How Do You Fund Innovation for Mobile and Digital Transformation?

Last month while in Sydney, Australia I participated in an interesting session taught by my colleague Ajoy Mallik on how to organize a continuous innovation program in-house.  Our client had asked us to help them develop this program.  It was while participating in this workshop that I recognized the value.

Fast forward to today and I am in Denmark experiencing late summer rain and working with a large CPG company and sharing our latest research on Code Halos, enterprise mobility, SMAC strategies and digital transformation.  During the workshop one of the attendees asked the question, "How do you motivate executives to fund innovation?"  It was a great question!  That is a challenge for most companies. Someone needs to pay for it!

The first question might be,  "Can't we just replicate innovation when we find it?"  My answer is that your frontline employees are in the best position to recognize where innovation is needed and how it could most benefit your company.  That kind of specific innovation requires motivation, collaboration and organization, ie., funding!

Your company needs to recognize the importance of continuous innovation - not project based innovation, but systemic.  A system that is continuously asking questions like the following:

• How are SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) developments and trends going to impact your markets, customers, partners, suppliers and your industry?  How are these developments going to change the future, and are your budgets aligned with those changes?
• How is the process of digital transformation going to impact your products and services?
• How are mobile technologies going to impact your brand, marketing, sales and business models?
• How are social media channels changing your market and industry?
• How can you deploy enterprise collaboration solutions to your advantage?
• How can you become more agile as a business, when your ERP and technology vendors are constantly trying to lock you into their expensive and slow paced technology cycles?
• What opportunities and risks are presented by the transformation from controlled PR, branding and messaging, to real-time social media feedback and swarming market behaviors?
• What new risks are being presented to your business models and markets because of all these changes?
• What changes need to happen within your ERPs and IT infrastructure to support a move to real-time information and updates?
• How does your company's organizational chart need to change in order for managers to respond quicker to real-time problems and market opportunities?

All of these issues are here today.  Companies must be continuously addressing these changes and trying new ideas, innovations and processes.  This is at the least, self-preservation, and at the most an opportunity to capture market share and achieve competitive advantages.  The future, if a company is to have one, must be funded.

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant

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Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Marketing History and Infograph

Mobile is now the first screen of influence for many marketers while adults are spending more time on mobile media than newspapers and magazines.

Timeline of Mobile Marketing

Middle ages

- Town criers are used to spread messages

1876

- First telephone introduced by Alexander Graham Bell

1973

- First mobile portable handset invented

1992

- First text message sent from computer to mobile phone

1993

- First mobile phone that both sends and receives texts introduced

1998

- Term "spam" officially added to dictionary to mean unwanted, junk emails

2003

- First commercial mobile SMS launches. Short codes introduced for use with text message marketing

2005

- Nike and Pontiac launch SMS campaigns

2007

- 2.4 billion SMS users worldwide
- Apple iPhone is released in U.S.
- Texting is embraced: Average monthly texts (218) outnumber calls (213)

2010

- Quick response (QR) codes start being used in mobile marketing
- Cambridge dictionary adds "text" as a verb

2011

- Mobile marketing becomes a $14 billion+ industry, including $9.3 billion worth of music

2013

- Android and iOS battle it out for market share

Businesses embrace new technology for mobile outreach

• Square-like apps for payment
• Same-day shipping through Amazon and eBay
• Mobile fingerprinting to secure payments
• Augmented reality in which customers can point their mobile cameras at products for reviews and discounts

2014

- Mobile Internet usage will overtake desktop Internet usage

2015

- 81% of U.S. mobile customers will have smartphones
- Mobile marketing will generate $400 billion in sales (a 52% increase in just two years)
- Retailers and marketers will spend $19.8 billion on mobile marketing, up from $6.7 billion in 2012)

2016

- Global mobile marketing spending will grow to $22 billion

We Love Our Mobile Phones - and So Do Businesses

91%

- Adults who have their mobile phone within arm's reach

271 million

- Adults who own some type of mobile device

75%

- Percentage of smartphone market held by Apple and Android

86%

- Users who use their smartphone while watching TV

$22 billion

- Mobile advertising spending
- 2012 - 2010
- $22 billion - $3.4 billion

15%

- Online retail sales in 2013 made through mobile devices

3 in 4

- Mobile users who use their device for shopping

$39 billion

Original Source: http://www.topmarketingschools.net/mobile/

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant

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Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Technologies, Delights and Family Life

The Benedicts

Mobile technologies are having a massive impact on our economy, society and culture.  Much is written both here and in many other places about these impacts and changes.  In this article, however, I am going to share some personal ways mobile technologies are having a significant impact on our family.

I publish articles, videos and newsletters daily about mobile and SMAC technologies and trends.  I can continue writing and publishing uninterrupted no matter my location in the world as long as there is Internet connectivity.  This was not possible even a decade ago.  I am still amazed by it.  Today, I can and do publish content from airplanes via WiFi!

Our son graduated last year from Boise State University and went immediately into training and schooling in preparation to serve as a military officer.  While going through training his class had a social media team that would post updated pictures of their training and exercises to Facebook nearly every day.  This simple act, was incredibly important to us and his friends.  We experienced his life, in a small way, through near real-time pictures and social media.  Every day we would search the faces of sweating soldiers for our son and study the photos intently to understand what he was doing and experiencing.

On most weekends, we were able to catch up briefly with our son via his iPhone.  Sometimes for only two or three minutes, but those minutes were precious and highly anticipated.

As his graduation neared, we visited the Facebook page of his organization to learn the details of graduation, schedules, how to dress, where to stay, rules and advice.  It was extremely helpful!

Now as an officer, with a more regular schedule, he can communicate with us and his friends regularly through texts, emails, Facetime and even voice!  He can easily pay his bills, complete his banking and conduct business in Boise, Idaho while he is located elsewhere.  Nearly all of his finances can be managed via his iPhone.

The distance that separates us is minimized by mobile communications and social media.  In fact, last week he uploaded a photo of some materials in Boise that he wanted to sell and posted it on Craig's List.  He is not currently located in Boise, but that is not a limitation these days.  I love it!

A few months ago our daughter graduated from high school.  This summer, as she was preparing to enter the university, her freshman class developed a Facebook page and everyone starting introducing themselves, their class schedules and their dormitories.  She quickly met her classmates, her roommate, and started developing relationships and preparing according to the advice others were sharing online.  We, as parents, will still feel the pain of separation, but also be comforted by the ability to communicate and witness our daughter's experiences via social media and mobile technologies.

Here is another example of how digital and mobile technologies are enhancing our lives.  This week my lovely wife asked her online community about problems with our dishwashing machine.  She received over a dozen responses full of great advice and recommendations within hours.  Some of the advice actually worked!  Problem solved at no cost!

In another example, a small group of us are very active in helping refugee families integrate and adjust to Boise upon their arrival from overseas.  It takes a surprising amount of organization, planning, scheduling and coordination to help new refugees.  They have a massive amount of paper work, appointments and meetings to attend.  They have language classes, schools, medical appointments and case managers to communicate with.  They are all on a timeline with pressure to get integrated, working and sufficient ASAP.

Integrating our refugee friends
into Boise (State) society

When we started working with refugees, we quickly realized that outfitting the refugees with mobile phones was an absolute priority.  It was critical to be able to find people, ask and answer questions, respond to emergencies and arrange transportation to various appointments.  This became quickly apparent after searching the streets of Boise many times over several days for various families and family members that had missed appointments and transportation arrangements, and experiencing deaths and births among the refugee community.

Today, the refugee families we work with are all organized and outfitted with mobile technologies.  Many of the families are now also communicating via SKYPE and Google+ with family members in their home countries preparing them for the journey to Boise.  Mobile and online technologies enable families to maintain and foster relationships with friends and relatives separated by thousands of miles.

I am not one of those people to pine about days gone by.  I love mobile and social media technologies!  It can and will be abused, but that cannot diminish the benefits and delights these technologies bring to the lives of my family and millions of others.

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant

View Linkedin Profile

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

What Does Research Say is the Competitive Advantage of Data?

The explosion of mobile devices, e-commerce and "The Internet of Things" is introducing massive amounts of new data into our ecosystem.  Some companies ignore this data for all but the most tactical explorations, but others are revolutionizing entire industries by recognizing the value of this data and taking advantage of it.

My colleague, Ben Pring, has been conducting a lot of research this year on the impact of business analytics, big data and other fast emerging business strategies on a company's ability to compete.  In this guest post Ben shares his latest findings.

What one key characteristic separates today’s high-flying outperformers – such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Netflix and Pandora – from fast-followers, wannabes, and laggards? It’s a precision focus on the information that surrounds people, organizations, products and processes – what we call Code Halos ™ – to build new business and commercial models. These leading companies have realized that the data – or Code Halo – that accompanies people, organizations and devices contains a richness of business insight that far outstrips the value of physical assets that have historically underpinned market leadership. Conversely, companies that have missed or misunderstood the Code Halo phenomena are now struggling to cope in markets that are moving at warp speed; some, in fact, have already succumbed.

We are in the early stages of an exciting and important new era in which Code Halos radically reshape the rules of business competition. Built on the SMAC Stack ™ (social + mobile + analytics + cloud technologies), Code Halos are being harnessed to help enterprises advance from old-world industrial models (premised on physical assets) to new structures informed by by digits.  Our study of Code Halos, in fact, reveals a new “crossroads” that businesses across industry must navigate to achieve sustained market prosperity and avoid what we call an “extinction event.”

From Personal to Business Code Halos

Each one of us is creating our Code Halo with every click or swipe of our phone, tablet, laptop, Glass, Nest, FuelBand, dashboard, or other smart device. Every transaction we make, every “like” we record, every preference we note, is building a digital fingerprint of who we are and what makes us tick. Our Code Halos, which have been building and deepening as more and more of our lives have become digitized, contain a multiplicity of attributes that reveal our likes, dislikes and behaviors, from recommendations of  great new books to  personalized radio stations that play our favorite  songs, many of which haven’t left their CD cases for a million years.

The Code Halos that exist around individuals are unlocking incredible new value for all of us and for the companies that we do business with.  But the Code Halo story doesn’t end in the consumer world. More and more smart companies are realizing that the concept of Code Halos isn’t confined to (relatively) simple B2C activities, such as book selling or online music. Instead, they’re recognizing that their very organizations have a Code Halo and that within their organizations they have hundreds, thousands, millions of Code Halos, made up of every digital interaction with every smart device they touch across “the Internet of Things”  (all of which of course have their own Code Halos).

This realization is sending profound shock waves through board rooms, as forward-thinking business and technology leaders begin to see the impact that the management – or mismanagement of Code Halos – has on corporate fates. In fact, many are now coming to grips with Code Halo intersections and how they can impact every meaningful aspect of their business operations, from design, to production, to selling, to talent management.

Winning in the New Code Rush

Whether it be the hipster in San Francisco using Square Wallet on his morning latte run or the engineering conglomerate getting its turbines to Tweet or the Singaporean government establishing its homeland as a “living analytics” test bed, the leverage of Code Halo thinking is making businesses big and small think about how the code they generate can collide with the code generated by other people, devices, and organizations. And, perhaps more importantly, how this data can be mined to create new products and services that are genuinely innovative.

To learn more about Code Halos, download our white paper at unevenlydistributed.com.

Ben Pring co-leads Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work. He joined Cognizant after spending 15 years with Gartner as a senior industry analyst researching and advising on areas such as cloud computing and global sourcing. Prior to Gartner, Ben worked for a number of consulting companies including Coopers & Lybrand. His expertise in helping clients see around corners, think the unthinkable and calculate the compound annual growth rate of unintended consequences has brought him to Cognizant, where his charter is to research and analyze how organizations can leverage the incredibly powerful new opportunities that are being created as new technologies make computing power more pervasive, more affordable and more important than ever before. Ben graduated with a degree in philosophy from Manchester University in the UK. He can be reached at Ben.Pring@cognizant.com.

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant

View Linkedin Profile

Read the whitepaper on mobile, social, analytics and cloud strategies Don't Get SMACked

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.