Chicago-Style Innovation 2013 [Lightbank Innovation Day]

Lightbank logoChicago-Style Innovation is my notes from Lightbank Innovation Day, which took place on 9 May 2013 at the City Winery (presentations) and Lightbank’s offices (networking). Throughout the day, it was obvious that the Knowledge Economy’s Social Channel was unfolding; entrepreneurs’ startups are stripping off an increasing breadth of enterprise processes and using digital social software to improve them. For example, Needle’s platform creates experts in user (customer) use cases and outcomes that outperform anyone at retail; Fieldglass, HighGround, Fooda, oDesk and TalentBin take aim at various parts of human capital while Aon Hewitt showed how to practice enterprise innovation on the inside; DoubleDutch aims to [at long last] digitize trade shows and conferences through its platform’s geosocial functions. Sprout Social and Contently offered social tools.

Presenters Gian Fulgoni, J Schwan and Ramon De Leon shared valuable advice for entrepreneurs, investors and enterprise executives. Fulgoni provided statistics that showed how mobile was eclipsing ecommerce and analog commerce; Schwan opened the audience’s eyes to Ubiquitous Computing and the Internet of Things, and De Leon showed the power of (pervasively ;^) being yourself.

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7 Social Business Transformation Tools [CDO Guide to Social Business Part3]

7 Social Business Transformation Tools provides digital executives the vital tools of online engagement, from the Social Business Life Cycle and Social Business Strategy Use Cases to the report that ranks social business advisory firms in their ability to help firms transform.

Social Business Transformation Tools

7 Social Business Transformation Tools is Part3 of the CDO Guide to Social Business for Transformation. The tools it describes encapsulate thousands of hours of hands-on experience with strategy and in-the-trenches execution work with global brands, and they explicitly address the ins and outs of people, process and technology. Part3 includes links to tools’ full versions, so CDOs can use it as a dashboard.

The Guide to Social Business for Digital Transformation helps Chief Digital Officers to understand and act on rapidly improving stakeholder relationships, productivity and business performance. The Social Business Competency Center has even more resources. The Chief Digital Office has other competency centers in Mobile, Big Data & Analytics and Ecommerce.

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How to Tap the Social Business Double Value Proposition [CDO Guide to Social Business Part2]

How to Tap the Social Business Double Value Proposition outlines an efficient and rigorous process for using social business for digital transformation in two ways: social business itself can drive reputation, preference and profit, and it’s the fastest way to develop requirements for mobile, ecommerce and big data investments.

How to Tap the Social Business Double Value Proposition [CDO Guide to Social Business Part2]

The social business double value proposition works because it discovers, engages and validates the organization’s understanding of stakeholder outcomes. Every organization’s crucial stakeholders have outcomes that they hope to attain by interacting with the organization or using its products or services. Developing deep and broad knowledge of stakeholder outcomes enables the organization to serve and quickly deepen their relationships with their stakeholders—by helping them attain their outcomes by collaborating online; moreover, since it opens fast and inexpensive communication and collaboration channels with them, it can create a continuous innovation process and sustainable advantage over rivals.

The Guide to Social Business Part2 shows how to maximize efficiency by using external and internal analyses to create and execute social business strategy, […]

The Social Business Enabler of Digital Transformation [CDO Guide to Social Business Part1]

TheSocial Business Enabler of Digital Transformation reveals how social technologies have changed the economics of interacting and collaborating, and it presents four ways that Chief Digital Officers can use social to lower risk and boost returns of digital transformation.

The Social Business Enabler of Digital Transformation [CDO Guide to Social Business Part1]Social business competency is pivotal to digital transformation because it combines four unusual characteristics. First, it makes interacting and collaborating an order of magnitude faster and less costly than current processes; second, few organizations understand how to use social business to interact with key customers to boost profit, so leaders enjoy rare advantage; third, when compared to ecommerce, mobile and big data & analytics investments, social business shows results quickly and costs less. Lastly, social business reveals what stakeholders really think when organizations aren’t in the room, so it’s effective for due diligence and “requirements analysis” for ecommerce, mobile and big data investments.

As Social Business Enabler of Digital Transformation explains, social business has a two-fold value proposition for Chief Digital Officers: they can use social directly to drive reputation, innovation and […]

How Social Technologies Have Disrupted Organizations [CDO Guide to Social Business Preview]

How Social Technologies Have Disrupted Organizations is a quick overview of the business and social environment around commercial, government and nonprofit organizations that sets the context for using social business for digital transformation.

How Social Technologies Have Disrupted Organizations [CDO Guide to Social Business Preview][UPDATED] Social technologies are quickly changing the context around why people buy products and services. Leaders of organizations in business, government and nonprofit sectors harbor a false assumption that is becoming lethal in the digital social age: they assume that products and services have inherent value to customers and constituents. In fact, products and services represent costs to customers and revenue to producers and service providers.

Customers must use products or services to create outcomes that are personally or professionally meaningful. The use of the product or service is where the customer or constituent produces value. This is why they buy. “So what,” you might be thinking. In this post I’ll show how digital social technologies are weakening mediocre products and services and how organizations can use social business to strengthen their offerings. Read a more in-depth treatment in […]

How Social Changed Retail: Empowered Customers and Omni-channel Commerce

Empowered customers and omni-channel commerce are mirrors of each other, and both are transforming “retail.”

empowered customers and omni-channel: retail and ecommerce disruption[UPDATED] Connected customers have the Internet in their pockets and use mobile and other devices in all stages of conceptualizing, considering, evaluating, buying and using purchased products and services. These customers want to interact with firms and brands in a seamless experience that features single sign-on as an entry point; they want the firm to respond using their individual data when that makes interacting more valuable. Omni-channel commerce refers to a collection of technologies, practices and strategies firms use to provide the personal individualized experience that connected customers expect.

IBM’s 2012 study of retail customers in eight mature economies (Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Spain, the UK and the USA) and seven growth economies (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Mexico and South Africa) lays bare that the retail “shopping” experience has shifted profoundly, although you wouldn’t know it by looking at most offline or online retailers’ presences. The paper, “Winning over the empowered consumer: Why trust matters,” is a call to […]

Mobile Transformation Roadmap [CDO Guide to Mobile Part3]

Chief Digital Office Guide to Transforming with Mobile

The Mobile Competency Center’s mobile transformation roadmap assumes “average” stakeholder (“user”) mobile adoption and enterprise competency, but its premise is that all organizations can use mobile to transform their relationships with stakeholders. This matters because most firms have weak customer relationships, which consist of mass communications, impersonal sales transactions and cost-minimized service processes. Done right, mobile offers visionary Chief Digital Officers a rare chance to increase their relevance to customers—and boost competitiveness.

This roadmap is necessarily a broad guideline because each organization’s optimal path of initiatives and milestones will depend on numerous variables. The sequence and priority of each part of mobile transformation will depend on the mobile adoption of highest priority stakeholders, how the firm wants to connect with them and the firm’s mobile resources and expertise. Knowing these variables will enable the CDO to sequence the roadmap.

Mobile Transformation Roadmap is Part3 of The CDO Guide to Mobile for Digital Transformation.

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How Mobile Transforms Relationships Between Brands and Customers [CDO Guide to Mobile Part2]

Chief Digital Office Guide to Transforming with MobileHow Mobile Transforms Relationships Between Brands and Customers presents underappreciated aspects of mobile user behavior before outlining three approaches for engaging customers and other stakeholders.

As outlined in Ubiquitous Computing Primer, “mobile” is much more than a channel or platform internet-connected devices. By any measure, the Internet’s information and utility are growing exponentially, and mobile devices put the Internet in people’s pockets, so they transform human capabilities and experience.

People plus the Internet have expanded abilities to act and perform. For example, having the optimal assortment of travel apps enables people to avoid many problems and capitalize on opportunities; they miss planes less often, pay less for hotels and suffer less crime. The same holds true for most human endeavors, so people without mobile internet are increasingly at disadvantage. [For more context, see: 1) the “Geoweb” and “Web 3.0.”

How Mobile Transforms Relationships Between Brands and Customers is Part2 of The CDO Guide to Mobile for Digital Transformation.

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Personal Individualized Experience: the DNA of Digital Transformation

Personal Individualized Experience: The DNA of Digital TransformationPersonal Individualized Experience is the DNA of digital transformation. It refers to using an optimal mix of people and digital technologies to provide personal interactions at scale, so it’s central to the mission of chief digital officers and CEOs and boards who hire them. Prior to digital and social technologies, organizations faced a trade-off between “personal” and “efficient” interactions with their stakeholders (customers, clients, employees, partners, regulators… hereafter “users”). Now this is no longer true; they can provide personal interactions at scale, once they learn how and where to interact efficiently and authentically.

Used well, digital and social technologies retain an authentic human element while digitizing key aspects of relating to people. Therefore, organizations/firms/brands (hereafter “firms”) can now provide the Personal Individualized Experience (PIE). This post explains the three components of PIE and shows how firms can use them to build and maintain authentic and profitable relationships with users.

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Mobile's Ultimate Business Context: Ubiquitous Computing Primer [CDO Guide to Mobile Part1]

Chief Digital Office Guide to Transforming with MobileUbiquitous Computing Primer reveals mobile’s ultimate business context and enables astute digital executives to create a whole new layer of value from their mobile investments. “Mobile” is far more important than launching smartphone and tablet apps because “smart” devices will interact with each other to provide a new level of capability and customer experience. This primer is a very brief treatment of a complex subject, so follow its links to drill down.

In 2013, smartphones and tablets imply that people are interacting with each other and “the Internet,” but “mobile” is becoming a “feature” of all kinds of devices and products in a phenomenon called “ubiquitous computing.”

Ubiquitous Computing Primer is Part1 of The CDO Guide to Mobile for Digital Transformation.

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