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The possibilities for using beacons are potentially endless. They’re already being used in retail, airports, and hospitality industries. However, it’s safe to say that even those who are early adopters haven’t yet tapped the killer ways to leverage location awareness.

Harnessing endless possibilities into meaningful outcomes is hard.

What should I have these “nearables” do?

– Should I have them tell me how long my shoes have walked or my bike has gone?
– Should I attach them to the mailbox door to let me know when the mail has arrived?
– Should I attach them to the ceiling fan to figure out the average temperature near the ceiling fan or how many lifetime revolutions I will get out of them?

Ultimately, what is the value of any of this information? Are any of these commercially attractive?

I already have a backlog of projects and maintenance to do on my home, my business, and with and for my family. Do I really have time to tinker?

What Leaders are Facing Today

Blown out and extended to a macro scale, the tiny simplistic scenario above is symbolic of the challenge that most organizational leaders are facing today as technology races ahead.

In an abstract sense, most people can envision how ultimately these new technologies will help to create new value. But the tensions of reality and bottom line results trump fantasy visions of utopian or dystopian futures.

How broad should I expand my focus? Too narrow and the risk of being blindsided increases. Too broad, and execution excellence goes out the window.

Over what time horizon should I plan? Too narrow and the tyranny of the urgent impedes long term progress. Too long and the market shifts too dynamically to respond.

How many resources should I allocate to disruptive or incremental innovations? Incremental innovations provide a clearer value proposition in the near term with an easier to understand ROI, though we likely won’t survive over the long term without disruptive innovations to catch subsequent waves of growth.

The opportunity for new value creation exists within the intersection of the constantly changing sphere of “what’s possible” with the economic feasibility of creating real and tangible business value.

This is hard work and requires creativity, savvy strategic bets, investment, testing, learning, and adjusting.

The Internet of Things hits Supermarkets

Kroger recently invested in temperature sensors in their frozen foods section to help reduce administration costs and ensure that food is not going bad for any number of reasons. The project is already said to have a strong ROI.

But this is just an embryonic predecessor of what’s to come. What happens when each item can be optimized for the ideal temperature? What happens when the supply chain is bringing just in time inventory based on constantly learning algorithms that rely on weather, traffic, beacons, and other digital signals to predict demand with ever narrower accuracy?

Sensors may soon be embedded in food to tell you whether it’s spoiled, the right temperature, the ideal eating conditions, or and/or if the caloric and vitamin intake is ideal.

Fast forward to a world where real time biometrics recommend the automatic creation and procurement of the ideal food on demand, aware of what you’ve already eaten or what you plan to do later that day or week.

Connection shifts the way the world works

The burgeoning world of nanotechnology is allowing us to connect even the smallest items. What happens when the cells and the atoms inside our bodies can communicate not only within the confines of one human body, but broadly to the entire world?

When things are connected, they bring with them the properties of interconnectedness; network effects, a near zero cost of production, and the benefits and risks of exponential multiplication of everything – good and bad.

As we saw a few weeks ago when a Jeep Cherokee was hacked while driving on the highway, connectedness brings with it new risks and exposes vulnerabilities we haven’t considered before.

So Many Problems to Solve

As I was driving through the California farmland this past weekend, I was struck by a few things;

1) We’re out of water. This is no surprise as it increasingly dominates headlines. California Lakes are down 10-20 feet. Our dependence on water is apparent. Entire fields had crops as dry as a bone. Thousands of acres of land lay barren. Why can’t we find an efficient way to manufacture water? Why can’t we harness the water of the earth across geographies to be better distributed? Why can’t we harvest water from the air in a more regular fashion?

2) The limits of physical geography seem constraining. For crop production, we are limited by the boundaries of the land, the minerals, the sun, the water, the fertilizer. We are totally dependent upon things out of our control. I envision future ability to replicate of all of these by magnitudes. I’m curious to watch the growth and expansion of aeroponic farming, etc. that transcends the limits of traditional farming.

3) The growth of solar panels to generate and create electricity were everywhere..

We’ve figured out how to harness the sun’s energy to store and distribute as desired. Why aren’t we doing the same with water? When will we do it?

Multiply these challenges by the millions across industries. These quick observations are a result of a drive home from a camping trip in the Sequoias. Every industry is in the process of being reimagined.

What are entrenched issues that have just been part of your organizational landscape that may suddenly be solvable with emerging technology that did not exist 1, 3, or 5 years ago?

Who’s job is this anyway?

While CEOs seem to mostly be looking to CIOs to lead digital innovation efforts, CMOs, CDOs, and COOs are also involved. My anecdotal research has shown that it’s less about title, but more about individual competence and passion that are driving these innovation efforts. There is, however, a great opportunity for CIOs to take a more prominent leadership role in their organizations as every company becomes a technology company.

The role of the next generation leader, regardless of title, is to bring together the best of their understanding of emerging technology, deep customer understanding, and sensible (network based) business acumen to drive their organizations forward. There is a great frontier for emerging leaders to bring the best of a new combination of skills and talents to make a difference in and for their organizations.

As automation consumes more blue collar (and white collar) work, the best that humans can bring is combining constantly emerging technological capabilities with creativity, strong relationships, and solutions that help the people around them live and share better lives.

What are you working on today?

This post is brought to you by The CIO Agenda.

The views and opinions expressed herein are my own and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of KPMG LLP.

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Billions of decisions are being made in organizations as you’re reading this blog post; Strategic decisions. Hiring decisions. Purchasing decisions. Technology decisions.

The cumulative impact of today’s decisions will impact the success of organizations in the coming weeks, months, years, and decades.

These decisions are being made within a cauldron of change; where roles are colliding into each other, boundaries are disintegrating, companies are morphing into platforms, and platforms are expanding into broader ecosystems. It’s an environment where once dominant mega-corporations shrink into bankruptcy or niche players, or extend their reach into adjacent markets.

This understated complexity makes it difficult to lead and to make good decisions at scale, consistently across an organization.

But regardless of what your organization does today, or will do, there are three bedrocks that will power successful organizations in the future – Data, Algorithms, and Analytics. This understanding should help to frame the context by which decisions are made.

Data

Data is the fastest growing raw material in the world. Paradoxically, at least from a ratio perspective, insights are perhaps becoming more scarce.

We recognize that the physical world is made up of atoms, and that the digital world is made up of bits. It is the merging of these two worlds that will spark the greatest inventions and will govern our world for the coming years.

The costs of excavating more data are plummeting as sensors of myriad types and capabilities are approaching free, creating the capability to extract data associated with the atomic and sub atomic levels of the physical world. The cost of collecting and storing that data is also plummeting. The cost of analyzing vast amounts of data is also falling – all of these dropping exponentially as I’ve highlighted multiple times on this blog and in my presentations.

While data has always played a key role in decision making, we now have much more of it. Like the world of gaming has progressed from Atari’s Combat to immersive multi-player virtual world environments, so has our understanding of the world around us.

Analytics

The assimilation and collection of lots of data is not only worthless but overwhelming and time consuming if you can’t make sense of it. It doesn’t take much data to overwhelm the processing capability of humans and this is where the role of analytics come in. From brands monitoring real time sentiment across thousands of social mentions, to throughput of manufacturing equipment, to real time athletic performance, the importance of world of analytics is exploding (often into new domains and in ever more granular detail).

Traditionally, analytics have been useful for analyzing actions that have happened in the past (largely known as descriptive analytics). Applying new predictive models have been able to take these historical analytics and extrapolate probabilities of what might happen in the future. Prescriptive analytics take these probabilities and filter them further provide recommendations on one or a few options about what action should happen next.

Algorithms

Increasingly powering the world of analytics (and the world at large) are algorithms, which are simply a pre-defined set of steps that perform a function. The increase in computing power has made algorithms increasingly powerful as huge amounts of processing can now take place in milliseconds. Cancer research that used to take months can now be done in hours. Previously undetected fraud can now be detected within minutes. Most of the world’s financial transactions are now executed by complex algorithms that are constantly adjusting.

Algorithms both threaten existing jobs and simultaneous provide the opportunity for unprecedented reach and scale by extending and amplifying capabilities.

Applying algorithms makes the job of one to solve one problem obsolete, but contain the power to scale the abilities of one focused burst of problem solving into unlimited scenarios.

The power of Data, Analytics, and Algorithms coming together

Earlier this week, a NY Times article featured a story about how several technology startups were trying various ways to automate the hiring process, citing the high inefficiencies in traditional corporate hiring. Humans make many mistakes, which costs billions in lost productivity and unhappy workers.

You’ve undoubtedly heard about Netflix leveraging its vast troves of subscriber watching data to inform the decision to produce House of Cards to seemingly raving success.

It is the vast combination of data, analytics, and algorithms that determines what’s in your Facebook feed and who LinkedIn recommends that you connect with.

But what if your business doesn’t run on a data rich platform?

And this is what brings us back to our original point about decisions. The decisions about strategy, spending, and hiring are being made through many different lenses. The default is to look at the issue through the traditional lenses of the same supply chain, the same distribution channels, the same org chart, and the same competitive landscape.

As atoms and bits collide and merge in the world around us, every company will look more like the digital natives that we all recognize. Data about customer behavior and correlations to other data sets will reveal new insights and discoveries that we didn’t know existed before. These discoveries will drive different decisions, and will determine the success of those who are making them.

When your closet uses algorithms to recommend what you should wear based on large amounts of data about your previous behavior, your preferences, the weather, your destination, and who you’ll be spending the evening with, the retail apparel industry will change. Or perhaps, we won’t even have a closet full of clothes, but rather a small set of infinitely modifiable clothing elements – similar to the Shift Sneakers prototype for shoes.

Because whether they are decisions made in the home, in the office, algorithms will help us make those decisions with increasing precision and accuracy, based on the data that is collected and analyzed.

Each of these bedrocks as a standalone have some value, but it is the value of them coming together where the value is multiplied several fold. Most research has shown that the increase in the accuracy of models comes from more data, not necessarily from better algorithms. This is broadly based on the fact that often more data reveals patterns directly, where algorithms are limited to the theories associated with the creator(s) of the algorithms. While, this isn’t nearly as black and white as it seems, it highlights the importance of gathering more data to better inform the models and algorithms.

Merging Atoms and Bits

If you are not accelerating the merging of atoms and bits in and around your organization (and it’s broader ecosystem), you may be late. However, if your industry is not yet thinking about these changes, you may have a great opportunity for first mover advantage. Are your products connected and “aware” of what’s going on around them? Is the “frictionless” collection of data and continuous feedback built into your value chain?

The era of “dumb” (disconnected) products is coming to an end. Products of the future will not create the most value for organizations when they’re sold, but as they’re deployed in the real world with an ability for continuous monitoring and feedback, and can be regularly updated and modified (like Tesla does with it’s cars) for the benefit of their users.

Products of the future will not only provide value as a standalone product that performs a task or function, but it will connect with other products in its environment, provide data to its owners, producers, and partners, and analytics and algorithms will recommend or determine the next best action for any of the things or people that it’s connected to.

How will that change the economics by which your organization is operating? How does this adjust the model and levers by which you operate?

Data, analytics, and algorithms will help leaders make better decisions. One of the best decisions they can make today is to invest in an infrastructure that collects more data, provides better analytics, and leverages algorithms to amplify the reach, scale, and automation of positive feedback loops for their organizations.

This post is brought to you by The CIO Agenda.

The views and opinions expressed herein are my own and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of KPMG LLP.

The post Data, Analytics, & Algorithms: Bedrocks of Future Organizations appeared first on Value Creator.

We are living in an era of of titanic shifts; an era where significant changes happen in comparatively short amounts of time. 10 years ago, smartphones didn’t exist. Now we can’t live without them. Companies like Slack and Uber have gone from pre-existent to multi-billion dollar valuations in less than 5 years.

We are staring down the barrel of a world where autonomous cars and robotics will power a large percentage of of our world’s infrastructure. Virtual reality will propel us towards placing an “n factor” on just about everything, making the “reach” of virtually everything exponential. Connecting our homes, our gardens, offices, manufacturing equipment, and everything else will fundamentally shift how value is created, shared, distributed, and harvested.

But, there’s a lot of work to do, and these changes will ultimately take decades. These changes will most often offer incremental improvements that move us 5 steps ahead and then 3 steps back.

Navigating Monumental Transformation

Most organizations recognize that they are in the midst of monumental transformation. I’ve written and spoken extensively about the organizations asleep at the wheel, not making the right changes fast enough, not understanding the pace and the explosive impact of the shifts amongst us. But I see another risk that isn’t often spoken of. There are others who are over-betting, over assuming, over simplifying, and over weighting the “next big thing(s)”.

One such recent manifestation is that everyone seems to be talking about the importance of mapping the customer journey.

Understand your customers. Map their journey. Map your content and offers to the right step in the journey. Voila. Magic. Success.

This isn’t necessarily wrong thinking (though my friend and well respected thinker and analyst Esteban Kolsky would argue that it is). The problem is that too many organizations are beginning or extending their respective journey down this road, expecting that the exercise will reveal deep understanding and predictability about their cohorts and will make their life simpler, and more profitable.

Framing this through the expectations of incremental expectations is absolutely appropriate. By getting a better picture, it is absolutely reasonable to expect meaningful improvements of 1, 3, 5, or 10%. We’re moving from 20/300 vision to 20/240. It’s better, but most organizations are still legally blind. This is confirmed by a significant body of research that show how little customers believe organizations know about them. Web re-targeting for instance, while helpful, is still basically horrible in its understanding of who people are and what they’re trying to get done (though it is better than blind banner ads). Too may are expecting that Lasik-like results, and 20/20 vision is just around the corner and it’s simply not true.

Customer journeys and experiences are incredibly complicated – largely variable and subject to whim and dozens, hundreds, or sometimes thousands of variables. As Dan Ariely explained, we (all customers) are Predictably Irrational.

Are there patterns to be discovered? Yes. Are they constant? No. Are they precise? No.

So, the challenge is not the process. It’s an appropriate exercise for our time related to creating better customer experiences and hopefully higher profitability. The challenge is the overweighting and the simplistic thinking that this will indeed be a silver bullet to customer acquisition and retention efforts.

I see the same patterns emerge in “big data” and IoT initiatives. (By the way, we saw the same things with ERP and CRM before that).

Five Steps Forward. Three Steps Back.

Uber is the most oft quoted success story du jour, but several of my last few Uber rides have sucked, quite frankly. As the company scales, finding drivers who have a friendly personality, know the local area, and are competent drivers is visibly getting harder. Summoning an Uber car when a Taxi is right outside the hotel is a harder decision to make. Yesterday, I waited 15 minutes for my Uber driver who was 2 minutes away because his phone couldn’t receive text messages or phone calls and he kept circling the airport arrivals level when I was at the mandated departures level. Another guy was incredibly friendly and helpful with a clean car, who couldn’t drive and couldn’t see the road at night.

I’m in the process of booking a vacation and because of the location have mostly used AirBnB and VRBO. It’s been a hassle. Upon trying to confirm a reservation, different prices are offered than what’s quoted on the website. There are large latencies in communications timeframes. I find myself longing for the frictionless booking process of the “professional” hospitality business.

The Nuance of Navigating Change

Change is well…change. The more we uncover, we realize how much we actually don’t know. Email didn’t go away because of social. Snail mail didn’t go away because of email. People still use the fax! New technologies disrupt and then ultimately carve out their own place in an ever expanding complex ecosystem.

And so the challenge for those evangelizing, driving, and executing change in their organizations is to understand and keep the core tenets of what things are so foundational that we’ve grown to take them for granted, while adopting new technologies to help accelerate new efforts. New technology will have downsides and risk. many of which we can’t predict.

Organizations need leaders who can appropriately assess how much to bet at the right time, and to set proper expectations with initiative sponsors, contributors, and recipients of technology driven change efforts. Move too slow, and your organization is done. Stick with the same model and you’re done. Bet too much on new technology and set unrealistic expectations, you’re in big trouble as well.

Navigating this course will require an astute ability to press the gas pedal fast enough to pass other cars on the road, patiently wait out storms that come along, and upgrade the car at just the right time to keep moving forward. Whatever you do, don’t give in to the shiny glow of false precision and over expectations.

This post is brought to you by The CIO Agenda.

The views and opinions expressed herein are my own and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of KPMG LLP.

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Upon initial rumors, I shared some brief thoughts on Twitter about a potential SFDC acquisition.

$SFDC speculation: ORCL is 1st to come to mind. IBM makes sense. SAP potential; not likely. MSFT a stretch. HP / Cisco interesting. #SFDC

— Brian Vellmure (@BrianVellmure) April 29, 2015

More $SFDC thoughts: Google could use #SFDC as anchor in Enterprise to counter what MSFT is doing. Google becomes real enterprise player.

— Brian Vellmure (@BrianVellmure) April 29, 2015

@kfarmer4444 I don't see that in their core (pun intended). Not really what Apple does.

— Brian Vellmure (@BrianVellmure) April 29, 2015

@Katykeim Plenty of room for $AAPL to penetrate the Enterprise with what they do best. This wouldn't be it. @Fortune

— Brian Vellmure (@BrianVellmure) April 29, 2015

@jonfortt Many paths to monetization. $CSCO has clearly stated big bet on cloud. $CRM could help. Agree lots of cash necessary @IanGertler

— Brian Vellmure (@BrianVellmure) April 29, 2015

@jonfortt @IanGertler AWS way out ahead & miles to go. Better for $AMZN to invest there. Both companies similarly profit averse though

— Brian Vellmure (@BrianVellmure) April 29, 2015

@cahidalgo I don't see $MSFT as the answer here. See my tweet stream for add'l thoughts on $CRM.

— Brian Vellmure (@BrianVellmure) April 29, 2015

Below are updated probabilities: I will update this post as information changes.

Oracle – 25%

Oracle still the favorite, and most straightforward case. Though Oracle is dominant from a CRM install base perspective, their current CRM offering has gaps. Some is old and mature. Other is new and underdeveloped. Benioff as CEO would be a win for Oracle. Yet another company to integrate for Oracle adds additional complexity to an already monumental challenge.

Microsoft – 20%

Microsoft has the cash. Nadella and Benioff appear chummy and are doing good things together. Reconciling tech, Go To Market, and legacy cultures would be a heft, and it’s unclear whether something like this would accelerate or slow the momentum that Microsoft is experiencing under Nadella’s leadership. SFDC would give MS rapid ownership of CRM in the Enterprise, where current Dynamics offering has played best in upper mid-market. They’d also be even stronger from a cloud platform perspective. This acquisition would be well outside MS traditional acquisition strategy of small and value based acquisitions, and a BIG bet for Nadella.

Nothing – 18%

Actually not a bad time to sell for SFDC. They’ve been on a heck of a run – are widely considered over valued and are fighting in a growing array of markets. One could argue that their best and highest growth days are likely behind them. Speculation of Benioff’s growing investments in philanthropy and a potential move into politics (even if completely unfounded) means that the inertia and motions of Mr. Market may already be rolling too fast to slow things down. Conversely, the potential buyers list is very small and there is no obvious answer. Even if intent is there, making a deal like this happen has a tidal wave of hurdles to actually get done.

IBM – 15%

IBM needs help. Their transition to the modern age, while in many ways is impressive, isn’t happening fast enough. Sometimes Huge challenge in bureaucracy, culture, future uncertainty. A SFDC acquisition doesn’t help IBM’s profitability challenges. It could actually exacerbate them.

Google – 9%

While this is not likely, Google has had Enterprise aspirations for quite some time and just haven’t been able to make them happen. This would help. A SFDC acquisition and bundling of Google for Business offerings with SFDC helps Google flank Microsofts momentum with O365, Windows 10, and Azure. of the less obvious players, this is my favorite.

SAP – 4%

Culturally, not a likely fit. In addition, SAP already has a complex array of CRM offerings, a large install base, and ongoing investments in CRM, Hana, and analytics. Not outside the realm of possibility, but not likely. The reconciliation of all of this appears to have too much risk.

Cisco – 4%

They’ve stated intention to move to the cloud. Lots of internal change currently and this would be an awfully big bet on the future for them.

Facebook – 3.75%

This would be a surprise, but not completely. FB has not been afraid to pony up and sees things 5 years ahead. Their acquisitions of Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus surprised many, and in subsequent months made a whole lot more sense in retrospect. FB has also been signaling an intent to reach enterprise wallets as most of the world has already adopted the platform. It’s well outside core capability, but could see some very interesting possibilities here.

HP – .75%

HP has been attempting to move more into enterprise software. This obviously would make them a player in a game they’re really not currently a player in.

Apple – .25%

I simply don’t see this happening. Apple could, but there are many, many other things that should garner their investment other than SFDC.

Someone we haven’t heard of – .25%

In the back of my mind, I see some sheikh, or well capitalized investment group from China wanting to make a large investment in the US economy. I am way out on a limb here (both in my knowledge and analysis), but since it’s crossed my mind, and this is 100% speculation anyway, I’ve included this.

Disclosure: SFDC is a client. Microsoft and IBM are past client(s).

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Nobel Prize winner, psychologist, an behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman has dedicated much of his 50+ year career to studying human judgement and decision making. In his best selling book “Thinking Fast and Slow“, he describes two primary systems of thinking – figuratively named “System 1” and “System 2“.

He sums them up as follows:

• System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control.

• System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration.

The labels of System 1 and System 2 are widely used in psychology, but I go further than most in this book, which you can read as a psychodrama with two characters.

When we think of ourselves, we identify with System 2, the conscious, reasoning self that has beliefs, makes choices, and decides what to think about and what to do. Although System 2 believes itself to be where the action is, the automatic System 1 is the hero of the book. I describe System 1 as effortlessly originating impressions and feelings that are the main sources of the explicit beliefs and deliberate choices of System 2. The automatic operations of System 1 generate surprisingly complex patterns of ideas, but only the slower System 2 can construct thoughts in an orderly series of steps.

Parallels between the Human Brain and the Global Brain

While neuroscience races ahead, continuing to unlock more secrets about how our brain works and functions (still largely a mystery), parallels continue to grow between how neurons fire to relay information and instructions throughout our nervous system, and how information flows between individuals and organizations in an increasingly connected world.

Concepts and considerations such as “the hive mind”, “global brain”, “collective intelligence” and similar continue to pique the interests of leaders, strategists, scientists, and futurists.

If we consider for a moment how information is stored, shared, and relayed across today’s enterprises in order to make billions of tiny decisions daily, we begin to see the parallels between independent brains of individuals and the central processing hubs of organizations, and the world at large. It is interesting to consider how we might learn by re-framing our view of today’s interconnected world, and it’s organizations and institutions.

In the early days of the industrial revolution, people assumed the roles of both System 1 and System 2 in the information processing of enterprise activities. System 1 actors were used as cogs in the assembly line to do repetitive work. A small fraction played the role of system 2, thinking about ways to optimize, expand, explore, and create new methods of value creation and exchange. Both were critical. Tools played an important role in the output, but people were at the core of the giant industrial machine.

Technological “agents” mature

During the last century, we’ve transitioned growing volumes of our repetitive work away from humans and to technology. (Remember telephone switch operators, stadium scoreboard operators, banks with no atms, and stores and airports with no self checkin/out function(s)?).

The pace of this transition is becoming more pronounced. The capabilities of our technological “agents” are becoming more sophisticated. Robots are set to displace bartenders and farms of the future will be nearly totally automated. Algorithms are fast approaching the ability to learn and think as well or better than humans.

The Global Subconscious

So as the move towards collective intelligence happens, technology continues to take greater ownership of our collective system 1 behavior. It is increasingly playing the role of the global subconscious, taking ownership of anything and everything that can be automated, freeing up humans to do more processing intensive work. But not everyone is getting the memo.

Anything that can be automated is being automated by technology. While this sentence was just as true 100 years ago, we are now able to automate increasingly complex activities. We see this manifesting itself in the programmatic nature of digital ad buying, and the automation of distributing content, offers, and other interactions. The algorithms of Google and Facebook control what and when people are exposed to.

It is also safe to argue that system 1 is also encroaching on more of our traditionally system 2 behavior (as evidenced by this tweet reading bot that made millions in the options market in a day). This relentless progression has actually led folks like Vivek Wadhwa to conclude that we’re actually heading towards a jobless future. (I disagree, but that’s a post for another day. )

While human capability is relatively static, the processing power, storage capability, and broadband speed and access continues to grow exponentially. We should expect these trends to continue into the foreseeable future.

This dichotomy has profound implications. Have humans and the frenetic pace of innovation actually unleashed “creative destruction” on themselves?

Because technology is able to absorb more and more of our automated, repetitive, high processing activities, what remains to be done by people is the heavy processing work of focused creativity.

At least for the next few decades, people will continue to carry the burden of system 2 thinking and behaviors in the context of the enterprise, and the global brain, as they transition more and more (intelligently) automated work to technology. The subconscious is becoming smarter, stronger, faster, and cheaper so we’re transitioning more of the collective work burden that way, increasingly cannibalizing much of the work that humans have traditionally performed.

What does this ultimately mean?

We’re collectively trying to figure this out. I’ll take a brief stab and I hope that we can build on this together.

FOR INDIVIDUALS

A tsunami is subsuming many traditional roles and the tasks and functions associated with them. Focus your efforts on doing what technology cannot. Automated processing, repetitive tasks, traditionally low wage jobs will be displaced by technology. Roles that involve creative and critical thinking, deep human relationships, and induce unique experiences will not. Look to solve problems that computers cannot.

FOR ORGANIZATIONS

There has been plenty written about how the pace of innovation requires organizations to become more dynamic, more agile, and that they tap the intelligence and capabilities of those that exist beyond the “four walls” of their organizations. Senior leaders should continue to think hard about what role their organization will fill within the context of the “global brain”.

– What role will they play in their respective industry and its evolving ecosystem?

– How can you leverage the power of the increasingly intelligent technology subconscious to speed the flow of information and value exchange within and beyond your organization, and what new models can be developed to capture value from these new flows?

FOR CIOs

In many ways, the ball is in your court. The future of organizational success (in every industry) depends on leveraging information, algorithms, and insights to create value. Innovative CIOs who can envision, evangelize, and implement a future state where a technology “subconscious” powers an increasing majority of repetitive tasks, while knowledge workers are provided with tools to help create, imagine, collaborate, prototype, and ship new products and services to market will be rewarded. Reframing the landscape, envisioning and constructing new models, and partnering with senior leaders and LOB (Line of Business) peers is key to continued success and relevance.

This post is brought to you by The CIO Agenda.

The views and opinions expressed herein are my own and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of KPMG LLP.

The post Technology assuming role of the enterprise subconscious appeared first on Value Creator.

I had just signed up for Hotmail – a free email service. I had recently been introduced to email – something I rarely used, but was increasingly relying on it, especially to communicate with friends who were far away. But Hotmail was amazing. It was free (we take this for granted today). Plus, I no longer had to go to the computer lab and login to my university email account, or deal with telnet. Any computer in the world with an internet connection and a browser would allow me to send a message (near instantly) to anyone around the world. I was amazed. The pen pals I had gathered during my youth from Alaska, Oklahoma, Hawaii, Arizona, and other places would no longer have to wait for a week to receive my letters.

Five years later, I found a site called Ryze.com. It was the first meaningful business social networking site. Over the next year, I learned about the power of digital social networks. I was amazed at the power of using the Internet to find people who might be looking for my services, or that could provide me with something I was looking for. I met friends, clients, and service providers on Ryze. About a year later, I became one of the first few thousand people to join a new business networking site called LinkedIn. LinkedIn was simply a profile holder for me for a few years before it began to gain critical mass. 347 million people since then have now joined the pulsing business network.

Five years after that (2007), I created an account on a new peculiar site called Twttr. The ability to search and filter people and their short bursts of thoughts or links took things to another level. It’s a fascinating tool and has opened up dozens (if not hundreds) of new doors and relationships for me.

Last night (March 2015), I broadcasted live from Periscope for the first time. The content was nothing particularly special. I was driving to dinner and it was close to sunset time, so I opened up the app on my phone and pointed it out the car window at the crashing surf and ocean on my left. Within a minute, close to 50 people (most of them strangers) had joined me virtually in real time, liking and commenting on the sunset out my car’s window.

A journey towards richer (virtual) communication

The bigger story to this brief 20 year retrospective is that technology continues to enable people to search, find, and communicate with people in better and richer ways. We continue to progress on a journey towards teleportation. For those in the developed world, geographical boundaries continue to be destroyed. Technology is increasingly enabling us to extend the power of our senses beyond our physical bodies. I can now see and hear (touch and smell are being experimented with) what’s happening most places in the world, in real time.

Twenty years ago, I could send a written electronic message to someone who was known. Then, with Ryze, I could search for, find, and communicate with business people who shared my interests. With Twitter, I learned that I could essentially search for and communicate with people anywhere for any reason, on any topic, in real time. Twitter tracks the pulse of the planet. It has become the world’s best real time monitor. On more than one occasion, I found out the details about earthquakes before the news media did. We can narrow and find experts and real time conversations on any topic possible.

The game has now leveled up. There is, has been, and will continue to be a non-linear progression from static written text based content to richer and richer media forms that are used for 1:1, 1:many, and many:many communications. Email, LinkedIn, and Twitter all now have the ability to share text, but also images and video as well. Periscope (and Meerkat) takes a prohibitively expensive capability from just weeks ago and makes it free and accessible to anyone with a smartphone and a data connection. If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is real time streaming video worth?

As I’m writing this, I’m watching Vala Afshar simultaneously live broadcast his (and Michael Krigsman’s) #CXOTalk on Periscope and Google+ hangout. His guest, Shashank Shashena, Director of Digital and E-Commerce at Kroger, just shared that between the time he woke up this morning and the start of the show, more content was uploaded to YouTube than Hollywood has produced in around of 100 years of existence. When live streaming catches on, how much more media will be produced than the relatively labor intensive work of recording and uploading to YouTube?

Periscope allows us to see and hear anything, anywhere, if just one person opens up a port hole for us to do so. As a caveat, the technology is still relatively immature, still riddled with bugs, and will likely have an incident or two that will give the masses pause on whether or not they should use it.

Regardless of how it plays out, the larger progression and path of technology and human behavior is clear. As broadband, storage, and processing power increases, we’ll collectively create, find, and leverage new technology to participate in richer communication experiences.

So what does this mean for the Enterprise?

Humans have a fundamental need to connect, to learn, to share. Long ago, there was essentially only one way to do that; in person – in full fidelity. Technology (telegraph, telephone, arpanet, email, social.) has enabled connection and communication to take place in various fragmented methods that continue to march toward the experience of full fidelity in-person communication. In most cases, these richer communication experiences have come bundled with better discovery and matching capabilities as well. As each channel and/or method of communication matures, each of them becomes optimized for the best appropriate use cases.

We’ve learned through the consumerization of IT and BYOD movements that as soon as something is possible, people will try it. And if they like it, they will defend and demand it’s use. Artificial constraints set by the enterprise have a very difficult time holding the line over the long haul.

For CIOs

I have no idea which players will win over the next few years, but the direction is set and there are some considerations to take into account.

1. If this catches on, employees and customers will expect this to work equally as well for work as it does in their personal lives.

2. If and when this reaches broad adoption (or even before), the job of the CIO will get harder. Anything happening inside the “walls” of your enterprise (virtual and physical) can be live streamed. Risk just skyrocketed. Just like when social media was introduced, reasonable guardrails and policies must be introduced.

3. Oh, another thing, demands on broadband and the network will also spike. There’s that small issue.

4. Could this be an alternative to GotoMeeting, WebEx, Skype, etc: The technology isn’t there yet, but why bother with the hassle of laptop and webcam, and the three (or sometimes 23) minutes of getting the web conferencing service up when I can just start a broadcast from my phone and get on with it?

Typically risk and chaos are coupled with new opportunities.

• Which activities, events, people, assets, if exposed to a broader audience, would benefit your organization? How can you leverage emerging networks to establish a new outpost for thought leadership?
• What value could your team offer your industry, your peers, your customers? Does this new distribution model enable a new channel for providing value?
• How could listening and observing what’s happening around the world help to shape your decisions, your marketing, your product direction?
• With critical mass, could this open up a new medium for ethnographic research?
• If everyone can live stream, how will this effect your customer service and support strategies, capabilities, and processes?
• When Periscope opens up the analytics on its platform, what clues will this uncover about human behavior? How will we be able to use these to enhance employee and/or customer engagement?

Plenty to think about. I’d love to hear your thoughts and questions.

This post is sponsored by KPMG LLP and The CIO Agenda.

The views and opinions expressed herein are my own and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of KPMG LLP.

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The cloud. It’s remarkable.

The widely available and rapidly growing source of the greatest computing power and storage capability ever known to man continues to unleash the rapid spread of new innovations. It allows unthinkable productivity miracles to happen anywhere at anytime with a nonchalant finger swipe across a 5 inch pane of gorilla glass.

The heft and weight and challenge of conceiving, buying, implementing, and delivering secure, reliable, enterprise class computing capabilities to armies of workers has now been simplified to the swipe of a credit card and a button click on an internet browser or app store.

The blood, sweat, tears, and headaches of wrangling applications, databases, hardware, and integrations has now been outsourced… to the giant and glorious cumulus in the sky.

The Journey

Many wrestled through the days of early programming en route to receiving their MCSE, then led a (or several) multi-year ERP implementation(s) while wearing their MIS Director hat, to finally graduating to receive a well deserved promotion. They had earned the title of CIO.

But then something happened. The business, frustrated with multi-year backlogs of projects, layers of frustrating and stifling bureaucracy, were emboldened by this revolutionary computing delivery model, and said “we don’t need you. We’ll handle it ourselves”. And with a small and simple monthly line item expense from their own budget, the CIO had lost visibility to and control of the new information systems.

So, the CIO has had, and many are still wrestling through, somewhat of an identity crisis. The cheese has indeed been moved.

Where did it go?

New meaning for C.I.O.

Many CIOs, seeing the winds and seas shift, adjusted their sails and found the cheese hiding on the island of integration. They watched their line of business counterparts, who thought they were so crafty suddenly realize that they still needed to merge their old legacy reports with the data from the new cloud based systems. They watched their counterparts struggle through the data and process integration challenges that they had conquered several times over the previous decades, and they were a welcome help. They re-formed partnerships with their business peers, and became a sight for sore eyes as they helped to detangle a mess. They built new integrated systems and processes, leveraging the next generation of new and emerging hybrid infrastructures.

Still others, swapped their boat in for a glider and sailed enthusiastically through the sky to embrace cloud computing. They recommended that their organizations hop on this ship before it was too late. Their identity and value was no longer in managing infrastructure, but creating and orchestrating the use of data and information in a new and exciting cloud computing world. They helped their organizations manage the transition from on premise applications and costly maintenance and support contracts to a new model which provided continuous incremental upgrades, a platform for innovation, and unprecedented reliability.

But even those who have successfully navigated these changes have another storm to navigate.

The Next Storm

Technology in 2015 is changing so rapidly that most business leaders can’t quite keep up with what exactly is changing and what the potential impact on their business is. Increasingly, competitors that aren’t even on the competitive radar list are the ones who are leveraging technology to have the most significant impact on businesses.

Is Marriott considering AirBnB a competitor? Or is AT&T considering WeChat a competitor? Was Mercedes really concerned with a novel little electric car experiment called Tesla? Taxicabs got blindsided by Uber. Do FedEx and UPS really see Uber and Amazon as potential competitors? (They should.) Increasingly it seems like everyone should consider Google a competitor as they foray into just about everything.

But, here’s the main point: Businesses not only need to modernize their computing platforms to help them execute their existing models better. That’s good, but likely not good enough to survive over the long haul.

The cloud (along with exponential growth in computing and storage power, new programming languages, and more innovative devices) continues to destroy barriers, which makes just about anything, from anywhere, possible. Widespread access to more and more capabilities means that we’ll witness the next facebook, amazon, and google rise to dominance from seemingly nowhere over the next few years. We’ll see more upstarts unseat decades long incumbents across industries.

Not only do organizations need to re-platform their infrastructure to leverage the best of cloud (and all of its numerous and growing permutations of hybrid offspring), but they need to imagine what’s possible and in many cases design entirely new models of value creation. These new models will capitalize on the white spaces that technological innovation opens up; In every industry. In every geography.

Leveraging the cloud to construct new value chains

And here is where cloud computing will once again sift the next generation CIOs from the others. The cloud and all of its growing mix of services up and down the technology stack will allow those organizations who are wise enough to understand how to leverage data, algorithms, and analytics to construct and orchestrate new value chains. CIOs who can spot and spearhead these innovation initiatives will be incredibly valuable to their organizations.

However, like those who were content to simply build and manage infrastructure have been forced to shift or changed roles entirely, those who remain focused on current generation integrations and cloud infrastructure for too long will also see their value diminish into commoditization.

The cloud will continue to mature, disintermediating CIOs from their old roles, but opening up new opportunities those aware and innovative enough to adapt. How will you respond?

This post is sponsored by KPMG LLP and The CIO Agenda.

The views and opinions expressed herein are my own and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of KPMG LLP.

IMG SOURCE: metro.co.uk via YouTube

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As I drove back home through the California desert, and in the weeks since, I’ve reflected on some of the things I experienced. To name just a few that are top of mind as I write this post:

• I drove a remote control car with just my thoughts
• I controlled a computer just by looking at where I wanted to interact with it
• I shot a basketball that told me the exact trajectory and ball rotation in real time, while knowing whether it went in the basket or not.
• I saw a consumer grade USB device that captured and stored DNA
• I experienced a 360 degree virtual world in 3D that felt so real, I continued to try and touch it, even though cognitively I knew it really “wasn’t there”.

My purpose for attending CES, however, was not just to “geek out”, but primarily to see and try and understand what the world might look like 3, 5, or 10 years from now, and help my clients and readers help to prepare for the coming changes.

I came back with several observations that I’ll be sharing in future posts, but one main theme that I walked away convinced of was that the the future of experiences are immersive.

This may have been said before, but this is now taking on a new meaning. Curved TVs and screens transform the traditional 2D flat screen experiences and help us feel more like “we’re there”.

There is a difference between watching a football game on TV, and actually being on the field. There’s a difference between watching a screensaver of a waterfall and standing at the base of one. New technology will aim to narrow the gap between theses experiences.

Samsung unveiled its “glasses free” 110 inch 8K 3D TV. (LG also showcased a 98″ version). While not quite commercially ready yet, it seems like these will be in the mainstream in 5-10 years. Embedded smart TV technology hints that not only will huge immersive screens be incredibly rich for the senses to consume, but they’ll also likely be interactive, potentially allowing for sharing, more real time personalization, and perhaps even “choose your own adventure” media experiences. Consider the impact of these realities on brand marketers and advertisers.

But even with all of these rapid advances in TV technology (4K TVs have barely hit the market), it’s still very clear to users that there is a distinct difference between the world that the individual is in, and the world behind the TV screen.

Here’s where the domains of virtual reality and augmented reality change all of that. Virtual reality, augmented reality and virtual worlds have been around for at least 50 years. Evangelists have been hyping the coming advances just around the corner for a long, long time and I want to be careful of falling into that trap. There is a lot that I don’t know about this world.

However, I do know that my experience with the Oculus Rift Crescent Bay prototype was remarkable.

Just got out of a demo of the next generation @oculus #vr device – insane! Truly amazing. #CES2015

— Brian Vellmure (@BrianVellmure) January 7, 2015

In tech circles, we often hear “anything is possible”. The experience for me extended the boundaries of what’s possible, by long margins.

In marketing, the old mantra is “location, location, location”. Location has always been bounded by the physical world. The internet and world wide web extended those constraints, kind of. The immersive world of virtual reality allows for an unlimited array of virtual real estate, in any form, constrained only by designer’s imagination and ability to create/render. The experiences I had were impressive, considering that this technology won’t even be released until late 2015. If this was the alpha version, the rendering when this hits the mainstream will be indescribable.

The immediate response for many reading this may be to constrain these advances only to the world of gaming as its the obvious pathway, given Oculus’ history. But gaming is just a beachhead. The potential for brands, corporations, universities, manufacturers, militaries, governments, and ultimately everybody to create virtual worlds, and allow interactions and transactions to take place within them and between them are sincerely only limited by imagination, the cost to create them, and the capabilities to build and extend this new ecosystem. As we’ve seen with the advances of blogs, YouTube, and Instagram, the cost to create should continue to plummet (at an exponential pace)

The technology, as it matures, appears that it will allow for unlimited worlds, unlimited experiences, and unlimited array of mixing, matching, sharing, and interactivity.

For most, this is prohibitively expensive today. But, just as we’ve seen the cost of processing a human genome go from over $100 million in 2001 to under $1,000 today, we’ll see prices come down as the ecosystem grows and processing power gets cheaper.

Undoubtedly, it will also open up new questions about privacy, addiction, health, identity, and even get to the core of human existence. Will it ever become viable enough where the boundaries between real and virtual become indiscernable? I’m not sure, but I can imagine us getting in there in 20 years.

What does this mean?

I am convinced that organizations must widen their view of what “customer experience” means. As we’ve seen the progression of short text, to long text, to images, and video, expect that over the next decade, the media that we interact with will be more immersive. Marketers must consider drastically new worlds of content creation, as what’s possible is about to explode by tenfold.

More immersion = more engagement = more data –> which requires that organizations and marketers respond in ever richer ways informed by ever deepening contextual awareness. I am looking forward to exploring and somehow participating in these emerging landscapes.

Augmented Reality – the blending of virtual and physical worlds

And if all that weren’t enough, we haven’t event discussed augmented reality yet. For those unfamiliar with the term, it means that while operating in the physical world, computer generated graphics, images, or information help to add to, or mediate the experience.

Examples include seeing distance information or directions to a store nearby, data about objects in the near vicinity, information about people within the field of view, or technical instructions for field service workers.

Augmented reality, like virtual reality, is also inevitable, but appears to be a harder nut to crack than either of the first two advances towards more immersive experiences (TV and VR).

We are born into the physical world and are experts at navigating it. We can learn to be experts in a virtual world. It’s distinctly different. Bringing the physical and virtual worlds together, however, has many more variables associated with it, and all sorts of unanswered questions:

• What’s the ideal technology?
• How do we integrate it with our current lives, devices, and culture?
• How do we attach data and processing to a local device? <-- ask this across thousands of use cases and personas
• How do we not sacrifice the physical experience by bringing new elements in?

In my opinion, there is a lots of work to do here. I tried prototypes from Sony that gave eyeglass wearers translucent directions to a store nearby. I also witnessed a vehicle repair prototype from Bosch. Both illustrated potential, but the user experiences were not easy nor beneficial enough…yet.

In no way, is this a knock on the vendors themselves, but simply data points from an industry in its early stages. Vuzix, Google, and myriad others are working at making this experience better. It is sure to come, but there seems to be a longer road to commercial success here than with the other domains, since it involves the convergence of so many disparate elements simultaneously.

In future posts, we’ll explore these and other themes more fully. We are living in an exciting time.

More reading:

Virtual Reality to Push Limits of StoryTelling at Sundance Film Festival
Virtual Reality: A New Creative Medium Where the Default State is Belief
Oculus is releasing 5 animated movies this year

IMG CREDIT: Gizmodo

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Do you want to grow? Leverage technology to automate everything that can be codified.

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