox marketing environment that allows a safe atmosphere to test the latest social platform or API integration, just&nbsp;to see if it breaks. If it works in the sandbox, we bring it in. You need a partnership between leadership, the IT group, and the marketing department to try something new.</p>  <p>VR and augmented reality will change marketing. In-game marketing is another platform that is similar, these immersive environments is where we are going to see the most growth and change. Marketers will need to again focus on the message and make sure it fits in these environments without being obtrusive or obnoxious.</p> <p>I believe another key business trend will be, I hope, a focus more on consumer data privacy. We protect financial and healthcare data and have seen the repercussions when it isn&rsquo;t secured. Consumers give marketers their trust by accepting cookies, by signing up for our newsletters, by purchasing and registering their products. They entrust marketers with their data, so marketers have a responsibility to use the data for marketing without releasing potentially sensitive information. I think customers will start to demand more protections like other sensitive data.&nbsp;</p>  <p>Amazon's Alexa. The simplicity of voice activation to access music at any time, to interact with different lists and calendars, to listen to podcasts or news sources, and to use fewer screens, is a game changer for the consumer marketplace.&nbsp;</p>  Sean Shoffstall View Edit Delete
62  Rolf Unterberger, CEO of Cherry Group and founder/CEO of RMU CAPITAL, is an internationally accomplished executive Manager with over 25 years&rsquo; experience in different industries, countries and leadership positions.  <p>Innovation was actually part of our DNA from the very beginning. And change is also an integral part of our company history. We have reinvented ourselves again and again.</p> <p>CHERRY was founded in 1953 in the basement of a restaurant in Highland Park, Illinois, to produce electronic switches. The company quickly gained a reputation for the quality of its microswitches in particular, which became commonly referred to as &ldquo;CHERRY switches.&rdquo;</p> <p>In the early 1960s, CHERRY expanded to Germany, creating a global brand known for key switches and high-quality computer input devices. In 1973, we began manufacturing computer keyboards. Today we are the oldest manufacturer of computer keyboards and a pioneer in the computer hardware industry.</p> <p>In 1984, we filed a patent for the CHERRY MX switch. In 2008, CHERRY was sold off to a German firm called ZF Friedrichshafen, a company that specializes in parts for automobiles. In 2016, CHERRY was acquired by the private investment firm GENUI, and our focus shifted from automotive parts to computer input devices.</p> <p>These are just a few milestones to show that innovation and change have always been an integral part of CHERRY.</p> <p>To make sure this spirit doesn&rsquo;t get lost nowadays, we are working and building innovation hubs internally as well as together with external people. Furthermore, we are running small innovation teams and projects outside the box or the so called comfort zone.</p>  <p>As a German company, we are subject to a whole host of legal regulations and provisions - at both national and European level. This goes so far that we have to comply with different governmental and environmental regulations for products in different European countries and have to prove a large number of certifications.</p> <p>Another problem is the fact that our products can easily be copied. These pirate copies then naturally fall far short of our high standards in terms of quality, environmental compatibility and safety. They damage our good reputation with all the unpleasant consequences.</p>  <p>To think around the corner, to always be one step ahead - that was already the motto of our founder, Walter Cherry. So it is not surprising, that the CHERRY brand stands for top quality, innovation, high-end design, technological expertise. This is what we still live every day.</p> <p>We are constantly working with innovation consultants. One of their tasks is to constantly challenge us in the development of new products and features. The basis for this is a clearly defined product development process that also includes milestones.</p> <p>To always be better than the competition is a tradition, a basic constant and our daily motivation! After all, we have a good name to defend. One way of achieving this is by setting up a review and approval meeting.</p>  <p>We, too, will continue to be strongly influenced by the major trends that have been emerging not just since today. First of all, there is the digital revolution, which is far from over and affects us in many ways.</p> <p>This starts quite trivially with the fact that many aspects of social life are digital and we therefore spend much more time in front of the computer - whether we shop online, deal with official business virtually, chat over the internet, play games, stream. All this requires high-quality input devices that are resilient and also meet expectations in terms of form and ergonomics.</p> <p>The world of work is also becoming increasingly digital, the forms of work more arbitrary if you like. More than ever before, people are working from where they want and when they want. The COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear to even the last home office refusenik that things actually work wonderfully. So in future, work will be much more hybrid and the home office will become a permanent feature. This, too, will undoubtedly have an impact on our business development.</p>  <p>Being innovative is virtually part of our DNA. This means that we actually see ourselves as early adopters. However, we are also self-critical and are very aware when we need to catch up in certain areas. Only recently we announced the acquisition Theobroma Systems Design and Consulting GmbH, an Austrian-based developer and trusted manufacturer of embedded systems. These support various industrial applications in the field of IoT and Industry 4.0. With this acquisition, CHERRY is specifically expanding its development and production capacities in the security sector.</p> <p>Furthermore, we partnered with Argand Partners to support Cherry&rsquo;s next phase of growth. Our business has gone from strength to strength, and we look forward to continued investment in our people, research &amp; development and manufacturing technology. The positive trends currently accelerating the adoption of PC gaming and the digitalization of healthcare make it an exciting time to be Cherry.</p>  Rolf Unterberger View Edit Delete
20  <p>Nicole Alexander is a marketer and lecturer; the quintessential unconventional marketer who has an extensive background working in digital media with an enviable list of blue-chip brands. She leads the Innovation Practice for Nielsen China and in this role she advises clients on the importance of evolving consumer journeys to deliver stronger returns on investment while eliminating fragmentation of brand communication across channels.&nbsp;</p>  <p>It should start from both the top and the bottom of an organization. Where leadership enables a culture of inspiring teams to develop ideas around change, provoke them to act on that change and then develop a framework that supports test/pilots to scale innovations that can be successful.</p>  <p>Expertise. Even the best organizations believe they have the skills and expertise in-house or know how to access it in order to plan and make pivotal decisions. With today&rsquo;s digital landscape there is an access to a global network of creative minds with depth of knowledge across sectors. By utilizing Open Innovation to understand how to develop new solutions, evolve existing frameworks and plan for human capital they will need to change their mindsets in a changing environment.</p>  <p>Unilever has been successful in adopting innovation from the bottom up and top down and supporting it within their communications; their day-to-day planning and how their employees are measured. Their new Global SVP of Consumer &amp; Market Insights, Stan Sthanunathan, has been the mastermind behind this transformation supporting and provoking the organization to think differently from developing Innovation Centers to leveraging integrated data and insight globally. They are looking at consumerization today and in the future &ndash; particularly in D&amp;E markets &ndash; and leveraging those insights to not only innovate on existing products but develop new ones with an eye on their sustainable footprint.</p>  <p>Machine Learning (i.e. Big Data and AI) will be the largest drivers of technological changes in the coming years, particularly when those solutions can pair complex processing decision making with human-like judgment. In the short-term, the rise of Machine capabilities could increase productivity and economic growth, causing a shift in human capital and growth patterns particularly within D&amp;E markets. We currently see signs of this across medical, research, agriculture and transportation areas. In the longer-term, if Machines exceed human capabilities we will see a devaluation of labor, increase in income disparities paired with increasing GDP. The great challenge will be how we ensure that this rapid technological shift doesn&rsquo;t leave people behind and blend that with policy change, education, and a fundamental shift in how we view capitalism.</p>  <p>Firstly, I admire any company that challenges the good enough or &ldquo;this is how things have always been done&rdquo;, mindset. Uber &ndash; who brings drivers together with customers &ndash; has innovated the way we experience on-demand transportation while also allowing individuals with a vehicle to be entrepreneurs.&nbsp;</p>  Nicole Alexander View Edit Delete
22  <p>Mark Manney is the Founder and CEO of Infobeing.com - a website disrupting the forefront of human interaction and trade practices. Mark left his corporate life and Seattle roots to travel the world and study new ways of commerce. While practicing international customs and eCommerce abroad, Mark was able to identify a major issue in networking practices of the present. This led to his creation of an ideal People&rsquo;s Economy via Infobeing. Mark believes that&nbsp;through innovative networking and modern trade,&nbsp;the People&rsquo;s Economy will help lead the world to a more productive and healthier lifestyle.</p>  <p>It is tempting to say that there is no industry sector for what we&rsquo;re doing, but in fairness we might compare Infobeing.com to social media like Facebook, Ello, Tumblr, and LinkedIn. These sites offer a Web 2.0 experience that is becoming obsolete for a few reasons.</p> <p>Social media contributes to information overload by providing a massive amount of irrelevant information. This makes us feel physically ill. Information overload is becoming a real problem. Infobeing.com is different because it is designed so that users spend minimum time on the site and maximum time living, doing, and becoming.</p> <p>Another problem with today&rsquo;s social media is that there is no real mechanism to meet new people in order to easily form mutually-beneficial relationships. These sites are designed primarily for staying in touch with existing friends or, occasionally, meeting someone new in a random way. Infobeing is designed for the purpose of helping you meet the new people you need to know in order to move your life forward.</p> <p>Social media leads to stagnation and inaction. It is passive. Infobeing uses the potential of the network world to create a People economy where everyone is doing what they want, what they are good at, just as they live in freedom and maximize their earning potential. This isn&rsquo;t happening on Facebook.</p>  <p>Today people remain stuck in a &ldquo;corporate economy&rdquo; paradigm. Our most important economic relationships are with brands, corporations, and companies. The vast majority of our purchase of goods and services are with organizations.</p> <p>My view is radically different. I&rsquo;ve spent the past 10 years traveling the world and living mostly in Eastern Europe. Things are done a bit differently here. Relationships between people are valued most. If you need something fixed, need to hire someone for an odd job, or need some help&hellip;people look to other people. There is a massive person-to-person economy that is based on cash transactions or even &ldquo;favors for favors&rdquo;.</p> <p>The Infobeing People Economy replicates this in the online world. We provide a new option for people to form relationships and conduct transactions for goods and services with each other. This is a radically different paradigm where we begin to trust each other and work together based on mutual wants, needs, and skills.</p>  <p>As Founder and CEO of Infobeing, Innovation isn&rsquo;t a conscious focus of mine. I don&rsquo;t set out to innovate. I simply do what I think makes most sense, with essentially no regard for what anybody else is doing. This is one of the benefits of living abroad, away from conventional wisdom, for so many years.</p> <p>Beyond this, I think innovation is allowed to thrive, and will continue to thrive at Infobeing, because our goal is not only to maximize profit. We are founding Infobeing as Public Benefit Corporation.&nbsp; We will be auditing our performance against a charter that includes 5 requirements for serving the public good. We&rsquo;ll remain completely ad-free, we will improve the overall happiness of our users, we will help our users achieve greater freedom, we will strengthen the local community through direct-democracy, and we will aim to do no harm to the planet.</p>  <p>I don&rsquo;t care about changing an industry. I care about changing lives. People have access to amazing technology, but they don&rsquo;t know how to use it to live in a better way. Infobeing is concerned with improving your quality of life in both the online and off-line world by making it easy for you to meet all of the people you need to know.</p>  <p>Follow your intuition. Meditate. Listen to your inner-voice first and let it drown-out any voices of conventional wisdom. The purpose of your life is to bring your unique perspective to the world. Failure to innovate is failure to believe in yourself and act on those beliefs.</p>  Mark Manney View Edit Delete
45  <p>Ayad sees a trend in the retail landscape where the front end registers disappear, and where check-out lines are eliminated through predictive data analytics, sensors, and artificial intelligence &ndash; and, eventually, where self-driving shopping carts meet you at the entrance of the store with your shopping list already uploaded into the cart screen, and even direct you to the items you need.&nbsp;</p>  <p>I really don't know whether we are changing the game or the game is changing us. Success in business, today, is all about the optimal intersection of the physical and digitals worlds, and the interaction between humans and intelligent machines.</p> <p>If you really think about the retail industry, so many innovations have compelled companies to start to think different, to act different, and to plan for potentially different outcomes. Within workforce management, for example, the industry is going through tremendous shifts due to the expansion in internet selling coupled with rapidly changing demographics and regulations. Thus, brick and mortar stores are under a different type of pressure. And it is said that necessity is the mother of all inventions, so many organizations find the dynamics of the environment and the accelerated speed by which innovation is happening a threat and an opportunity leading to new strategies and innovations.</p> <p>I&rsquo;m of the opinion that societies change slowly, and despite so many years in e-commerce rapid growth, e-commerce is still a fraction of the total retail and service industries. So, it is going to continue to be a combination of digital and physical for the retail industry. Many organizations are utilizing data - predictive modeling, advanced algorithms - to better forecast work in the stores. And once work is forecasted and measured, then it becomes easier to schedule people to be at the right places and times - either when the truck is coming to the store to deliver products, or when customers are coming to the stores to receive a service.</p> <p>You need optimizing software to help deliver efficiency. But no one platform is going to be the only and the ultimate solution. I think what's so clear, at least in my mind, is that the future is a blend of the digital and physical capabilities.</p> <p>Based on my academic and my industry knowledge, I can tell you that customers want to shop anytime and anywhere. Leading retailers, including Bed-Bath, want to serve customers wherever, whenever, and however they wish to be served.&nbsp; Leading retailers want to be there for customers when they want to shop, the way they want to shop, and the way they want to complete the transaction, whether it is &ldquo;ship it to my home&rdquo; or &ldquo;let me pick it from the store&rdquo;, or a combination of both.</p> <p>What's exciting about the current technology is how friendly it is to everyone involved. For example, 10 years ago you had to go to the store to see your schedule as an employee. And the manager of the store ultimately decided who worked when. There was little freedom or flexibility. Today, technology allows you to see your schedule on your phone, and even to opt for available shifts. Employees can swap shifts with their coworkers if they need to, without disrupting operations. This is a significant win-win change.</p> <p>The technology is not only allowing organizations to respond better to customer needs, but also to employee's needs and situations. It's becoming more participatory versus top-down. And it is proven in research and in practice that happy employees create an environment of happiness for the customers. Efficient workforce management is beneficial to customers, and to the business. That's why companies invest in them.</p> <p>In terms of benefiting from customer insights, today, you can measure and map customers&rsquo; movement in the stores from the entry point to the exit point through sensors. Based on data, you would know exactly, or on average, know how long the customers will be shopping in your store. Eventually, you would know when they're going to get to the register. Ultimately, you will be able to know the number of employees that need to be at the front end to help the customers exit the building and pay for the merchandise. So, it is not just long-term predictive modeling, but on-time, live, as you go, so that there will be totally no long lines up front for customers who choose to interact with an employee, and managers would be able to respond faster to customers&rsquo; needs.&nbsp;</p>  <p>I&rsquo;m very familiar with two industries: the retail industry and the academic industry. Luckily, both industries have adopted and encouraged innovation, perhaps because of the competitive nature of the retail industry, and the critical thinking nature of academia.</p> <p>Fear of failure and siloes are often common challenges.&nbsp; Financial obstacles and opportunities are both drivers and blockers of embracing innovation. You might go after an innovation because it's financially rewarding, but then you may not embrace it fully because it's financially&nbsp;burdening on the short term.<br /><br />Some are short-sighted; they might&nbsp;think about the quarterly results, and not necessarily look at the long term. The other fascinating aspect is the speed of innovations. Some companies are hesitant to embrace innovation because today's innovative solutions may become obsolete quickly, which add burdens on the organization; especially from a change management perspective.&nbsp; However, perhaps the biggest impediment lies is the culture of the organization; organizational culture is the make or break for innovation.&nbsp;</p>  <p>The retail industry was among the first industries to benefit from (disruptive) innovation. Take Walmart for example, it started with Sam Walton&rsquo;s innovative ideas about the nature of the retail store - the role of transportation and logistics, and the mindset of trying new things. Walmart optimized innovation by supporting its people to become owners of the business and by techniques such as profit sharing and career planning. You see, employees are called associates, and associates call Walmart stores &ldquo;my store&rdquo;. A culture that's built on the idea that the employee is the owner of the business unit, not the keeper of the business unit, is positioned to benefit from the unlimited creativity of people.</p> <p>Another example from Walmart: They have a practice called VPI, or Value Producing Items, where employees compete and have fun adopting and promoting specific items. Employees get recognized on results. All this infuse tremendous amounts of energy, engagement, pride, and innovation into organizational culture.</p>  <p>The Internet of things, robots, artificial intelligence, brick and mortar store closure, regulations, and the entry of new organizations to the marketplace. For example, the entry of Lidl from Europe to USA.</p> <p>Lidl already has 10,000 stores in Europe, and they&rsquo;re coming to the United States like Aldi did, and Aldi already has 1,600 stores in the US, and by some reports, in&nbsp;the 2018,&nbsp;they may have another 400 stores, reaching 2,000 stores. That's almost half the size of Walmart! Granted, the stores are smaller, but they are everyday low-price, because of their competitive pricing and their business model Walmart has to respond, and they are. Walmart recently announced drops in the price, and&nbsp; Target - a couple of days ago - announced a significant investment in price. So that entry of new organizations, and new regulations will significantly impact&nbsp;the retail industry.</p>  <p>From my perspective, one of the innovative strategies that I find very compelling is the idea of underground delivery of freight, supported by drones and self-driven cars and robots. The idea of moving freight underground by a magnetic field that's created by electrified coils, when complemented by drones and self-driven cars seems fascinating and disruptive. Research is happening, especially in the UK, around the concept of underground fright delivery. Why not, water and electricity are delivered to homes underground; why not packages! Imagine that!&nbsp;</p>  Amine Ayad View Edit Delete
49  <p>In the UK&rsquo;s world of IT, Martin Summerhayes is known as &ldquo;The Billion Dollar Man,&rdquo; having once innovated a billion dollar business for HP while also working as a field engineer.</p> <p>His expertise in customer experience and service needs derive from innumerable physical visits from his field engineer days, which have enabled him to create enhanced service models with a customer-friendly but up-front extended warranty. This innovation became a huge new revenue stream for Fujitsu, and a model emulated by many companies since its inception. His service ideas stem from customer-centric realizations like this: Why should a customer have to deal with the complexity of choosing between hardware, software or warranty departments in seeking solutions from their provider? Surely the provider should be able to take their problem &ndash; or, better still, already know or anticipate the problem &ndash; and refer them to the right channels to solve it.</p> <p>Summerhayes is now Head of Delivery Strategy and Service Improvement for Fujitsu &ndash; one of the world&rsquo;s top five IT service providers, with products and services available in&nbsp;more than 100 countries. The company&rsquo;s &ldquo;human-centric&rdquo; tech innovation is far-reaching, ranging from farming sensors for better harvests to software for the hearing impaired, and augmented reality systems to reduce truck rolls for field engineers. Its slew of recent awards includes the Citrix Award for Partners, in which Fujitsu managed to get a key agency of the New Zealand government back online within days of the country&rsquo;s 7.8 magnitude earthquake, with a cloud-based desktop-as-a-service solution.</p> <p>Rather than seeing their tech portfolios managed in a series of add-ons and piecemeal updates in response to changing&nbsp;needs and improved software, enterprise customers routinely hail the fact that Fujitsu IT services are continuously up-to-date thereby enhancing personalization for the client&rsquo;s needs.</p> <p>One of Fujitsu&rsquo;s most famous clients in the UK is McDonald&rsquo;s. At a recent Fujitsu Forum event, Doug Baker, head of IT for McDonald's UK, said the partnership had gone beyond the traditional &ldquo;break-fix&rdquo; contracts of the past, and toward a flexible service which enabled a personalized, optimized customer experience for its 1260 restaurants.</p> <p>The partnership, including the new CARE program, is enabling kiosk-driven table service &ndash; and the remarkable recognition that &ldquo;the biggest focus for technology innovation in restaurants is leveraging a customer&rsquo;s own device,&rdquo; &ndash; as well as a very human kind of load-balancing, where drive-thrus take simultaneous orders in two lanes and deliver efficiently in one.</p> <p>Having learned some high traffic retail customers do not like the disruption of even rapid response site visits by predictive IT engineers, Fujitsu responded with &ldquo;invisible service provision.&rdquo; Martin Smithen, head of Fujitsu&rsquo;s TMS Offering Development, notes to ensure the success of the remote, invisible support, the service requires customers are kept fully informed. Despite the benefits of optimized engineering support, the role of human intelligence remained on a par with technology&nbsp;in formulating business strategy, Doug Baker, head of IT for McDonald's UK, says, &ldquo;The most powerful data we have had comes from CARE engineers who go to sites, talk to the stores, and brief us on how the systems are being used.&rdquo;</p> <p>No one knows the value of both human intelligence and technology better than&nbsp;Summerhayes, who remarks, &ldquo;The consumer is driving changes like the opportunity for prediction, the cost of IT, and the spread of the Internet of Things. Thirty years ago, we could monitor container ship&rsquo;s location. Twenty years ago, we could monitor the containers. Ten years ago, we could monitor the pallets in the containers. Now, we are talking about tracking products throughout their entire journey, through lower cost RFID tags on value-based consumer items. Lower levels of granularity present huge opportunities for customers.&rdquo;</p>  <p>Fujitsu is an organization that manufactures everything from telephony systems to PCs, mobile phones, enterprise servers, mainframes - and much more. It operates in a software development space and provides solutions for customers.</p> <p>In Fujitsu, we hope to bring intelligence, big data, analytics, predictability, and predictive tools together&nbsp;to answer big questions: How can we better track trends and anomalies? How can we predict failure before failure occurs? How can we drive preventative programs? How can we use our engineering workforce, our partner workforce, and our repair workforce to ensure our customers do not experience downtime? My team is leveraging software tools and partners, plus the knowledge we have developed to be able to look at that space.</p> <p>A new type of service model called CARE uses intelligent engineering to drive and support the customer&rsquo;s changing requirements. One of our prominent customers, McDonald's, is leveraging our CARE service to allow customers to pre-order and select a time for pick up before the customer gets to the store via an app on their phone; the customer can use&nbsp;a connected kiosk; customers have a choice.</p> <p>Fujitsu ensures uptime and availability to those stores, which often operate 24/7.</p> <p>As a part of the outsourcing space within my team, I look in how Fujitsu provides managed services to customers who have either IT products or It services provided by another partner we can take over.</p> <p>From a game-changing perspective, ten years ago, there was IT outsourcing version 1.0 &ndash; where the company decided to move it to a partner who managed its IT provision on a holistic basis. Outsourcing moved through a tower model called IT managed services or outsourcing version 2.0, in which the IT provision breaks up into various towers. It is like an orchestra of independent companies playing together, or the company orchestrating it themselves.</p> <p>My team is looking at how we provision engineering-type services, provided either remotely or on customer sites. It is <em>how</em> we provision and make available those engineering services to customers that is a key game changer. We hope to provide a service before the customer realizes they have a problem.</p> <p>Fujitsu tries and pilots programs like an intelligent error engineering deployment for one of their customers in the UK. Their goal is to take it from white screen concepts to a working prototype within two weeks.</p> <p>We are looking at augmented reality from our engineering workforce perspective. The ability to use a smartphone, and point at another device&nbsp;for both visual and providing verbal instructions to the engineer in the terms of how best to resolve the problem.</p> <p>Fujitsu hopes to use virtual reality tools to train our engineers like "just in time training" - broadly scaling our engineering workforce in terms of a core set of skills.</p>  <p>Speed is the biggest hurdle to overcome when it comes to IT services, as our customers expect rapid deployment and zero downtime. The complications of adopting speed of change with the challenge of demonstrating return on investment limit innovation. It becomes difficult to clearly articulate the value of innovation without taking the C-suite on a customer experience journey, where they can clearly articulate those savings.</p>  <p>Fujitsu&rsquo;s innovation depends on the speed of adoption versus the speed of change. Most companies, whether banks, retail institutions, or manufacturers, have a legacy environment plus a small element of new code, and its service models vary dependent on those factors.</p> <p>Amazon is a disruptor in retailing and supermarkets. In the UK, Amazon states they are the online supermarket. Consumers can even order fresh produce from Amazon. Many companies are seeing disruption within their industry by new competitors.</p> <p>There is little to consider as first generation, innovative. Small pocket organizations create an innovative idea, it develops, and then it is realized as a blue ocean market opportunity or a disruptive market opportunity. That is how innovation happens, and how innovation gets inculcated in an organization.</p> <p>I see innovation in Fujitsu and in many of its competitors. Fujitsu implements an encouraging culture for innovation. The challenge is in demonstrating the business case and the return on investment.</p>  <p>Within IT services, the Internet of Things, the connectivity of many devices, and the integration of big data through analytics will be the major industry disruptors.</p> <p>Augmented reality and virtual reality will have an impact, although AR will be more prevalent. It is how companies bring those various elements together around industry vertical solutions. How vertical solutions are brought together to offer a solution to the customer is key.</p>  <p>Google&rsquo;s innovations are highly compelling. When traveling, Google gives online recommendations through Google Maps in terms of products and services nearby the user. A consumer can submit photographs and narratives of places they have visited via social media channels, and contribute to shared information.</p>  Martin Summerhayes View Edit Delete
7  <p>Chris Hummel has a 20+-year career in enterprise sales and marketing and is a globally-recognized thought&nbsp;leader and widely-respected senior executive in the technology industry. Chris Hummel is a true international executive, having lived, worked, and successfully led organizations around&nbsp;the globe, including the US, Germany, Eastern Europe and Asia.</p>  <p>Innovation is something you don&rsquo;t easily teach or even force on an organization.&nbsp; It requires fresh and unique perspectives gained from either pulling people out of their traditional roles and comfort zones or by bringing in outside perspectives through new talent acquisition or external expertise.&nbsp; At the same time, executive leaders must display and encourage a strong preference for thinking &lsquo;outside the box&rsquo; and a willingness to take risk to foster a change/innovation culture.&nbsp;</p>  <p>Innovation is stifled in companies that operate in silos, where leaders are inwardly focused, and where stakeholders have allowed business challenges, market dynamics or competitive pressures to dominate decision making and investment decisions.&nbsp; There is ample evidence of brands who have seen market leading positions deteriorate due to over-confidence and too much &ldquo;we know best&rdquo; mentality.&nbsp; Finally, companies whose research and development agendas are dominated by engineering or product focus rather than a market focus often fall behind peers from an innovation perspective.</p>  <p>A determined shift to a market-focused R&amp;D&nbsp; agenda is helping to drive an accelerated pace of innovation at my company.&nbsp; We have shifted away from investment decisions driven by the product portfolio or so-called &ldquo;long tail&rdquo; development projects toward a decision schema driven on careful analysis of industry trends and changing customer requirements.&nbsp;&nbsp; Those companies whose investment priorities are the result of market-facing analysis will have a faster time to value from innovation projects.</p>  <p>The emergence of improved collaboration and communications technologies will enable innovation workers to better come together as virtual teams and amplify the collective effort of today&rsquo;s &ldquo;anywhere workers.&rdquo;&nbsp; Such technologies will seamlessly combine voice, video, text, structured and unstructured content while also enabling a much improved collaborative environment that will drive not only higher levels of business performance but also accelerate the pace of innovation.</p>  <p>I admire Apple for what they have done for product design.&nbsp;&nbsp; Frog showed us the power of bringing customers into the conversation around innovation.&nbsp;&nbsp; In the end, I admire any company who has the courage to seek a better alternative when the &ldquo;good enough&rdquo; option won&rsquo;t do.</p>  Chris Hummel View Edit Delete
52  <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Hicham Sabir is the Open Innovation Leader for North America at Philips Lighting. He holds an Engineering Degree from French Engineering School&nbsp;<em>Arts et M&eacute;tiers</em>&nbsp;and a Master of Science in Applied Physics from&nbsp;<em>Chalmers University of Technology</em>&nbsp;in Sweden. Prior to his current position, Sabir worked in Philips Lighting&rsquo;s R&amp;D and venture teams to build up Philips&rsquo; LED Lamps portfolio, professional systems and connectivity solutions. Sabir says the iconic global brand is responding to a profound disruption &ndash; connectivity &ndash; not only with leading connected solutions and optimized illumination but also with transformative new business models.</span></p> <p>In addition to its market-leading suite of lighting products for both B2B and B2C environments, Philips Lighting offers data-enabled solutions in an extraordinary diversity of applications &ndash; from helping building managers optimize their office spaces, to guiding retail shoppers to sale items with game-changing accuracy, to improving safety and livability for smart cities.</p> <p>&ldquo;Lighting is ubiquitous,&rdquo; says Sabir. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s everywhere people are. Imagine connecting even a small percentage of this lighting, you will end up with the largest connected IoT network in the physical space. Our ambition for Philips Lighting is to be the lighting company for the Internet of Things, turning light sources into data points to connect more devices, places and people through light.&rdquo;</p> <p>Sabir says the company is achieving transformation through a collaborative approach to innovation that includes partnerships with expert vendors in new technologies and use case applications to achieve their maximum potential through lighting infrastructure.</p> <p>He told BPI that the applications and value emerging from its data-enabled services are such that it is no longer optimal for traditional procurement or lighting executive teams to explore partnerships on their own &ndash; because other departments&rsquo; stakeholders, from IT and finance to sustainability and marketing, stand to benefit directly from the data-enabled solutions.&nbsp;</p> <p>&ldquo;From our <a href="http://www.lighting.philips.com/main/systems/connected-lighting/citytouch">Philips CityTouch</a> connected street lighting solution to the category leader for connected home lighting, <a href="http://www2.meethue.com/en-us/">Philips Hue</a>,&ndash; connectivity is driving innovation use cases throughout the entire Philips Lighting portfolio,&rdquo; he says.</p>  <p>There are two significant trends driving the growth of the lighting industry and new innovations in lighting technology.</p> <p>The first is increasing demand for more energy-efficient light. According to the US Energy Information Association, <a href="https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=electricity_use">lighting accounts for 10% of total electricity consumption in the US</a>. Switching to LED enables light-related energy savings up to 50% - and that number jumps to 80% when paired with smart controls. There is a tremendous retrofit opportunity as a significant portion of light points in the US still need to be converted to LED.</p> <p>The second is the increasing potential of lighting systems and services that harness the power of digital light. Lighting infrastructure already exists everywhere that people live, work, travel, shop, dine and interact. From cities and stores to offices and homes, lighting systems are being transformed into information pathways with the capacity to collect and share data, and offer new insights that enable, and really drive, the Internet of Things. These lighting systems become a conduit to exciting new services, enabled by data, that make people&rsquo;s lives more safe, inspired, and comfortable, make businesses more productive and profitable, make cities more efficient and livable, and make the world more sustainable and prosperous.</p> <p>Connectivity will continue to proliferate as technology evolves and volumes drive costs down. The smart city is a great example of growth potential for connectivity. Globally, just 2 percent of installed street lighting systems are connected today, but this number is set to reach 35 percent by 2025, according to a recent market analysis from Philips Lighting. This represents a huge opportunity to help enable smart cities in order to improve public safety and services.</p> <p>In retail, our visible light communication technology enables customers to have precise positioning of devices to help them navigate the retails stores and find sales, while at the same time providing the store with detailed analytics on what the shoppers are doing. In commercial buildings, connected lighting systems can collect, share and analyze data that uncover insights into new capabilities such as space optimization and employee experience. With technology that exists today, we can equip every light with a sensor that can collect all kinds of data points about the office environment and its uses. With these insights, there is so much more value that a building can afford its tenants, or companies offer to its employees, beyond illumination.</p> <p>The Open Innovation team is responsible for the identification of disrupting trends and the selection of the startups and partners that will help us respond to those disruptions. My approach with the open innovation team is to be vocal about what we are trying to do and find the right partners within the greater innovation ecosystem who specialize in areas of technology that are complementary. Our overall innovation strategy is to grow the company in data-enabled services and build partnerships with organizations who we may not otherwise have dealt with &ndash; those with higher risk profiles, or larger companies within verticals we would not normally engage.</p>  <p>The benefits of our connected systems go far beyond the lighting itself. When we talk to a city, we talk to the lighting and infrastructure and utility guys. They know all about lighting and energy savings, but when you start talking about acoustic sensing, or lighting that can help improve traffic safety, you need a discussion with additional departments. Those applications will trigger further innovation for both parties. We are starting to see cities hiring Chief Innovation Officers and CTOs, precisely to bridge the gap between technology , city operations and public services.</p>  <p>We have a long history of innovation, and we are well positioned on awareness on the need for innovation. Our 125-year legacy of innovation is core to our business and to meeting our customers&rsquo; needs.</p> <p>We are pioneering breakthrough innovations in products, system architectures and services &ndash; making bold investments in sensors, cloud-based controls platforms, connected lighting, indoor positioning technology and consumer-based personal wirelessly controlled home lighting systems.</p> <p>We invest approximately 5% of sales revenue in R&amp;D to ensure we remain at the forefront of lighting technological developments.</p> <p>Our culture was formerly structured around large internal R&amp;D teams. Over the past five or six years, we became more structured toward partnerships for external innovation. We recognize that there are partners that have complementary areas of expertise and experience. By sharing, learning and working with one another, we can explore new ideas and open new opportunities.</p> <p>There is no comparison with the current speed of innovation compared to ten years ago. There is a sense of urgency where a typical innovation project today will take three to six months, while that might have lasted two years prior to the LED revolution.</p> <p>Internally, we have a number of innovation challenges within and between our R&amp;D teams. For example, every few months, there will be a challenge for sourcing ideas from engineers on how new approaches can be applied elsewhere in the portfolio. We try to bridge this gap by involving additional stakeholders in the organization. One of the things that has been most instrumental is connecting with marketing. Meetings with our marketing teams on what they are seeing outside help us to make more informed decisions about how to improve our products or create new solutions.&nbsp;</p>  <p>We want to become a data-enabled services company. Technologies like AI and IoT are all critical to delivering services based on data insights, so they are vital for our continued success and innovation.</p> <p>We need to have connected systems and sensors to extract information from the physical space. We also need to make sense of unstructured data, which is where artificial intelligence comes in. And we need to be able to commercialize and offer services, including exciting new business models.</p> <p>In the professional space, in some of the smart cities and smart building projects we do, the customers are paying for lighting services, not for the light system itself. This is what we call light-as-a-service. Our revenue depends on the performance of the system, so it is vital to ensure the system is operating as efficiently and effectively as possible.</p> <p>With IoT, you can optimize maintenance contracts. If I send people to repair three street lights, they will have the right diagnosis and the right parts. If I see there are ten nearby lights that will fail in a month or two, I can make the decision to replace them all now to reduce my overall maintenance costs. The ideal scenario will send someone to fix the problem before the customer notices there is something wrong.</p>  <p>I am a big fan of innovative products like our Philips Hue connected home lighting system. When paired with smart home platforms, particularly voice assistants like Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit and Google Assistant, Philips Hue is transforming the way consumers experience and interact with light at home. Finally, I am intrigued by the autonomous driving revolution and the scaling-up of electric vehicles.</p>  Hicham Sabir View Edit Delete
56  <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Andre</span><span class="s2">&nbsp;Fredericks is a get-things-done strategist exploiting design and technology to solve complex business problems. Learn how his organization is changing the game in life insurance by taking a complicated, uncomfortable product and making it appealing.</span></p>  <p>Life Insurance is a complicated product. It&rsquo;s typically a grudge purchase made mostly because an agent convinced you that you needed it and assisted you over the purchase line. This in itself can be a complicated and drawn out process which could take a few weeks to complete, with underwriting and medical tests that need to be conducted. Life insurers also typically struggle in attracting younger clients which places pressure on long term business sustainability.</p> <p>Indie has rewritten the narrative of purchasing Life Insurance away from &ldquo;Protecting your loved ones when you pass on,&rdquo; to &ldquo;Not just insuring your life, but Creating Wealth." We do this by matching up to 100% of your monthly premium and placing it into an investment that generates wealth over time. It's all tax-free and costs our clients nothing.</p> <p>We&rsquo;ve been successful in attracting a younger audience with our fresh messaging and honest content. We don&rsquo;t just want clients to buy our product, we want them to be financially savvy and make the right financial choices. That is why we keep on producing content to educate - not only for our clients but for everyone.</p> <p>We view the entire customer experience and engagement as &lsquo;The Product,&rsquo; which is contrary to the traditional view that only the Financial Product is &lsquo;The Product.&rsquo; We actively leverage design and technology to deliver it in a seamless and cost-effective manner. With us, you can purchase underwritten Life Cover in as little as 10 minutes, or if you prefer, save and resume later, or chat with a live customer success agent for assistance.</p> <p>We truly place our clients in the center of everything that we do. We view them as the true heroes of the story, which is their financial journey. We are only their guide. Our aim is to equip them with the knowledge and tools that will assist them in making the right financial choices and pave their way to financial freedom.</p>  <p>Large incumbents have been around for many years. As an example, our Parent Group has been a going concern for 100 years. During that time, you develop a significant portfolio of legacy technology systems which inhibits your ability to change. This effect is compounded as the financial products those systems support have a very long lifespan and continued platform renewal is not always viable.</p> <p>Mature businesses are also geared for continuous optimisation in order to remain profitable. Halting or impeding operations to experiment with a new business model introduces risk and creates tension between short and long term goals.</p> <p>Our industry is also still largely intermediated where agents have relationships with the clients and insurance companies provide products. This separation makes it difficult for companies to get closer to clients and build real empathy required to deliver on their needs.</p> <p>We have been set up as a new business with the freedom to experiment with new business models and technology whilst leveraging the scale that comes from our parent company. This scale comes in the form of intellectual property, financial licenses and access to capital. So really, the best of both worlds.</p>  <p>Having the luxury of building an organisation from the ground up ensured we made it a foundational principle and baked it into our DNA. We try and keep our structure as flat as possible and communication as transparent as possible.</p> <p>No one person has a monopoly on ideas or innovation. Everyone is encouraged to contribute and participate in identifying opportunities or brainstorming ideas to problems. Work in progress solutions are shared and everyone has the opportunity to engage, ask questions and make suggestions.</p> <p>We also hired people who did not have experience in our industry and we valued the diverse opinions they brought to the table. Many times their &ldquo;naivety&rdquo; unlocked some insight where we were stuck in our old paradigm of &ldquo;this is how that is supposed to work&rdquo;.</p> <p>We also have a bias towards action, as we truly believe that doing, and shopping our product is the only way you really learn. We are client driven and embrace feedback. It is the only way you refine your value proposition and assist your clients in achieving their desired outcomes.</p>  <p>As the core financial products become more commoditised, companies will adopt a more personalised approach focusing on client engagement. Companies will have to deal with two major issues here, 1) typical Life Insurance services and products don&rsquo;t lend themselves to frequent engagement and 2) as the industry is mostly intermediated, the client relationship typically resides with the agent.</p> <p>We can expect to see regulation, affecting how agents are remunerated, create an advice-gap where agents opt to serve higher-income clients, leaving lower-income clients unserved. This is where Robo-Advice is able to play a role by automating financial advice processes. Agents could also leverage the type of tools we see remote teams use for collaboration, to attend to more clients, thus removing geographic barriers and saving time.</p> <p>Effective distribution will remain key and I expect to see the continued experimentation with alternative distribution and partnership models.</p> <p>Technologies like Cloud can assist in driving down operational costs and unlock new capabilities, while investments in AI and Analytics can offer better client and market insight, and also help optimise front- and back-end processes such as underwriting, improved pricing, risk- and capital management.</p> The key is not which technologies or trends are the latest, but how the intersection of these technologies and trends can be utilised to unlock more utility value for their clients. Companies who really understand and engage their clients will reap benefits.  <p>I am a big proponent of Design Thinking as it provides a mechanism to really understand clients, identify their pain points and latent needs. Spending time with clients and building empathy really allows you to build solutions that matter. Beyond the Design Thinking process, having the right mindset is important such as reframing, asking questions, keeping an open mind, deferring judgement, and continued learning.</p> <p>I also love innovations that bring to life that which seems to be futuristic in a way that hides all the technical complexity, whilst delivering a seamless client experience.</p> <p>Amazon Go is a great example of this. Using computer vision, machine learning and IoT together to redefine the shopping and checkout experience. You simply scan your app&rsquo;s code on the way in, select what you want from the shelves and just walk out. The technology detects what you&rsquo;ve selected to buy and charges your card on the way out.</p> <p>Each piece of technology already existed in its own right, but Amazon Go used the intersection of those technologies to develop a customer experience with enhanced utility value i.e. instant checkout.</p>  Andre Fredericks View Edit Delete
42  <p>Sebastian Herzog constantly moves between corporate culture and startup spirit. Herzog has more than 10 years of work experience within Lufthansa, including being the former executive assistant to the CEO of Lufthansa Group, while also founding his own fashion ecommerce startup OfficePunk.</p> <p>In 2014, Herzog finally bridged both worlds by becoming a true corporate entrepreneur, initiating and founding the Lufthansa Innovation Hub jointly with internal and external top talents as a separate legal entity. Asked about the focus fields of the Lufthansa Innovation Hub, Herzog explains that he is not a believer in focusing on specific trends or technologies. &ldquo;If you really want to change things, you have to focus on a specific customer,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Innovation starts with empathy and only with understanding the needs of a customer, one will be able to derive real improvements and innovations. In that sense, our only focus is the traveler and his or her needs. In an exaggerated way, I would say, 'customer interest beats company interest.'&rdquo;</p> <p>One very concrete example is the pain of travelers having to check-in for their flights manually. Instead of supporting the Lufthansa core business with state of the art self-check in solutions, the Lufthansa Innovation Hub built www.airlinecheckins.com-- an industry-wide solution that allows travelers to be checked automatically for more than 100 airlines based on their preferences. Herzog says, &ldquo;While it might sound contra-intuitive in the beginning, we are now learning a lot about the traveler behavior when they use other airlines than Lufthansa. And of course, this knowledge helps Lufthansa as well.&rdquo;</p> <p>Herzog is also advising and consulting other corporates on the topics of digital transformation and corporate entrepreneurship. He adds, &ldquo;Regardless of the industry I am working for, they all struggle on how to cope with the incredible speed and rate of change out there. That is why corporations such as Lufthansa can fully exploit the full potential of an Innovation Hub by setting it up as a second operating system of the corporate that runs with a different speed, based on different talents and framed with a different set of budgeting rules. If you then develop the right links to the mothership &ndash; Innovation Hubs can become a major driver of commercial and strategic impact.&rdquo;</p>  <p>Three main differentiating factors between the Lufthansa Innovation Hub and other corporate innovation activities are:</p> <p>1. Talent: Instead of &ldquo;just relocating&rdquo; existing line-managers to a fancy tech-location &ndash; we managed the challenge to get significant amount of entrepreneurial talent on board. Currently 80% of the Lufthansa Innovation Hub consists of people that have not worked for Lufthansa before.</p> <p>2. Tool set: Instead of being a pure incubator, accelerator, technology lab, or corporate VC, we are deeply linked with the Lufthansa Corporate Strategy and pursue whatever innovation setup that is suited to a specific challenge.</p> <p>3. Test-driven culture: Instead of writing five-year plans on whiteboards, we try to get instant market feedback, regardless if we are building prototypes and products or developing broader strategies.</p> <p>This unique combination really allows us to support and drive the digital transformation within Lufthansa by supporting the existing business with startup partnerships and new products, (&ldquo;better business&rdquo;) as well as pursuing topics out of current business boundaries (&ldquo;new business&rdquo;).</p>  <p>There are three levels one has to consider:</p> <p>First &ndash;&nbsp;The Innovation Team. In general, you often see innovation teams pursuing something they are passionate about but that customers do not really care about, or teams unwilling to kill off ideas that aren&rsquo;t working. Within the Lufthansa Innovation Hub we try to rapidly kill our projects if they do not meet our initial hypotheses.</p> <p>Second &ndash; The Industry. You always have to consider the industry you are working in. The aviation industry for example highly relies on safety&mdash;we build systems to be backed up by systems to be backed up by systems. You don&rsquo;t want us to do fail-fast. Fail early, when it comes to building or running aircraft or engines. Even within development, safety is drilled down with the manufacturers and airlines at a level only otherwise seen in nuclear energy. This is understandable, but it has implications for innovation potential.&nbsp;</p> <p>Third &ndash; The Corporate. Corporates in general have a lot of things to lose &ndash; for them it is so hard to innovate. Start-ups can fail fast, because you have no customers to lose, no brand to lose, no package to lose. At big corporates, you have everything to lose, and that keeps you from pushing the boundaries. That is where corporates have to find their own platforms where they can be explorative, and that is where we come in.</p>  <p>The history of the Lufthansa Innovation Hub is quite a unique one. In May 2014, a small group of internal Lufthansa colleagues convinced the Lufthansa Board about the relevance of travel tech startups as driver of innovation in our industry. That time, we were looking for the commitment to acknowledge those startups as a very relevant stakeholder for Lufthansa. Based on these very early and initial findings, I personally had the chance to set up a team of three internal and three external colleagues to move to Berlin for three months and try to figure out what is needed and what is suitable for Lufthansa.</p> <p>The six of us spent the time in a shared apartment in Berlin: meeting various startups, corporate entrepreneurs, building the first prototypes, and finally convincing Lufthansa to move this initiative to its next level with founding the Lufthansa Innovation Hub as a separate legal entity in January 2015. While we were equipped with an initial budget for one year, Lufthansa just recently increased their commitment with a three and a half-year funding and more resources focusing on commercial and strategic impact. To summarize, these intense 30 months since the days within the joint apartment one can say that the Lufthansa Innovation Hub moved from an internal experiment towards a fully integrated part of the digital transformation of Lufthansa.&nbsp;</p>  <p>Speaking of technologies, we live in a world with some very interesting technologies all with the ability to change major parts of our daily lives. For example, there is voice recognition, artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, blockchain. One could name every fancy buzzword here, but the question I am really asking is, what&acute;s the impact on business models and customer interaction?</p> <p>Take travel booking as an example. As the consumer, you are confronted with numerous choices from airline websites, meta-searches and online travel agencies. Whether you are on a leisure or business trip, you could spend endless hours comparing offers and trying to find the best deal. Even if you found what you are looking for, it is not convenient to book. You are forced to type in passport credentials and personal data over and over again. This high degree of inconvenience is a perfect open door when it comes to disruption.</p> <p>We see a change in the interface: travelers are very eager to use their existing communication channels such Email, Whatsapp, or Facebook, and rather deal with one travel-focused concierge service than with a broad set of various travel providers, each with his own communication. That observation and anticipation of customer behavior then led to the launch of www.hellomissioncontrol.com &ndash; a travel concierge built by the Lufthansa Innovation Hub.</p> <p>Talking about the future, will we still have airline booking websites around in five years? I don&rsquo;t know. I literally cannot imagine people who still enter an airline website domain and manually type in where they want to go. I just don&rsquo;t see it because there are so many trends towards much more convenient frontends with massive data-driven backend that actually can perform the task you want them to do.</p>  <p>I am impressed by innovation strategies that are able to adapt according to what is happening out there. Just as if you would be building a prototype: you build, you learn, you measure, you build again. Considering the uncertainty and speed we are living in, I am convinced that five year plans are not worth the paper they are written on. Strategy has to be as agile as product development.</p>  Sebastian Herzog View Edit Delete
50  <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Kim Smyth works for AstraZeneca, a global biopharmaceutical company, where she leads a Silicon-Valley-based Technology Innovation Lab. Kim&rsquo;s team explores emerging trends, scouts new companies, and delivers innovative proof-of-concepts for stakeholders within AstraZeneca&rsquo;s science and business units.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Kim has more than twenty years of broad cross-industry experience in consulting and operational roles, focused on how to help large companies take advantage of new technology to improve top and bottom lines. She joined AstraZeneca in Australia in 2010, where she led strategy, digital innovation and patient program functions. She moved to Silicon Valley in the office of the CTO to help accelerate technology innovation across the full company life cycle from discovery through clinical trials and commercialization.</span></p> <p>While Kim can&rsquo;t yet speak in detail about the exciting new partnerships and initiatives her new team is spearheading, she says that the pace of technology change &ndash; driven by advances in computing, machine intelligence, data analytics, and connected devices &ndash; is creating many opportunities for life sciences companies and the healthcare delivery system.&nbsp;</p> <p>Smyth tells BPI:</p> <ul> <li>&ldquo;I'm very excited about the potential to marry digital tools and approaches to support our therapies. I have seen a lot of great progress, especially in chronic disease, where behavioral aspects such as adhering to lifestyle, diet, and exercise changes are key..."</li> <li>&ldquo;We have a broad mandate, looking for innovation that optimizes current processes, or re-imagines our industry. Because we&rsquo;re looking to the future, we emphasize value potential vs immediate ROI. We follow our Company Values: putting patients first, following the science, and doing the right thing. If we get those things right, the business case and competitiveness will follow.&rdquo;</li> </ul>  <p>My team operates in Silicon Valley with three goals: bring Silicon Valley perspective and knowledge into our company; find and incubate new partners (especially start-ups) to demonstrate the power of new technology and approaches, and build a West Coast presence that leverages technology as well as life science leadership.</p> <p>My team sits in IT, so we serve all therapy areas and functions. Technology is changing the game in many industries &ndash; or eating the world, as Marc Andreessen might say. We look for innovation that can bring medicines to market more quickly, or make therapies more effective. This could be re-imagining how we recruit or operate clinical trials, delivering mobile services that complement our medicines, or applying machine intelligence for clinical or patient support.</p> <p>Our industry is complex, so we work closely with internal teams for the necessary scientific, clinical, and business domain expertise. We are a catalyst, empowering innovation rather than trying to own it in our team. This requires new technology skills in areas such as data analytics or IoT, as well as soft skills in communication, influencing and teamwork. We prioritize based on the importance that differentiating new technology plays in the opportunity, whether the potential value is incremental or transformational, and how closely the company matches our current needs and therapy area focus.&nbsp;</p>  <p>Healthcare and drug development are highly regulated environments, with enormous - often literally life-and-death &ndash; impact on people&rsquo;s lives. This makes innovation all the more important, but it has to be done carefully and respectfully.</p> <p>Regulators have a very difficult job to keep up with impending changes, and sometimes lag the &ldquo;state of the art&rdquo; in areas like social media, or machine learning. How will a regulator assess a machine learning algorithm that doesn&rsquo;t offer a clear rationale for a diagnosis, for example?</p> <p>Another challenge is the complexity and deep specialization required across multiple scientific and technological domains. We need people with deep knowledge in both technology and science or clinical areas &ndash; or who have exceptional ability to work with together.&nbsp;</p> <p>The healthcare environment is a complex and fragmented system with many regional variants, and even though we are a large multinational, our impact on the overall system can be limited. People like to say it is easy to pilot a healthcare innovation, but hard to scale it.</p> Finally, we have a very successful core business. It can be hard to convince highly accomplished people of the need to change - especially when many aspects of digital health are still generating clinical evidence, or have very different operating models.  <p>One of the hardest parts about embedding innovation is moving from a successful proof-of-concept into widespread adoption.&nbsp;</p> <p>Ideally, at a grass-roots level, we work jointly with highly motivated internal stakeholders at a very early stage, so that if we are successful there is a home for the project to land and grow. This is a balancing act &ndash; at times, we need to push the envelope too!</p> <p>However, top down executive visibility and endorsement is critical. When our leaders understand technology trends and potential impact on our business, they provide invaluable recognition and support of projects that might otherwise &ldquo;fly under the radar&rdquo; or be seen as optional. Executive support has also helped to embed innovation objectives for employees more broadly &ndash; moving everyone from innovation &ldquo;if and when I have time&rdquo; to &ldquo;a core part of my job, which I&rsquo;m accountable to deliver.&rdquo;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>  <p>There are huge advances in the way we store, transfer, use, and think about data, software and devices. The real change is driven not by a single technology, but by the combination of several: cloud computing, increasing digitization of healthcare, more personal and linked data, connected devices in the hands of patients, and changes in the ways we interact with computers.</p> <p>We are arriving at a new class of data-empowered healthcare tools. Formerly invisible factors involving behavior, diet, environment, genetics, omics, or early cancer risk can now be measured and assist in risk assessment and diagnosis support. The cost of sensors and medical grade devices is decreasing, improving our ability to monitor continuously. Machine intelligence is exceeding human ability to recognize patterns in medical images and data. This opens possibilities to identify patients at risk, understanding disease progression, and analyzing historical and real time data and making appropriate recommendations. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>At the same time, issues like cybersecurity, privacy and cost sustainability must be addressed if we&rsquo;re to realize these benefits without introducing unacceptable risks.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>  <p>I am most excited by companies that surprise me and challenge the way I think &ndash; bringing fresh approaches to some of our industry&rsquo;s longstanding challenges. I believe there is huge potential in combining the rigor of science with the power of human-centered design. One company is using sensors and data analytics to quantify the degree of control in asthma patients, which could help predict an attack days before it would otherwise have happened. I&rsquo;m also fascinated by &ldquo;doctors on demand&rdquo; services and the degree to which smart logistics, advanced teleconferencing, conversational UI and machine learning-enabled clinical support could improve the experience of healthcare while dramatically lowering costs. And I am excited about companies who are thinking about the whole ecosystem &ndash; for example, one that is looking to create an &ldquo;app store&rdquo; for genomics, challenging potential partners to offer value at a very personal level to their customer base.&nbsp;</p> <p>The variety and impact these companies will have is part of what makes my role such an exciting and rewarding one!</p>  Kim Smyth View Edit Delete
43  <p>Prith Banerjee is Group CTO of Schneider Electric, a global leader in energy management and automation, with operations in more than 100 countries. With an EcoStruxure platform that defines its &ldquo;Innovation at Every Level&rdquo; business philosophy, Schneider leverages the most advanced data technologies&mdash;and an open, standards-based innovation strategy&mdash;for next-generation solutions and efficiencies. Its commitment to innovation is illustrated in an R&amp;D budget of 5 percent of revenue and a dedicated architecture for incremental, new-market, and disruptive innovation, defined as Horizon 1 (core or short-term), Horizon 2 (adjacent or medium-term), and Horizon 3 (disruptive or long-term). Historically, its disruptive initiatives include pioneering aspects of IoT itself in 1996, and with recent technologies like arc-fault detection and its new IoT-enabled M580 automation controller. Today, its connected circuit breakers, protection relays and variable speed drives are already reducing machine downtime for customers with remote reporting of actionable data, while pilot projects are underway to slash downtime even further, with asset performance management IoT systems predicting faults before they happen.</p> <p>Meanwhile, Schneider is now looking at business model transformations, in which guarantees of production outcomes can be sold as services. Seeing access to energy as a basic human right, the company&rsquo;s &ldquo;Life is On&rdquo; vision is to ensure that energy is available to everyone in a safe, reliable, and sustainable manner. Anticipating global megatrends like rapid urbanization and digitization as the defining parameters for this vision, Schneider recruited Banerjee as Group CTO specifically to drive digital innovation and the transformation to IoT. Banerjee was previously MD for Global Technology R&amp;D at Accenture, after serving as CTO for ABB and Senior VP for Research and Director of HP Labs at Hewlett Packard. In driving innovation and technology differentiation for these leading companies, he also leveraged significant academic experience. Banerjee has served as Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the Walter Murphy Professor and Chairman of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northwestern University. He is also the author of 350 research papers.</p> <p>In an interview with BPI, Banerjee says that despite the massive strides already made with IoT-enabled solutions, the truly game-changing innovations will come from next-generation analytics on big data. And he says those leaps in efficiency are not only required for competitive advantage, but also for the macro challenges of demand and sustainability facing the industry. Banerjee also mentions a 300 percent increase in efficiency is required to deal with a 50 percent increase in global energy consumption in 40 years without significantly increasing carbon emissions. Fortunately, the company&rsquo;s portfolio of innovative products has vast consumption efficiency gaps to eat into, including 50 percent energy inefficiencies in asset-intensive industries and a stunning rate of 80 percent inefficiencies in the world&rsquo;s buildings.</p> <p>Banerjee says the bringing together of smart energy management, automation, and software could not only achieve the required efficiencies, but also lead to exciting new business models.</p>  <p>We deliver to our customers low and medium voltage products and automation systems that are all integrated in several end markets: buildings, data centers, asset intensive industries, and utilities. We have a host of innovations throughout those areas, and we invest 1.3 billion euros on R&amp;D. It is about faster, cheaper, better, so why do we need that deep level of innovation?</p> <p>Over the next 10 years, the energy consumption in the world will increase by about 40 percent, and electricity consumption will increase 80 percent thanks to things like urbanization, industrialization, and digitalization; you must be three times more efficient to keep carbon emissions near neutral. We found that in the domain of buildings, only 18 percent are energy efficient, so there is an opportunity for 82 percent of untapped energy efficiency in buildings. Data centers are 30 percent energy efficient. Asset intensive industries such as oil and gas, mining, and metals are about 50 percent efficient. The grand problem we are trying to solve is making sure your energy efficiency is running close to 100 percent.</p> <p>I work with the five business CTOs to harness the innovations springing from that $1.3 billion investment. Connectivity is a major part of the solution. We are on the IoT journey, and our innovation chain is tied to IoT and digital transformation. Connectivity is about bringing value to our customers, and it can be cost reduction, efficiencies, performance, or all of the above. It also promotes safety, and safety has always been a core value in our customer proposition.</p> <p>We look at innovation in the portfolio approach. A large percentage of investment&mdash;about 70 percent&mdash;is on Horizon 1: short term innovations on our core products. With Horizon 2, we have products like Masterpact MTZ, which has an IoT and power monitoring capability. This is Horizon 2 or adjacent and medium-term innovations: bringing new technologies to the same product. H-2 also includes bringing the same product to a new geography, meaning bringing these circuit breakers to China or India with modifications. H-2 is about 20 percent of our innovation investment. Horizon 3 is truly disruptive and long-term innovations, and represents a lot of the stuff we are driving today, and is about 10 percent of our R&amp;D spend. Some of them are seemingly crazy, but with huge potential to completely disrupt our industry.</p> <p>I am responsible for all innovation, not just the digital parts. We are on the journey of IoT and digital transformation, and almost all our products&mdash;from automation systems to circuit breakers&mdash;are integrated with digital technologies. We are absolutely the market leader.</p> <p>Our new products are taking the industry by storm, and I am completely proud.</p>  <p>We are moving toward IT/OT convergence, so all of a sudden engineers who had been very focused on the physics of arc breaking and switching in circuit breakers find themselves in the world of cyber security and cyber trends, of analytics, and machine learning. How do you bridge the gap from the old physics-based engineering to new world technologies or social media, machine learning and data analytics? That&rsquo;s a challenge, and it needs a multi-disciplinary approach. Finding people who have knowledge in all areas is tough. Obviously, you do not need individuals fluent in all areas, but you do need individuals who can collaborate in large teams to solve customers&rsquo; problems effectively. The competency of people in our area is in the IT/OT convergence. We are an operational technology company, so we take care of the actual operations of the company&mdash;whether it is operating wells for Shell or what have you, whereas the IT companies like Oracle or SAP or Microsoft do the company back office.</p> <p>Siloes also present a problem, because in many organizations, each line of business is so focused on their own vertical that they don&rsquo;t think about the broader ecosystem. Companies that don&rsquo;t invest enough in innovation have an even greater challenge. If I had only the industry average of 2 percent of sales for R&amp;D, I would not be able to compete with the Schneinders of this world!</p> <p>Also, with a risk-intolerant culture, you get only incremental innovation. The only way to get disruptive innovation is to create a culture of risk tolerance, where it is okay to try crazy things. We have a culture where it is okay to fail, and even encouraged to celebrate early failures&mdash;but only early failures, not just putting hundreds of millions of dollars into a stubborn mule project. We try to spend on lots of wacky things, knowing that most will fail, and when they do I give the team a pat on the back and say thanks for trying that, and what have we learned? Knowing something does not work also adds to our knowledge. Organizations who do not tolerate failure become very incremental.</p> <p>For IoT, there are three main challenges: cyber security; inter-operability, or standardization; and legacy systems. There are systems you build on that could be 30 years old (brownfield systems) or one day old (greenfield systems). I think data security is a very big problem. The perimeter for attack is increasing daily with the 50 billion connected devices in the world of IOT. Cyber terrorists can create more havoc with cyber attacks than with bombs. We are giving a lot of attention to cyber security.</p>  <p>One of the things we pride ourselves on is the concept of open innovation, and that is something I have been practicing and preaching for years. Open innovation is a very big part of what we do, and we try build solutions for our customers with partners. Before we open an R&amp;D project, we always ask if there is any start-up in the world that is doing something related to what we are trying to do? If there is, lets investigate and possibly collaborate with or bring that start-up into our fold. We can innovate much faster with this approach. It took three years and 10 million dollars to bring a solution to customers before; now we can spend, say, one extra million and bring it to market in six months. That&rsquo;s the value of open innovation.</p> <p>We have partnerships with the top 50 companies in Silicon Valley and relationships with top venture capital firms, and we ask all of them: &ldquo;what are the top start-ups you are working with in the IoT space? In the sensor space? In the cyber space or in the drive space?&rdquo; We ask them for their technology strategy&mdash;what is it they are trying to do? From this, we typically identify three or four start-ups, and we try to identify the technology that best matches with our system. Conferences are also helpful. A week ago, I gave a keynote in Barcelona at the IoT world congress. We tell the world, &ldquo;this is where we are headed,&rdquo; and then 15 start-up founders came to me and talked about possible synergies.</p>  <p>As Group CTO, I am driving IoT, and there are four pillars that are part of my organization. One is working with the five divisional CTOs on driving about 1.3 billion euros in R&amp;D spend. The second is programs like open innovation. The third pillar is our corporate research center, where we look at Horizon-3&mdash;disruptive innovation. The fourth pillar is IoT. I was recruited at Schneider fundamentally to drive our IoT development, along three levels. One is connected products, which is fundamental, but not where the real value is.The next level is edge control, where in our application, our customers do not expect these IoT products to be connected and controlled from the cloud. We want to have local control. The third level is apps, analytics, and services, which we are building on top of the cloud.</p> <p>The first value is in services. In the past, if a transformer failed, you as the customer would have to alert Schneider and ask if we can fix it. Today, we will tell you your transformer has failed, and ask if you would like me to fix it. Remote services are the low hanging fruit we are going after. But the next level is having the transformer give signals before it fails so we can inform the customer that the transformer will fail Thursday, and replace it Wednesday. Now there is no downtime. It is called asset performance management with predictive analytics, and we are doing it with a whole range of products. The cost of 15 minutes of downtime for an Amazon data center can be a hundred million, so the value is enormous. The third value is outcome-based services&mdash;if you can guarantee the outcome. If you&rsquo;re making widgets in your factory, we can guarantee you will make 20,000 widgets per minute, no matter what. So rather than selling the 1,000-dollar transformer, we can sell the guarantee of 20,000 widgets per minute. You lease our products which we install for free, and you pay for the service of productivity. We are currently running pilots on this model. The IoT area will journey from products to connected products to services to guaranteed outcomes. We are increasingly moving toward a world where people will not own products, and instead will get services on demand where and when they need it.</p> <p>IoT also offers enormous benefits for continuous customer engagements. In the past, when we sold you a circuit breaker or panel that lasts seven years, the next time we would talk would be in seven years. With IoT, you have a 24/7 connection with the customer. We know exactly what is going on. Continuous engagement with customers is an amazing new opportunity for marketers, and the best thing you can do for your CMO. IoT is just the plumbing. The technology that will be truly disruptive will be the analytics on that big data you are collecting. How to use data is the most important question we discuss every day. Initially, you are collecting small data, but with data coming in 24/7 from 50 billion connected devices. How do you do artificial intelligence and machine learning on all that data? This is going to be the most exciting thing. Connectivity is the easier part; analytics on the big data is going to be the game changer.</p>  <p>I am very excited with some of the latest innovations in areas such as augmented reality/virtual reality, cognitive computing and machine learning, 3D printing, robotics and drone technology.</p>  Prith Banerjee View Edit Delete
16  <p>Lilach Felner is a marketing consultant and lecturer specializing in building customer trust. She helps companies and brands become trustworthy by injecting trust into their businesses. As a marketer of multinational consumer brands for over 15 years, Lilach has experienced first-hand the tsunami of consumer militancy towards companies and brands, social media escalation and the dramatic transition of power to consumers.&nbsp;Her Trustworthy Marketing Approach helps organizations and brands become more worthy of their customers&rsquo; trust in the age of open social communication.&nbsp;</p>  <p>First, the organization must be managed by strong leaders that know where the organization is heading, and have a clear purpose and clear goals. Second, in order to make the changes happen, the organization needs a management that "walks the walk", adheres to its values and lives by them. Essentially, an organization needs management that believes in the necessity of change, and is willing to be committed to the change and its implications. Third, rolling out the change depends on management's ability to lead and inspire its employees, to empower those who come up with ideas, nurture them and activate them as advocates.&nbsp; In order to execute change, the employees must be involved. This is why the management should have an "open door policy," encouraging an open flow of communication and demonstrating high levels of accessibility. Fourth, another critical parameter for rolling out innovation and change is trust. In an atmosphere of trust, innovation and speed reach their full potential.&nbsp;</p>  <p>Based on my experience, the biggest obstacles to change and innovation are as follows:</p> <p>Short term-ism: A short-term managerial attitude includes management that is focused on short-term gain rather than long-term growth, management that finds it difficult to balance the need for long-term strategy with short-term results demanded by the market, and management that doesn't communicate a long-term vision for the business.</p> <p>A continuously decreasing Chief Executive Officer tenure: CEOs and senior executives with short tenure seem to have few incentives to embrace long-term oriented behavior. They find themselves facing an intriguing ethical dilemma between optimizing their financial pay-off within their own tenure and securing the longer-term well-being of the organization. According to a 2014 report released by The Conference Board, the average tenure of a departing S&amp;P 500 company CEO has decreased in recent years, from roughly 10 years in 2000 to 8.1 years in 2012.</p>  <p>The innovation process should start from the CEO and the management team in order to give it the focus and the priority it deserves. A special committee for innovative change should be appointed with representatives from all relevant departments. Employees should feel they are involved as well. In order to examine the effectiveness and the results of the process, a 'before and after' survey should be conducted.&nbsp;It is recommended to plan a kick-off session with all relevant employees in order to create involvement and engagement and build their commitment.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>  <p>Given the erosion in customer trust towards organizations and brands due to a history of over-promising and under-delivering, not only do we find more and more customers who arm themselves with as much unbiased information as possible but also more and more consumers who trust what their peers say. In this reality, I believe new technologies should focus on the 'social customers', those customers that are constantly engaging with one another in order to seek out advice and opinions from their peers. Engaging these powerful, trusted voices has become even more important considering that 92 percent of consumers around the world say they trust earned media, such as recommendations from friends and family (Nielsen&rsquo;s Global Trust in Advertising Report). &nbsp;Another area that challenges new technologies lies in the proliferation of communications channels. The challenge is to create a seamless, omni-channel solution that will provide a single, <em>seamless experience </em>for the customer across all channels. The customer views the company as being one company no matter how many channels it has. Each platform needs to have awareness of the other. This means a lot of coordination between IT and marketing.&nbsp;</p>  <p>I have two examples of trustworthy leaders who embody the innovation mindset in the way they lead.</p> <p>Tony Hsieh, the inspiring widely-admired founder and CEO of Zappos.How often do we see a company where most of its efforts towards customers happen after they&rsquo;ve made the sale? How often do we see a company that has reps who are trained so that when a customer is looking for a specific pair of shoes, if they&rsquo;re out of stock (for example, they don&rsquo;t have their size), they will look on at least three competitor web sites and refer the customer to that competitor if they find the shoe the customer is looking for? Hsieh has innovated the way Zappos treats its employees, its customers, and its suppliers. Hsieh is an inspiring example of a leader who believes that being true to your own values is fundamental to how others will perceive you.</p> <p>Peter Aceto, the President and CEO of Tangerine&mdash;formerly ING Direct Canada. How often do we see a CEO who measures his employees&rsquo; views about his leadership after his first year as CEO? After his first year as CEO, Peter Aceto decided to send a company-wide email, inviting everyone to vote on whether they wanted him to remain in charge. He was prepared to leave the position if the employees weren&rsquo;t inspired by his leadership. The response rate was 95% and of those who responded 97% said he should stay.&nbsp;</p>  Lilach Felner View Edit Delete
26  <p>Voted one of Houston&rsquo;s &ldquo;40 under 40&rdquo; business stars by Houston Business Journal, Phillips has founded and grown a company which is changing the game for consumers in the healthcare field. In fact, in September 2014, PBS named 2nd.MD one of the Most Innovative US companies.&nbsp;Whether solving the most complex medical case, serving the poorest in Africa, or speaking at MIT, he is determined to make healthcare ridiculously easier, and more effective, for millions of families.</p>  <p>Medical knowledge is doubling every two years and most people are receiving poor, conflicted medical information. 2nd.MD's first goal is to make the ability to reach medical specialists more easily accessible.&nbsp;For example, our member​s can now&nbsp;​enjoy a video consultation with&nbsp;a top specialist from ho​me ​within three days,&nbsp;getting remarkable clarity and up-to-date information regarding their condition. ​We are combining high-tech with high-touch, and the marriage is beautiful. Healthcare gets faster, easier and more personal.​</p>  <p>One of the biggest impediments to innovation in our industry is simply being in the&nbsp;healthcare&nbsp;business. Things have been so bad for so long ​that organizations have stopped trying to improve. Large organizations control a lot of the industry, making big changes difficult, even if it would help everyone.</p> <p>A second impediment is that everyone is concerned about their&nbsp;data&nbsp;being shared or stolen. Healthcare data is incredibly sensitive, but unless you can understand and access someone&rsquo;s healthcare data, how can you help them?&nbsp;</p> <p>A third is the&nbsp;fear&nbsp;of the unknown. When speaking to a top doctor via video for a second opinion, doctors worry they might lose a patient; members worry they might offend their doctor by seeking a second opinion; hospitals worry that a procedure might be cancelled. Like most of our fears, they don&rsquo;t come true, but you can still expect resistance.</p>  <p>Our team is a group of people so unsatisfied with the current limitations and frustrations of healthcare that we cannot stop thinking about how we can improve it.​ Changing lives is the fuel that lets us know we are headed in the right direction. Our team continually reviews new apps and companies to evaluate if there is something we can learn and improve upon. We look over our shoulder constantly, knowing that our success can be shadowed by a new or current player improving on our model. Frustration, fear, and faith are three equal motivators that drive us to improve.</p>  <p>Being able to prick your finger and monitor 100 markers in your blood on your smartphone is particularly exciting to me. We trademarked 'hospital in your hand' as we see how the smartphone could become the center of healthcare.​ Having most of your medical encounters with medical professionals be from home will save tremendous time, cost, and frustration of sitting in a medical suite for an hour reading old magazines. Also, the ability to instantly access your medical records from various places will allow progress in our treatments and lessen waste, which will be a game-changer in its own right.</p>  <p>I honestly cannot think of a more compelling innovation than one which saves lives through linking people in need to right doctors when they need it most. And what industry requires innovation more urgently than healthcare, where our members remind us daily of the lack of clarity, unnecessary paperwork, unjustifiable cost, and rough edges of our healthcare system.​&nbsp;</p> <p>This week at a managers meeting for a famous company, an employee stood up and told us how 2nd.MD changed their child's life. They had been to see 40 specialists and were not sure of their baby&rsquo;s future. Today they have a plan and a new hope after a single video consultation with a top doctor.​ No innovation has driven customer engagement like stories people share with one another when a life has been changed.​&nbsp;</p> <p>Of note, my son will never know the healthcare we all struggled with. He will simply pick up his tablet, ask to speak to a doctor, video consult with a perfectly matched doctor who is looking at his records, diagnose his blood, and then, following doctors orders, will roll over and go back to sleep. That&rsquo;s what we are building.</p>  Clinton Phillips View Edit Delete

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12SELECT `Program`.`id`, `Program`.`title`, `Program`.`subtitle`, `Program`.`summary`, `Program`.`description`, `Program`.`image`, `Program`.`thumbnail`, `Program`.`date`, `Program`.`feature`, `Program`.`enable`, `Program`.`created`, `Program`.`modified`, `Program`.`modifier`, `EventsProgram`.`id`, `EventsProgram`.`event_id`, `EventsProgram`.`program_id` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`programs` AS `Program` JOIN `bpinorg_dev`.`events_programs` AS `EventsProgram` ON (`EventsProgram`.`event_id` IN (129, 127, 53) AND `EventsProgram`.`program_id` = `Program`.`id`) 110
13SELECT `Event`.`id`, `Event`.`name`, `Event`.`date_start`, `Event`.`date_end`, `Event`.`date`, `Event`.`not_exact_date`, `Event`.`location`, `Event`.`description`, `Event`.`url`, `Event`.`image`, `Event`.`category`, `Event`.`event_type`, `Event`.`created`, `Event`.`modified`, `Event`.`modifier` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`events` AS `Event` WHERE `Event`.`category` = 0 AND `Event`.`date_end` >= '2025-04-29' ORDER BY `Event`.`date_start` asc LIMIT 3000
14SELECT `Report`.`id`, `Report`.`date`, `Report`.`title`, `Report`.`subtitle`, `Report`.`summary`, `Report`.`author`, `Report`.`body`, `Report`.`upload`, `Report`.`image`, `Report`.`internal`, `Report`.`url`, `Report`.`featured`, `Report`.`program_only`, `Report`.`related`, `Report`.`enable`, `Report`.`created`, `Report`.`modified`, `Report`.`modifier` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`reports` AS `Report` WHERE `Report`.`id` IN (3, 5)220
15SELECT `Tracking`.`id`, `Tracking`.`referrer`, `Tracking`.`user_id`, `Tracking`.`non_member_id`, `Tracking`.`report_id`, `Tracking`.`report_download`, `Tracking`.`other`, `Tracking`.`date` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`tracking` AS `Tracking` WHERE `Tracking`.`report_id` IN (3, 5) 000
16SELECT `Download`.`id`, `Download`.`user_id`, `Download`.`non_member_id`, `Download`.`report_id`, `Download`.`tracking_id`, `Download`.`date` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`reports_download` AS `Download` WHERE `Download`.`report_id` IN (3, 5) 32320
17SELECT `Program`.`id`, `Program`.`title`, `Program`.`subtitle`, `Program`.`summary`, `Program`.`description`, `Program`.`image`, `Program`.`thumbnail`, `Program`.`date`, `Program`.`feature`, `Program`.`enable`, `Program`.`created`, `Program`.`modified`, `Program`.`modifier`, `ProgramsReport`.`id`, `ProgramsReport`.`report_id`, `ProgramsReport`.`program_id` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`programs` AS `Program` JOIN `bpinorg_dev`.`programs_reports` AS `ProgramsReport` ON (`ProgramsReport`.`report_id` IN (3, 5) AND `ProgramsReport`.`program_id` = `Program`.`id`) 110
18SELECT `Tag`.`id`, `Tag`.`tag`, `Tag`.`created`, `Tag`.`modified`, `ReportsTag`.`id`, `ReportsTag`.`report_id`, `ReportsTag`.`tag_id` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`tags` AS `Tag` JOIN `bpinorg_dev`.`reports_tags` AS `ReportsTag` ON (`ReportsTag`.`report_id` IN (3, 5) AND `ReportsTag`.`tag_id` = `Tag`.`id`) 000
19SELECT `MediaCoverage`.`id`, `MediaCoverage`.`date`, `MediaCoverage`.`title`, `MediaCoverage`.`author`, `MediaCoverage`.`summary`, `MediaCoverage`.`publisher`, `MediaCoverage`.`url`, `MediaCoverage`.`created`, `MediaCoverage`.`modified`, `MediaCoverage`.`modifier`, `MediaCoverageReport`.`id`, `MediaCoverageReport`.`media_coverage_id`, `MediaCoverageReport`.`report_id` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`media_coverage` AS `MediaCoverage` JOIN `bpinorg_dev`.`media_coverage_reports` AS `MediaCoverageReport` ON (`MediaCoverageReport`.`report_id` IN (3, 5) AND `MediaCoverageReport`.`media_coverage_id` = `MediaCoverage`.`id`) 000
20SELECT `Brainwafe`.`id`, `Brainwafe`.`issue`, `Brainwafe`.`ednote_title`, `Brainwafe`.`ednote_content`, `Brainwafe`.`feature_headshot`, `Brainwafe`.`feature_logo`, `Brainwafe`.`feature_logo_url`, `Brainwafe`.`feature_title`, `Brainwafe`.`feature_subtitle`, `Brainwafe`.`feature_content`, `Brainwafe`.`interview_headshot`, `Brainwafe`.`interview_logo`, `Brainwafe`.`interview_logo_url`, `Brainwafe`.`interview_title`, `Brainwafe`.`interview_subtitle`, `Brainwafe`.`interview_content`, `Brainwafe`.`contributed_title`, `Brainwafe`.`contributed_subtitle`, `Brainwafe`.`contributed_content`, `Brainwafe`.`enable`, `Brainwafe`.`current`, `Brainwafe`.`url_hash`, `Brainwafe`.`modifier`, `BrainwavesReport`.`id`, `BrainwavesReport`.`brainwafe_id`, `BrainwavesReport`.`report_id` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`brainwaves` AS `Brainwafe` JOIN `bpinorg_dev`.`brainwaves_reports` AS `BrainwavesReport` ON (`BrainwavesReport`.`report_id` IN (3, 5) AND `BrainwavesReport`.`brainwafe_id` = `Brainwafe`.`id`) 000
21SELECT `InnovatorProfile`.`id`, `InnovatorProfile`.`linkedin_url`, `InnovatorProfile`.`summary_bio`, `InnovatorProfile`.`answer_1`, `InnovatorProfile`.`answer_2`, `InnovatorProfile`.`answer_3`, `InnovatorProfile`.`answer_4`, `InnovatorProfile`.`answer_5`, `InnovatorProfile`.`leader_id`, `InnovatorProfile`.`modifier`, `Leader`.`id`, `Leader`.`name`, `Leader`.`job_title`, `Leader`.`company`, `Leader`.`headshot`, `Leader`.`company_logo`, `Leader`.`bio_full`, `Leader`.`summary`, `Leader`.`category`, `Leader`.`featured`, `Leader`.`program_only`, `Leader`.`game_changer_only`, `Leader`.`enable`, `Leader`.`created`, `Leader`.`modified`, `Leader`.`modifier` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`innovator_profiles` AS `InnovatorProfile` LEFT JOIN `bpinorg_dev`.`leaders` AS `Leader` ON (`InnovatorProfile`.`leader_id` = `Leader`.`id`) WHERE 1 = 1 ORDER BY `InnovatorProfile`.`answer_5` asc LIMIT 2020200
22SELECT COUNT(*) AS `count` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`innovator_profiles` AS `InnovatorProfile` LEFT JOIN `bpinorg_dev`.`leaders` AS `Leader` ON (`InnovatorProfile`.`leader_id` = `Leader`.`id`) WHERE 1 = 1110