Showing posts with label future of work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label future of work. Show all posts

The Best Future Focused Interviews of 2022

2022 has been a great year for insightful guests and interviews.  I have enjoyed every guest we interviewed for FOBtv.  Some even took us deep into the future and left us hungry for more.  I hope you enjoy the following selections as much as I did.
Kevin Benedict
Futurist at TCS
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

The Future of Work with Expert Dr. Paul J. Bailo

In this episode, we speak with Professor Paul J. Bailo, about the future of work.  Dr. Bailo teaches executives and students in many highly respected universities, and shares what he is hearing and learning as he moves back and forth between teaching, entrepreneurship, and leadership.


Q1: Talk to us about some of your first jobs... A1: 1:32 Q2: Are people going back to work? Do you think there will be more long-term hybrid modes? A2: 9:47 Q3: In this new world you’re envisioning, should that impact the way we educate our kids? A3: 11:18 Q4: What is your take on the Digital Assistant? A4: 16:07 Q5: What is your take on automation creating unemployment? A4: 21:20 Q6: How do you see the interest in relocalizing work affecting the jobs of the future? A6: 27:03 Q7: What advice do you give your students about what they should do to prepare for a career? A7: 30:42


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Kevin Benedict
Partner | Futurist at TCS
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

The Power of Experience with Expert Bruce Temkin

In this episode, I have the joy of talking to the brilliant experience management expert, Bruce Temkin.  He is the Head of Qualtric's XM institute, and shares his latest thoughts on how experience management is evolving.  We also take a deep dive into the impact of the pandemic on remote workforces, explore the six universal laws of experience management, and the future of remote work.  


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Kevin Benedict
Partner | Futurist at TCS
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Navigating to the Future

The problem with the future lies in its navigation system.  Let me explain.  In my Jeep’s navigation system, I put in my destination and it efficiently proposes routes (preferably over mountains and rivers. The future, however, uses different inputs.  It takes inputs from innovations in science and technology, and mixes them with developments in the societal, geopolitical and economic domains, adds fast changing consumer preferences and behaviors, VC investments, profit motivations, and then sprinkles in some additional earth-shaking catalysts like depressions, wars, pandemics, insurrections, and economic crisis.  Where will that navigation system take us?  Who knows!?  You can see why it’s a fool’s errand to make predictions about the future.

The future’s navigation system is either broken, or we just don’t know how to use it.  It seems to lack a key field – a destination field.  A field where we can specify a place we want to go where humans flourish, develop in healthy ways, in a favorable environment and that is filled with abundance and joy.  If we can find that input field, we should add that destination!

Many of us have given up on navigating to our desired future.  We’ve stopped trying and turned our attention to learning how to best react to whatever comes along on the road to nowhere.  As chaotic and complex as our world is, that still doesn’t seem to be our best option.  As stewards of our civilization and our children’s future, it seems having a desired destination where humans flourish, and choosing the most efficient, equitable and safe routes to get us there would still be in everyone’s best interest.

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Kevin Benedict
Partner | Optimistic Futurist at TCS
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

An Optimistic Futurist

At any given moment, there are events within our control and out of our control.  There are areas we can influence, and areas we cannot.  As an optimistic futurist, I read and analyze the positive with the negative, and then I seek opportunities to influence a positive outcome. 

The global COVID-19 pandemic is a timely point of reference.  I read all the distressing news and projections like everyone else, and then look for opportunities to both mitigate the risk and to achieve the best possible outcomes.  

Imagine if you would sitting in a canoe full of your dearest family members.  The canoe is drifting quickly toward a dangerous waterfall.  Our choices are to focus on all the possible negative future scenarios of going over the waterfall, or focusing on influencing a positive outcome.  What will it be?

We need the clarity and wisdom of recognizing all the possible negative scenarios and consequences, but once we have that recognition, we should focus on shaping the outcome to something purposely positive.  Wouldn’t you agree?  Some might say futurist are better off being objective spectators, but I want a futurist to throw me a rope.

Doomsday futurist are often secretly hopeful they’ve got it right.  They sit back and wait for the canoe to go over the waterfall...as they predicted.  Optimistic futurist, identify, reverse engineer and rehearse both positive and negative possible future scenarios to learn what needs to be done today to purposefully influence our path to achieve the best possible outcome.

Future

My Futurist boss here at TCS, Frank Diana, always says, “It is impossible to predict the future - anyone who tries is on a fool's errand.”  There are simply too many building blocks of the future including, science, technology, societal, geopolitical and economic converging together, plus catalysts of change (think pandemic), mixed into this giant pot of stew we call the future.  Exactly what comes out can be guessed at, but not predicted.  At best we can identify a range of possible and plausible future scenarios to consider and rehearse. 

Given that we can’t predict the future - let’s identify the future we want and do everything possible and purposeful to achieve it.

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Kevin Benedict
Partner | Futurist at TCS
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Leadership Advice from a Futurist

Over the years I have conducted many surveys of business and technology professionals, and the one consistent insight across all these surveys is a high level scepticism that leaders will make the necessary decisions and act fast enough to compete effectively.  I understand that.  Most failures can be directly traced back to either bad decisions or a lack of decisions by leaders, but I also have great sympathy for them.   Leading through rapid market evolutions and disruptions is difficult in the best of times, but when you throw in fast changing consumer behaviors, supply chain disruptions, technology advancements and global pandemics it's just unfair.   There are, however, some great insights and wisdom that can be gleaned from all the surveys I have reviewed and research I have participated in.  I put together the following list that I hope you will find useful.
  1. Develop and monitor your own digital mindset and that of your organization's: Understand the need to continuously upgrade and update your own thinking, as well as your organization’s.  
  2. Accept that business success lies within change. Understand digital technologies and their capabilities.  Rethink every aspect of your business in light of technology advancements and changing customer preferences.
  3. Understand the role and impact of platforms and platform ecosystems.  Understand how they will change your marketplace now and in the future.   Think Uber, airbnb, Amazon, Apple, etc.
  4. Recognize the role culture plays in being successful in three key areas: leadership culture, organizational culture and customer culture.  Make every effort to ensure your culture helps, not hinders your success.
  5. Understand the four areas of digital transformation where speed is essential: technology adoption, organizational agility, decision-making and customer alignment.  Recognize the consequences of being slow in any of these areas and focus on improving them.
  6. Organize for agility: Platform ecosystems are changing the rules of business and rapidly expanding into adjacent markets.  Be prepared to rethink and respond rapidly.
  7. Know the unknowns: If your organization is operating on conjecture as a result of data blind spots, fix that with sensors, analytics, artificial intelligence, automation, customer and behavioral analytics.  Help your businesses operate at a level of precision never before possible. 
  8. Harvest the future: Understand that tomorrow’s competitive advantages are created today.  Invest in innovation experts that can identify new and emerging technologies early, and understand the possible business impacts faster than competitors.  The value of innovations and inventions depreciates rapidly over time, so catching them early optimizes value.
  9. Teach the leaders: Continuously educate and train your leadership and board to ensure they keep an open, curious, updated and innovative mindset.  They need to learn at the same pace and cadence as their markets are evolving.  Running the day-to-day operations of a large enterprise is complex and all consuming, and without a formal process, plan and schedule for continuing leadership education it doesn’t happen.
Thriving during digital and market transformation does not happen by accident.  It is a purposeful effort.

Watch the animated-reading of this article here.



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Kevin Benedict
Partner | Futurist at TCS
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

The Expanding Boundary of Opportunity and Employment

W. Edward Deming taught that quality is achieved by measuring as much as possible and reducing variations.  Japan widely adopted Deming's philosophies in the 1950s and, largely as a result, became the 2nd biggest economy in the world.  This revolution in manufacturing, that introduced a system of quality improvement and innovation, led directly to jobs and economic expansion.

This same kind of revolution is now taking place around decision-making.  Algorithms are now able to expand and codify Deming's philosophies and to take them to the next level.  Algorithms can standardize decision-making and make improvements to them, and for the first time in history uncoupled them from the very human dynamic of unpredictability.  This is a rich area for innovation and job creation.

Markets are often like a balloon - when one end is squeezed the other expands. When the market catches up with a competitive advantage and the advantage ceases, competition is squeezed and moves elsewhere.  Employment acts similarly.  When one industry is contracting, another often expands.  

Digitizing the physical world to more efficiently measure, monitor and make decisions about it is one of those expansion areas where competitive advantages can be found. This area today is rich with new ideas, new businesses and job creation.

Once unknowns become knowns (through data capture, digitization and analysis), smart people will build new businesses and solutions to take advantage of them. Investments and jobs will then migrate to the new frontier, the outer-edge, in search of new competitive advantages.  When something new is made possible - jobs are always created.  As something new ages into something ubiquitous it will be automated, jobs will decrease and investment will move toward the outer-edge.

The good news is that the the outer-edge, this expanding boundary, represents areas of recognized job creation, innovation and emerging competitive advantages.  The rule of the "Expanding Boundary of Opportunity and Employment" says that those who willfully move to the outer-edge through lifelong learning, focus and purposeful career choices dramatically increase their career and earnings potential.  Job markets never stop moving.  What about you?


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Kevin Benedict
Partner | Futurist at TCS
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Digital Anthropology, Covid-19 and the Future of Work

In this interview we discuss Covid-19's impact on businesses, digital transformation, the impact of automation on humans and the second digital revolution with entrepreneur and future of work expert, Richard Skellett.  Richard is opinionated and calls the displacement of humans with robots and automation immoral.  Join us for a thought provoking exploration of the future of work.

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Kevin Benedict
Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Covid-19 and the Role of a Futurist

Early Futurist
Futurist Frank Diana leads Tata Consultancy Services' Future of Business team.  When people ask his predictions about the future he often responds, “We don’t predict, we identify and consider possible scenarios.”  He is also fond of saying that most predictions made after a crisis are wrong.  It’s not picking one future scenario to place a bet on that is the role of a futurist, rather identifying many possible scenarios and then monitoring and tracking which are becoming more likely or not - given new and continuous inputs.

What then is the role of a futurist during a pandemic like Covid-19?  As a Futurist myself working on Frank’s team I can say we focus on how Covid-19 is altering the trajectory of various trends and acting as an accelerate or inhibitor to change.  The value of course is for leaders to use these insights to best position their businesses to succeed.

Human, Digital and Future Cadences on a Time Continuum

Strategy is the art of making use of time and space. I am less concerned about the later than the former. Space we can recover, lost time never. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Digital transformation involves the process of transforming a business from one state to another.  It is also about time.  An important part of this transformation is speeding up the cadence of business and information movement along the time continuum from human, digital and finally to future-time.  Businesses today must be capable of competing in all three of these cadences on the time continuum simultaneously.

What are the time cadences on the time continuum?

1. Human-time – time cadence governed by our physical, biological and mental limitations as humans and the regulatory environments that we work within.
2. Digital-time – time cadence supported by the digital and mobile technologies used including computers, software applications and network transmission speeds.
3. Future-time – time cadence stretching into the future and only limited by the lack of available data, computing power and the sophistication of algorithms used to analyze, predict, model, project, forecast and recommend.

Digital Transformation in Retail - 13 Action Steps

  1. Recognize the need for digital transformation extends beyond websites and mobile apps to the entire organization and across all business processes.
  2. Understand the degree of change occurring in retail as a result of customers’ fast-changing behaviors.
  3. Judge accurately where your organization stands on a digital technologies maturity curve.
  4. Show the necessary leadership to change strategies, budget priorities and plans based on new data, trends and insights, and then make the required investments in digital technologies, people and skills to compete successfully.
  5. See that traditional channel-centric strategies are no longer viable; rather, retailers must adopt precise, customer-centric strategies, enabled by digital technologies.
  6. Don’t excuse slow adoption of digital technologies, as the data is clear and compelling and demands immediate action.
  7. Think with a digital mindset, intimately understand the capabilities of digital technologies, understand digital’s role and importance in customer interactions, and develop new digital business models, processes and strategies for supporting today’s and tomorrow’s digital markets and consumers.
  8. Realize that digital transformation and the industry’s adoption of digital technologies are occurring on an accelerated schedule that peaks around 2020. It waits for no retailer’s budget cycles, three-year master plan, leadership change or strategy.
  9. Align the pace of digital transformation initiatives with the speed at which consumers are adopting digital technologies, behaviors, markets and thinking. This might mean over-investment in the near term to catch up or stay ahead of the competition.
  10. Unify disparate digital transformation initiatives behind a single company-wide digital transformation doctrine – a guiding statement that effectively describes the reason for digital transformation, what needs to happen and what winning looks like. This doctrine must be used to direct and shape the entire company’s efforts.
  11. Closely monitor the business impact of rapidly emerging digital technologies to ensure investments are prioritized and acted upon in the right time and place to maximize ROI and competitive advantage, while also balancing the need to innovate and embrace a fail-fast, test and learn mentality.
  12. Understand how digital transformation will alter traditional retail roles, responsibilities and skills for all associates.
  13. Pay close attention to how digital transformation shapes and changes consumers’ interactions and experiences, and train associates to best serve digitally enabled consumers.
 Follow Kevin Benedict on Twitter @krbenedict, or read more of his articles on digital transformation strategies here:
  1. Mistakes in Retail Digital Transformation
  2. Winning Strategies for the Fourth Industrial Revolution
  3. Digital Transformation - Mindset Differences
  4. Analyzing Retail Through Digital Lenses
  5. Digital Thinking and Beyond!
  6. Measuring the Pace of Change in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
  7. How Digital Thinking Separates Retail Leaders from Laggards
  8. To Bot, or Not to Bot
  9. Oils, Bots, AI and Clogged Arteries
  10. Artificial Intelligence Out of Doors in the Kingdom of Robots
  11. How Digital Leaders are Different
  12. The Three Tsunamis of Digital Transformation - Be Prepared!
  13. Bots, AI and the Next 40 Months
  14. You Only Have 40 Months to Digitally Transform
  15. Digital Technologies and the Greater Good
  16. Video Report: 40 Months of Hyper-Digital Transformation
  17. Report: 40 Months of Hyper-Digital Transformation
  18. Virtual Moves to Real in with Sensors and Digital Transformation
  19. Technology Must Disappear in 2017
  20. Merging Humans with AI and Machine Learning Systems
  21. In Defense of the Human Experience in a Digital World
  22. Profits that Kill in the Age of Digital Transformation
  23. Competing in Future Time and Digital Transformation
  24. Digital Hope and Redemption in the Digital Age
  25. Digital Transformation and the Role of Faster
  26. Digital Transformation and the Law of Thermodynamics
  27. Jettison the Heavy Baggage and Digitally Transform
  28. Digital Transformation - The Dark Side
  29. Business is Not as Usual in Digital Transformation
  30. 15 Rules for Winning in Digital Transformation
  31. The End Goal of Digital Transformation
  32. Digital Transformation and the Ignorance Penalty
  33. Surviving the Three Ages of Digital Transformation
  34. The Advantages of an Advantage in Digital Transformation
  35. From Digital to Hyper-Transformation
  36. Believers, Non-Believers and Digital Transformation
  37. Forces Driving the Digital Transformation Era
  38. Digital Transformation Requires Agility and Energy Measurement
  39. A Doctrine for Digital Transformation is Required
  40. Digital Transformation and Its Role in Mobility and Competition
  41. Digital Transformation - A Revolution in Precision Through IoT, Analytics and Mobility
  42. Competing in Digital Transformation and Mobility
  43. Ambiguity and Digital Transformation
  44. Digital Transformation and Mobility - Macro-Forces and Timing
  45. Mobile and IoT Technologies are Inside the Curve of Human Time
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Kevin Benedict
Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

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

Mistakes Retailers Make in Digital Transformation

  1. Failing to stay fully on top of changing customers’ needs and behaviors.
  2. Focusing insufficiently on cybersecurity.
  3. Ignoring fresh thinking from outside the company.
  4. Lacking a clear digital strategy.
  5. Moving too slowly. 
  1. Winning Strategies for the Fourth Industrial Revolution
  2. Digital Transformation - Mindset Differences
  3. Analyzing Retail Through Digital Lenses
  4. Digital Thinking and Beyond!
  5. Measuring the Pace of Change in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
  6. How Digital Thinking Separates Retail Leaders from Laggards
  7. To Bot, or Not to Bot
  8. Oils, Bots, AI and Clogged Arteries
  9. Artificial Intelligence Out of Doors in the Kingdom of Robots
  10. How Digital Leaders are Different
  11. The Three Tsunamis of Digital Transformation - Be Prepared!
  12. Bots, AI and the Next 40 Months
  13. You Only Have 40 Months to Digitally Transform
  14. Digital Technologies and the Greater Good
  15. Video Report: 40 Months of Hyper-Digital Transformation
  16. Report: 40 Months of Hyper-Digital Transformation
  17. Virtual Moves to Real in with Sensors and Digital Transformation
  18. Technology Must Disappear in 2017
  19. Merging Humans with AI and Machine Learning Systems
  20. In Defense of the Human Experience in a Digital World
  21. Profits that Kill in the Age of Digital Transformation
  22. Competing in Future Time and Digital Transformation
  23. Digital Hope and Redemption in the Digital Age
  24. Digital Transformation and the Role of Faster
  25. Digital Transformation and the Law of Thermodynamics
  26. Jettison the Heavy Baggage and Digitally Transform
  27. Digital Transformation - The Dark Side
  28. Business is Not as Usual in Digital Transformation
  29. 15 Rules for Winning in Digital Transformation
  30. The End Goal of Digital Transformation
  31. Digital Transformation and the Ignorance Penalty
  32. Surviving the Three Ages of Digital Transformation
  33. The Advantages of an Advantage in Digital Transformation
  34. From Digital to Hyper-Transformation
  35. Believers, Non-Believers and Digital Transformation
  36. Forces Driving the Digital Transformation Era
  37. Digital Transformation Requires Agility and Energy Measurement
  38. A Doctrine for Digital Transformation is Required
  39. Digital Transformation and Its Role in Mobility and Competition
  40. Digital Transformation - A Revolution in Precision Through IoT, Analytics and Mobility
  41. Competing in Digital Transformation and Mobility
  42. Ambiguity and Digital Transformation
  43. Digital Transformation and Mobility - Macro-Forces and Timing
  44. Mobile and IoT Technologies are Inside the Curve of Human Time

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Kevin Benedict
Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

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

Digital Transformation - Mindset Differences

  1. Analyzing Retail Through Digital Lenses
  2. Digital Thinking and Beyond!
  3. Measuring the Pace of Change in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
  4. How Digital Thinking Separates Retail Leaders from Laggards
  5. To Bot, or Not to Bot
  6. Oils, Bots, AI and Clogged Arteries
  7. Artificial Intelligence Out of Doors in the Kingdom of Robots
  8. How Digital Leaders are Different
  9. The Three Tsunamis of Digital Transformation - Be Prepared!
  10. Bots, AI and the Next 40 Months
  11. You Only Have 40 Months to Digitally Transform
  12. Digital Technologies and the Greater Good
  13. Video Report: 40 Months of Hyper-Digital Transformation
  14. Report: 40 Months of Hyper-Digital Transformation
  15. Virtual Moves to Real in with Sensors and Digital Transformation
  16. Technology Must Disappear in 2017
  17. Merging Humans with AI and Machine Learning Systems
  18. In Defense of the Human Experience in a Digital World
  19. Profits that Kill in the Age of Digital Transformation
  20. Competing in Future Time and Digital Transformation
  21. Digital Hope and Redemption in the Digital Age
  22. Digital Transformation and the Role of Faster
  23. Digital Transformation and the Law of Thermodynamics
  24. Jettison the Heavy Baggage and Digitally Transform
  25. Digital Transformation - The Dark Side
  26. Business is Not as Usual in Digital Transformation
  27. 15 Rules for Winning in Digital Transformation
  28. The End Goal of Digital Transformation
  29. Digital Transformation and the Ignorance Penalty
  30. Surviving the Three Ages of Digital Transformation
  31. The Advantages of an Advantage in Digital Transformation
  32. From Digital to Hyper-Transformation
  33. Believers, Non-Believers and Digital Transformation
  34. Forces Driving the Digital Transformation Era
  35. Digital Transformation Requires Agility and Energy Measurement
  36. A Doctrine for Digital Transformation is Required
  37. Digital Transformation and Its Role in Mobility and Competition
  38. Digital Transformation - A Revolution in Precision Through IoT, Analytics and Mobility
  39. Competing in Digital Transformation and Mobility
  40. Ambiguity and Digital Transformation
  41. Digital Transformation and Mobility - Macro-Forces and Timing
  42. Mobile and IoT Technologies are Inside the Curve of Human Time
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Kevin Benedict
Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

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

Interviews with Kevin Benedict