Three reasons to tackle the hard problems, right now.

It’s common for businesses to prioritize solving the easy problems while delaying the greater efforts needed to solve the hard problems. It’s usually a low-risk (at least short-term), low-effort and low-cost approach that can return incremental advantages within a single budget cycle. The collective and cumulative effects of that habit are that we usually witness the emergence of parity stop-gap solutions across an industry. Eventually parity leads to price comparisons and margin reduction until some entity finally takes on the risk of investing enough time and treasure to take on the hard problem.

The question here is does it make sense for a business to take on a high-risk/high-reward strategy of taking on the hard problems in our current environment? At this moment in time, making sense of any business risk associated with innovation or change is saddled with the added calculus of considering the impacts of a global pandemic, an economic downturn and potentially massive social change. A short-term perspective might point you away from taking on any additional risk in this environment, but I’d suggest, there are powerful reasons to consider taking the long view and making significant moves, even now.

1. “The best chance to deploy capital is when things are going down." - Warren Buffet

While Buffet was referring to purchasing a controlling share of corporations, the philosophy applies to an investment in your own enterprise. The underlying driver of buying on the way down is an understanding that markets are cyclical and if there is a sound business model supporting long-term viability, it makes sense to buy/invest when prices are low. 

Today, we can find an historically low cost of capital, supply exceeding demand for externally sourced goods and services (excluding cleaning products, PPE and ventilators, et al), and, given the general slowdown of commerce in most sectors, little in the way of opportunity costs. 

Meaning, in short, your dollar can potentially go a lot farther in a down market and return a much better multiple when markets return. Contraction, or waiting for the markets to return to normal, simply drives your realized returns to zero in the short term, increases the cost of the same improvements in the future and lowers your ROI.

2. If you wait until everything comes back, you’ll be in a long line.

Contraction is happening at an unprecedented level. The resulting and pervasive fear is causing a lot of businesses to simply pause until they understand what’s going to happen next. On the face of it, that sounds like prudent risk management. But there’s a flaw in the logic. There is never a moment when anyone can say with any real certainty what will happen next.

Let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that your market demand will eventually shift back to pre-COVID-19 levels. When that occurs, the impending feeding frenzy amongst you and your competitors will likely be as unprecedented as the great pause that preceded it. It will be a battle for share. There will be competitors whose offerings remained stagnant. There will be competitors who spent the time during the downturn actively responding to changing market conditions, gaining a better understanding of the changing needs of their customers, and improving their offering, their features, or customer experience. We believe the latter will be prepared to take a greater share, command a higher margin, or both. The question every business needs to answer for themselves is which of those future positions is a better bet, today?

3. If the math works, why wait?

I want to be clear that I am not advocating for blindly taking on risk. Just the opposite, actually. What I am saying is businesses should also not blindly avoid risk because general conditions are, at least for the moment, frighteningly bad. Obviously, no matter what potential investment or transformation you might be considering, these are exceptional times and evaluating any investment requires exceptional diligence. 

That being said, when I was in business school, one point drilled into our heads was if you can engage your resources and return even $1 of profit, you should. Unless, of course, there is an alternative opportunity that will return more than $1. They also taught us the time value of money—that a dollar in your hand today is worth more than that same dollar at some point in the future.  

So, for many businesses, now might be the best time to look seriously at options for making major improvements —even if they require a different operational approach, a sizable investment of capex, or a longer-term expectation of market recovery. If you can create a reasonable proforma, based on valid well-researched assumptions, that projects a positive value for your project, why are you waiting? 

Practicing what we preach.

It’s time to refocus our efforts around innovating new products and services, developing digital transformation strategies, and designing and build new user experiences that address our most difficult business challenges. Admittedly, in this great economic pause, we are all facing challenges. But we should not be pausing to wait and see what might happen. We should work and invest in our people and our businesses to build new capabilities, explore new platforms and technologies, and create a more relevant offering for the very different market we see emerging over the horizon.

On the economy, ice caps and COVID-19

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Greenland_Ice_Sheet.jpg

The asymmetry of loss

A few weeks back, I was listening to an episode of the podcast “The Skeptics Guide to the Universe,” and the host, Steven Novella, was discussing the asymmetrical time frames of destruction and restoration when considering the fate of the polar ice caps. If we do nothing about climate change, the models show a significant decline in the ice caps over the next 100 years and a total disappearance within a thousand years. The next point, however, was the one that struck me as most serious. Even if we reverse all of our carbon dioxide levels and cool the climate to pre-industrial levels, once those ice caps are gone, it would take millions of years for them to build back up.

That type of asymmetry is what concerns me about our current COVID-19-driven economic crisis. There are businesses, organizations and cultural institutions that, as a result of these economic pressures, could disappear in a very short time frame. And should that happen, they might never return, regardless of how quickly the general economy begins to bounce back.

The melting away of industries, experience and institutional memory

Some of the industries that will be affected most by any long-term closures are obvious. Bars. Restaurants. Hotels. Theaters and live-performance venues. But what might be less obvious is the fact that those employees left to fend for themselves will be forced to find other forms of employment, assuming those even exist. And inevitably, should that occur, having experienced the economic vulnerability of those professions firsthand, some percentage of them will never return. It’s sound logic, really. But what will we lose as a society if we shelter idly by and let that happen? We could lose a generation of great chefs, hoteliers, actors, artists, musicians and comedians.

Stimulus starts with innovation

The impacts of shelter-in-place and social distancing orders on bars and restaurants, theaters and cultural institutions are massive. Most of these establishments don’t have large cash reserves to cover rent, let alone payroll, for months of lost revenue. Of course, we hear news about government stimulus packages becoming available to stem the suffering of small businesses. But those are meant to help businesses whose livelihoods are impacted, not decimated. And help is not arriving anytime soon. So, these communities and institutions have begun to innovate.

Shedd Aquarium

Source:

https://www.instagram.com/shedd_aquarium/

In Chicago, we’ve seen Michelin-starred restaurants begin to provide previously unthinkable drive-up service or delivery. Theaters are livestreaming performances. Zoos and aquariums are embracing social media. These are amazing, creative solutions, to be sure. But even the most successful of these service design pivots represent a revenue loss of 80–90% for most of these businesses and institutions. As a society, to prevent the loss of our culture, we will need to do more.

But brute force solutions are needed, right now

As I write this, Congress is fighting amongst itself over how and to whom to deliver the benefits of a two- to four-trillion dollar stimulus package. This money needs to get into local economies quickly and pervasively if we are going to protect the small businesses and cultural institutions that actually make America great.

What’s the difference between UX and UI?

Left Brain, meet Right Brain.

For any experience to truly connect with people, it must engage both halves of their brain. Now, we understand that this mythical separation of domain between the right and left hemispheres of the brain is more rooted in pop culture than science, but it is still an apt framework for this discussion. While some like to say UX and UI are two sides of the same coin, I think it’s more apt to call them two halves of the same brain. The analytical versus the aesthetic. The data versus the qualia. The objective versus the subjective. You get the idea. But what does that mean for how we might understand the individual disciplines themselves?

Analogy time—UX is to architect as UI is to interior designer.

Let’s imagine the UX and UI designers of your digital design project are instead tasked with a bathroom remodel. The room is stripped to the studs. Without getting too graphic, we all understand that any bathroom must provide people with access to a number of critical functions. But the permutations of how the bathroom itself is laid out or how it appears, aesthetically, are virtually infinite. 

The UX designer creates a blueprint.

In doing so, they will address some basic design questions. What goes where? How much space does each activity require? What should be closest to the door? Is there a logical flow from one area to the next? Should everything be visible the moment one arrives, or should some areas be obscured? How do we arrange water supply lines and drains to maximize utility while minimizing construction costs? Where do we need storage and with what do we fill it?

In UX design, the analog to that floor plan would be a wireframe. Wireframes are the blueprint. They document the structural design and how the experience is optimized and arranged to serve a predetermined set of goals or conversions. Wireframes are the graphical representation of the relative importance and hierarchy of elements, how those elements relate, what needs to be stored in those elements and what the logical flow should be between them.

The UI designer does the finish work.

If we’re staying with the bathroom analogy, the UI designer’s decisions dictate mostly how the bathroom feels. Paint colors. Material finishes. Fixtures. Sounds. Scents. At first blush, these seem superficial, but they actually make a substantive difference to how, or if, the experience elicits a proper response. So what does UI mean in our digital design world? 

While the UX designer’s wireframes may provide broad guidelines as to what should appear on a screen and the interaction flow, the UI designer creates the actual screens, layouts, visual patterns and content and style guides that document the required family of UI elements like tone of voice, content length, buttons, icons, scrolls, menu styles, micro-animations, colors, typefaces, etc.

Both work best when considered and developed in tandem.

Of course, every digital property should work well and look and feel beautiful. But the best way to evaluate whether a design is successful is to understand whether or not it is achieving its objective. That objective may be to increase a business KPI (number of form fills, sales leads generated, etc.) or overall engagement levels like time on site, number of articles read, pages visited, etc. To maximize either, or any combination in between, requires a coordinated effort across all disciplines. 

Consumer expectations for the quality of their digital experiences are increasing. Only by understanding and engaging with people logically, intellectually and emotionally will UX and UI professionals create a competitive advantage through design.

Brainstorming vs. Ideation

Brainstorming and ideation are different tools for different purposes.

You’ve undoubtedly been in brainstorming sessions. Some of these sessions have likely been fruitful, others disappointing. I often get asked how ideation is different from brainstorming. A very smart and talented friend of mine, Matt Phillips distinguished the two types of sessions by asserting most brainstorms are simply “meetings… with better food.” But beyond that perhaps undeserved jab at brainstorming, there are several aspects that separate brainstorms from formal ideation.

First, what is an ideation session, anyway?

Before I jump into the difference between a brainstorm and an ideation session, I should provide some context for anyone unfamiliar with this process. In traditional design-thinking, the ideation phase is often the most exciting step within the process. The ideation session itself is the organized gathering of minds within that step where the litany of ideas is generated against some highly defined problems or desired outcomes. These ideas range from the possible to the seemingly impossible given current organizational constraints.

A time and a place.

For what it’s worth, I love a good brainstorm. They’re fun, engaging and often produce creative ideas. They are collaborative and aid in generating new ideas to improve internal processes, develop creative campaigns, share ideas, etc. This is all important work.

But let’s remember that ideation is the third step in a more formal design-thinking process and should be treated as such. It should be informed by learnings emerging from the Empathize stage, address specific challenges outlined in the Define phase and, finally, create a starting point for the Prototype and Test phases.

Ideation is about not only generating ideas but also systematically upending and exploring the mental models surrounding those ideas, assessing recurring themes, evaluating ideas through a variety of lenses and, ultimately, converging and consolidating various branches of thought into manageable future areas of innovation. Ideation, to that point, also requires more time, commitment, homework and buy-in from stakeholders. 

Ideation may be utilized for a multitude of business challenges. Some examples include:

• Developing new product or service directions

• Exploring new business strategies and revenue streams

• Finding new business angles by solving complex customer-centric challenges

Leave it to a professional.

When led by a trained moderator, ideation sessions get users beyond the myriad obvious solutions often generated in traditional brainstorming sessions. The session moderator leads participants through a series of carefully structured exercises designed to create an abundance of ideas and then explore, build on and refine the most viable. There is a substantial amount of exercises out there (this site is a nice repository for a number of tools and methods), but understanding which exercises are best suited to address your particular challenge is a skill honed through repetition and experience. Having a moderator who can teach or lead your team through the effective use of these tools is equally as critical as wielding them in the first place. 

A successful session leader will help you:

• Ask—and answer—the right questions

• Break through organizational constraints to view challenges in a new light

• Keep your “hero” user’s needs and behaviors at the foundation of your innovation

• Rise above the obvious solutions to increase innovation potential

• Identify and leverage different perspectives to uncover unexpected angles for innovation

There’s definitely a team in “I.”

In ideation, fielding the right team is critical. Sure, brainstorms usually include teams. But, yet again, ideation is different. It’s important to bring in the right expertise and perspectives to maximize the value of a session. A diverse group of resources is the most effective, from internal subject matter experts and designers to trend experts and sometimes potential customers. The diversity of expertise within the group can be critical in creating and enhancing groundbreaking ideas, ensuring all angles have been explored, examined or exhausted.

It’s always a matter of time.

In addition to being internally focused with little structure or outside perspectives, most teams dedicate an hour or two for a brainstorm. Little thought or prep work is required. Ideation, on the other hand, is a commitment—session preparation, session execution and idea refinement. To be successful, most sessions require a time commitment of one to two business days.   

Just interesting people kicking back, sharing a beer and developing a breakthrough innovation?

If only it were that easy! The truth is, while they may be fun and stimulating, ideation sessions are hard work. When done right, most participants leave both stimulated and exhausted.

TL:DR?

Here’s a quick snapshot of the difference between a brainstorm and an ideation session.

Brainstorm

• Often a standalone meeting based on a singular objective

• Used to generate new ideas

• Good uses of a brainstorm include:

  • Improving internal processes

  • Developing creative campaigns

  • Naming exercises

• Often unstructured with takeaways delineated at the end of the meeting

• Often include homogenous teams

• Time commitment: 1–2 hours

IdeationSession

• The third step in the design-thinking process: informed by gathered insights and defined challenges to solve

• Used to generate ideas and explore what surrounds those ideas, assess themes and evaluate ideas

• Good uses of an ideation session include

  • Developing new product/service directions

  • Exploring new business strategies and revenue streams

  • Finding new business angles

• Highly structured with pre-work and post-session refinement

• Includes diverse perspectives and internal and external resources

• Time commitment: 1–2 days

What is futurecasting (and why should you care)?

No one can predict the future. But smart innovators still try.

There are two paths to innovation. One resides in our timeline just beyond now—solving a problem that exists today with technologies and resources available today. For comparison’s sake, let’s call it simple forecasting. The other path resides in our timeline years into the future—solving a problem that is, at least according to the tea leaves of trends and R&D pipelines, imminent, using technologies or resources that may not be currently available. That’s futurecasting.

Why would an organization spend time and resources today solving a problem that may not exist for years? 

For starters, it aids in long-term strategic planning. Simply informing your forward-looking opinions with as much research and forethought should add an increased level of confidence in those opinions and resulting decisions. Second, and perhaps more important, preparing for that predicted future you’ve so meticulously mapped out might take substantial research and development. 

Further, you may require the entirety of that time span to be prepared to offer the most relevant product at the right time. But you won’t know what you’ll need or how to get there unless you spend the time speculating, planning and resourcing today. So, as we navigate the innovation path long into the future, what are the steps we need to ensure we’re heading in the right direction with the proper resources?

Futurecasting using the Narrative-Based Innovation process

Narrative-Based Innovation was created to maintain continuity of purpose and clarity of vision throughout any design-thinking project. It’s an extraordinarily useful framework for something as fraught with uncertainty as futurecasting.

1. Empathize — Understand the core human needsWhether you perform deep ethnographic research, conduct focus groups or scour secondary research sources, do whatever you can to understand the breadth of factors, conditions and influences that drive people’s emotional motivations for engagement in whatever industry or category for which you intend to innovate. Understand what they’re getting from current transactions—satisfaction and disappointments alike. Understand what jobs they’re hiring your product or service to do today. Understand what drives decisions around alternatives and substitutes. Of course, you should document the behaviors and transactional WHATs of your market, but for futurecasting, the more important aspects to understand are the emotional WHYs that might inform the need for a new solution in the future. Now, document those drivers and motivations. You’ll need them when drafting your narrative!
   

2. Personify — Create your hero(es)At this step, you should have a decent understanding of the type of person(s) who is, or might be in the future, engaging with your innovations as well as what emotions are driving their decisions and engagements. In this step, start to build a day in the life narrative for these heroes. Systematically think through and document how these heroes might experience the world before, during and after engaging with your business.
   

3. Project — Set a time frame, consult your road map, map out trends Understanding exactly how far out into the future you wish your innovation to exist is critical to the potential success of your process. As anyone in technology or fashion will tell you, timing is everything. It’s also critical to managing scope within your project.So, pick your time frame—two, five, 10 years—and focus exclusively on understanding what will (or probably might) be different about the world, your customers, your markets, technology, etc., at that specific moment. Do you have projects in your R&D pipeline that should be in the market by then? How are the breakouts of consumer segments predicted to have shifted in your markets and the general population? How will social, economic, cultural norms have shifted?Every business or industry would have a unique set of factors and drivers they would need to consider. The point here is to build as much dimensional understanding of the prevailing environment and motivations influencing your heroes’ decisions.The outputs of this step can take many forms. You could write a series of “headlines from the future.” You could create a “top 10 list of things every time traveler should know” about your specific date in the future. You could write the CEO a letter from your company’s annual report for the year prior to your future date. No matter what format you choose, give those predicted values and trends as human a face as you can imagine.
   

4. Build & Define — Walk your hero(es) through your future worldHere, you’ll want to envision emerging challenges or opportunities your hero might encounter in the world we just predicted. What of the factors you mapped out might have an influence on your heroes’ behaviors, motivations or ability to engage with your business? What are the basic human needs driving those behaviors and motivations? And what within those challenges or motivations might represent a foundation for innovation? Here, you’ll write the beginning of our hero’s journey (or heroes’ journeys) as they navigate this future world. You’ll want to explore how they encounter the challenges you’ve defined/predicted.Walk them through a typical day. As you document the what and where of their day, dig into the emotions and motivations that directly and indirectly affect the hero’s relationship to their surroundings. What personal or professional relationships matter to them? Bring them from their general world to a moment of joy or frustration that represents a solvable moment for you to innovate around. Can you make a great moment better? Can you reduce friction or eliminate some form of frustration entirely?Hold the story here and use that moment to craft your “How might we…” statement to use as the fuel for your ideation, coming next.
   

5. Ideate solutions for those challenges. Now that we have a narrative beginning to build around our hero and the challenges they face in the world at the specified future point in time, it’s time we do that hero a favor and imagine all of the ways we might solve for whatever challenge we envisioned in the previous step. How to conduct an ideation session is a bit out of scope for the level of detail we are covering here, but within that session, all participants should have suitable familiarity with the hero and the circumstances that led them to require our collective problem-solving. But coming out of the session, you should have a shortlist of prioritized solutions to serve as the foundations for the next chapter—the prototype narrative.
   

6. Create the (prototype) narratives of the heroes’ encounters with the solutionIn this step, you can use a story to work through the most important moments of engagement between the hero and the solution(s) imagined in the ideation phase. Don’t skimp on the details here. It’s critical that the full experience be considered, described and rationalized. The trick is to be thorough enough in the telling of the encounter that anyone with no prior knowledge of the solution should be able to envision the experience and make a rational judgment as to its potential desirability because next, we share and test those solution narratives to begin to quantify what the viability and market prospects of these solutions.For testing, you may want to create prototypes that take the form of text-based stories, storyboards, explainer videos, dramatic enactment video, etc. What level of fidelity and production value will depend on the level of confidence you expect to glean from the outcome. Generally, the broader the concept you’re testing, the lower fidelity your prototypes need to be.
   

7. Share/Test—Testing can take a number of forms. If you want to understand raw market potential, you may do more quantitative testing, like an online survey. If you’re looking for more nuanced evaluations and feedback, something qualitative, like focus groups, individual interviews or dyads, makes more sense. In any case, present the narratives and document the response. Is this a concept people find desirable or, given the unexpected nature of some of the ideas you’re likely to present, even believable?
   

8. Iterate — No one should expect to get every innovation right on the first try. If you’re creating something new, unexpected issues or reactions will always arise. Hence that whole testing phase. If you think, after testing, that you’re still confident in the problem as defined, take stock of the feedback received in testing and circle back to the ideation phase and have another go! If the feedback points to a rethinking of the problem itself, circle back to the definition phase and re-craft your “how might we…” question and, once again, head back to ideation. Rinse and repeat until you have a clean answer to your hero’s challenges.
   

9. Craft the happy ending — As you envision your hero at the end of the story, having experienced your solution, document in your narrative how you expect the hero would feel. What expectations have been met? What needs have been satisfied? How might they express the engagement from their own point of view?

Even the future deserves a good first draft.

It would be great to say that the inevitable result of this process would be an ironclad road map for what’s next, but it’s more likely that the process acts as a great compass for pointing toward what direction to wander, and, more importantly, where your competition might be heading as well. I’ve said before that the best way to be wrong is to try and predict the future. But I also believe the best way to improve your odds is to create that future yourself.

Tesla’s innovation is in the doghouse

And that’s a good thing.

Watching the world’s automakers respond (or not, as the case may be) to Tesla, has been interesting, to say the least. I find it fascinating to see an established market watch a competitor waltz in and secure a beachhead in a successful new category, with a near-zero response from the established powers for years. 

All the while, the upstart works hard, establishes a brand, creates a supply chain and builds out proprietary charging infrastructure, not to mention (at the time of this writing) amassing the largest market capitalization of any US automaker. Even today, some of the largest, most advanced automakers are projecting they won’t be fully engaged in the electric market for another 2–3 years. So what does Tesla know that seems to baffle other automakers? Well, after having had the opportunity to drive a Tesla Model 3 for a few weeks, one thing hit me.

The difference between cats and dogs.

A genetic study of cats showed cats are basically unchanged from their feral ancestors. Meaning, they’re not technically domesticated. Well, they’re domesticated as much as they choose to be. And while people may derive a great deal of enjoyment and feel a great deal of empathy for their cats, the relationship isn’t in any way truly servile. In fact, it’s probably more accurate to say people are in service to the cats. Dogs, on the other hand, are the most genetically domesticated animal on the planet. And while not totally selfless, they are, for the most part, living in service to their owners. Why do I bring this up? Well, for almost a century, owning an automobile was more like owning a cat. It may be a rewarding relationship for many people, but ultimately, the human was the last consideration in the design, basically placed by the engineers into the mix in service to the machine. The car would do what it was asked, but it was, itself, never much help in the process. The innovation that differentiates Tesla is to design the car experience to be more like owning a trained dog. It’s a car in service to the driver.

Obviously, in that sense, self-driving comes to mind. But that’s not, in and of itself, what I’m referring to. Traditional automakers seem to start the design process by thinking about the machine itself—achieving a level of performance, adding a feature, etc. Tesla seems to have started at the experience and worked back to the machine needed to satisfy the vision for the experience.

For example, when the driver enters a Tesla, the car remembers and restores positions for the driver’s seat, driver’s sideview mirror and steering wheel steering mode, regenerative braking preference, mirror auto-tilt, instrument panel layout, performance preferences and all touch-screen display preferences, just to name a few. Pretty much anything you can set to your liking will automatically switch to suit you the moment you get into (or rather, your phone gets into) the car. The car adjusts to you.

When the car needs charging, not only will it remind you, it will show you where the nearest supercharging stations are, and, assuming you paid for the (inaccurately named) auto-pilot software, like a sled dog, will effectively assist you in getting there.

Enter the big dog.

The latest example of this perspective is the deeply polarizing Cybertruck. The first reaction most had to its unconventional design was of shock, even horror in some cases. However, when one considers the user experience as the main driver of the design process, a certain beauty emerges. The utility that the Cybertruck is poised to deliver is currently unmatched by any traditional truck maker:

• Up to 14,000 pounds of towing capacity (tri-motor version)

• 120- and 240-volt outlets that can be used to supply power tools without the use of a generator

• An onboard air compressor for tools

• Adaptive air suspension

• “The vault”: A motorized rollout cover that secures the bed; Tesla claims a solar-panel version should be available in the future, providing up to 15 miles of charge in a day

• An innovative tie-down system that allows you to insert anchor or mounting points in various positions

• Zero to 60 mph in less than 2.9 seconds (tri-motor version), 4.5 seconds (dual-motor) or 6.5 seconds (single-motor rear-wheel drive)

The whole announcement reminded me of a movie from the early ‘90s, “Crazy People,” starring Dudley Moore as an advertising executive in a midlife crisis. In the film, he pens what he considers an honesty-based headline for Volvo, which read: “Volvo: they’re boxy, but they’re good.” I have a suspicion Elon Musk would be quite happy with that headline, with perhaps the exception of wanting something more superlative, possibly incorporating a few well-chosen explatives in place of “good.”

I have a hard time imagining the Cybertruck coming out of the design shops of any of the major automakers. Though I also imagine those same automakers are having a hard time understanding how Tesla received more than 200,000 pre-orders for the vehicle within days of launch.

Empathy is an evolutionary advantage

Recent studies suggest empathy is what led to dogs being the most successful domesticated animal on the planet. And it seems that is what’s driving Tesla’s market success today. It will be interesting to see if the traditional automakers reveal themselves to be more akin to the dinosaurs or a pack of wolves waiting for their moment to pounce.

Five sensational gift ideas for the innovator in your life

Innovators: maybe the toughest people to buy for

Innovators are notoriously tough people to buy gifts for. They’re early adopters, so the stuff they likely want isn’t on sale yet, or worse, they couldn’t wait and already bought whatever it is for themselves. They get bored easily, so to be worth our effort and hard-earned dollars, the things you buy for them really need to offer thoughtful and engaging enough experiences to bring them back, time and time again. So, how can you find something truly sensational to give them? We thought it might make sense to talk about some of the most innovative items available, one sense at a time! 

#1—Touch:

Zhiyun Smooth 4 3-Axis Handheld Gimbal Stabilizer

Despite what Apple tells you in every iPhone launch, perhaps the most dramatic innovation in mobile imaging technology isn’t in the mobile handset itself. If you’ve ever wondered why some of your favorite YouTube influencers can shoot great footage while walking and why your walking-around footage looks something like you’ve stepped into an earthquake measuring something greater than magnitude 4.0, it’s time to get your hands on a gimbal. Gimbals combine the same accelerometer chips that have become ubiquitous in smartphones. This is a technology that has followed a price-to-performance trajectory, not unlike Moore’s law. Even two years ago, technology like that in the Zhiyun was between five and 10 times more expensive, with lesser performance and functionality.

#2—Taste:

The Aviary Cocktail Book

With incredible design and gorgeous photography, this book of cocktail recipes (formulas?) from Chicago’s Aviary could have easily been included in the “sight” section of this post. And, given that most of us won’t have the full set of lab equipment to truly craft many of the cocktails, maybe it should have. But if you are looking for innovation, look no further. More than simple cocktails, these are designed experiences. Granted, they may be experiences that require non-standard barware, but that’s what innovation is all about, right?

#3—Sight:

LuminAID Solar Lanterns

There are good products, and then there are the rare products that find innovative ways to do good. LuminAID unquestionably falls into the latter category. Formed by two architecture students following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, LuminAID makes solar-rechargeable lanterns and cell chargers that help the victims of natural disasters in two ways: first, by donating lanterns/chargers that deliver much-needed illumination and keep the cellphones going when the normal electrical grid is either disabled or destroyed, and second, through the Give Light Get Light Program. By sponsoring a light for a family in need, supporters earmark a solar lantern or solar phone charger to go directly to the organization of their choice. More than 50,000 solar lights have been sent to families through the Give Light Get Light Program. 

#4—Smell:

The Olorama Scent Technology Virtual Reality Pack

If you thought that for the smell section we would trot out something akin to a tired old aromatherapy candle, you underestimated the scent technology industry! Olorama creates commercial-scale scent replication and delivery products. And, not to leave the home VR crowd out of the fun, they now offer the Virtual Reality Pack, a $2,014.88 scent-synchronizing accessory for your $199 Oculus Go. From the Olorama website, it seems the only VR experience you can actually purchase is something they call “Make your own breakfast.” Obviously, Moore’s law has not accelerated scent delivery tech quite yet, but it’s a start! Admittedly, no one here at Magnani has been willing to shell out the premium funds to smell this tech in action. But we thought you might earn a few points toward your street cred in the eyes of your favorite innovator just for knowing this tech exists! In any case, you can be sure we’ll keep watching (smelling?) to see if this technology improves in its price-to-performance ratio.

#5—Hearing:

The Devialet Phantom Reactor

The original Devialet Phantom was (and still is) an amazing feat of engineering. In a speaker system looking much like a predatory rugby ball swallowed a soccer ball, whole, they managed to stuff in some 2,000 watts of amplification power and output more than 100dB of distortion-free music. Unsurprisingly, they did that, starting at a cost of over $2,000. The new Phantom Reactor series cuts the specs and price in half—a tiny 8.5” x 6.5” x 6.5” case, 600 Watts and 95dB, at a cost of $1,090. Still not cheap. But still massive sound for a tiny speaker. And, unlike its larger sibling, the Phantom Reactor comes in matte black. Astute audiophiles will notice there’s only a single high-frequency driver, meaning it plays your stereo music in mono. So, if true stereo playback is your goal, you’ll need to buy that innovator in your life a matching set.

Bonus #6—Thinking (Because it’s the thought that counts, right?):

Innovate. Activate. Accelerate. A 30-day boot camp for your business brain.

Okay, the brain isn’t a sensory organ, per se, but this is a bonus gift idea anyway, so why not? And, in full disclosure, unlike the rest of the items mentioned on this list, we do make a very small bit of income on every book sold. But if you have an innovator in your life, they’re sure to find something useful and/or entertaining in this book. We created this book for those who see every day as an opportunity to be smarter about how they approach their business, their customers and their competition. It’s a series of bite-sized strategic ideas, exercises, frameworks and thought starters to keep innovators focused on the big picture.

Or, support your favorite local charity

If you’re really looking to please the one person in your life who has everything, we think giving a donation in their name to folks who have a lot less is always a joyful option. Happy holidays.

Three reasons Uber should never have invested in self-driving technology.

R&D and innovation are not the same thing.

There’s a classic Venn diagram generally attributed to Ideo’s Tim Brown that points to the reality that for an idea to be considered an innovation, it needs to satisfy three criteria: desirability (people would want it), feasibility (it is something that can realistically be created) and viability (it can be made and offered in a way that makes financial sense for the business). Academics or inspired home tinkerers may be satisfied with any combination of one or two of these qualities, but a business, especially a publicly held business, needs to satisfy all three.

Viewing Uber’s sustained autonomous vehicle R&D efforts against this framework, I think we can safely question the reasoning that led to this endeavor. That’s not to say that I disagree with the underlying premise that self-driving vehicles will ultimately take over the role of your cousin Tommy who earns a little extra cash driving for Uber or Lyft, now. I just question whether Uber did the smartest thing for its business or its investors by taking on the Herculean task of developing the technology themselves. 

The liabilities are potentially massive.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) just released a report outlining the results of their investigation of a fatal accident involving a pedestrian pushing a bicycle and a self-driving Uber vehicle. The NTSB chose not to find Uber criminally liable for the accident. But according to new documents released as part of the investigation, the software inside the Uber car in question was not designed to detect pedestrians outside of a crosswalk, and the self-driving car, in general, failed to consider how humans actually operate.

I have to think this was likely Uber’s one and only free pass. As we have seen in corporate liability cases lately, juries are quite willing and capable of doling out judgments in the multibillion-dollar range. One might argue that even that risk would be worth it for Uber to reap the rewards of working autonomous driving technology long term. But, as we’ll see in point two, one might be overestimating Uber’s ability to reap those rewards in any significantly advantageous fashion.

Long term, there is no competitive advantage.

In 2018, Uber spent nearly $500 million on transportation research. Of course, all of that was not on driverless vehicle research. Some was on autonomous delivery drones. The point here is that massive R&D budgets should be at least theoretically correlated with massive payouts—as in risk and reward should be expected at equal levels. But the potential rewards seem unlikely to be Uber’s alone, if theirs at all. It appears that if Uber does, somehow, develop working autonomous driving technologies, it’s unlikely they will be alone in doing so. And as it stands today, Google is more likely to win the race to market, and perhaps more germane, Uber will most likely have to license much of their self-driving tech stack from Google, anyway.

So, let’s assume Uber eventually figures out self-driving. They already know they will be multiple billions in the hole, day one, on the software front. But now they’ll need a fleet of vehicles. I have doubts Uber is poised in any way to become an auto manufacturer as well, so they’ll need to purchase a fleet built to run their software. Meaning, the costs they’ll need to recoup on capital expenditures will be disproportionately higher than a competitor who simply buys vehicles that will most certainly be available through any number of auto manufacturers who will license Google’s tech directly.

It seems like a scenario that has Uber “winning” this competition would need to be based on the assumption that customers have such goodwill toward Uber that they would be willing to either pay a premium for their services or that Uber would be able to once again operate at a loss for an extended period of time while they roll out the service. Both seem unlikely, especially the latter, which brings me to point three.

Short term, they simply cannot afford it.

Scale is a funny thing. It’s either on your side or it’s not. And in Uber’s case, it is not. At least not yet. In their earnings report for the third quarter of 2019, bookings, or total rider receipts before expenses (like paying drivers), grew to $3.7 billion, a 29% increase over the same period in 2018. Total net loss, however, grew to $1.1 billion—18% more than the same period of 2018. So, losses are positively correlated with revenues. Not good. Since that report, the stock has fallen by nearly 10%. Now, we cannot attribute all of their losses to the investment in self-driving technology, but it is a significant portion of that. It will be seen in the next few quarters whether the market believes those losses are an investment in a more lucrative future or another outsized Silicon Valley wager. Obviously, from my previous point, I fall into the latter, more pessimistic camp. Further, in the past few weeks, we’ve seen states coming after Uber with massive employment tax bills. If the courts side with any of the local and state governments, you can be sure every other state and municipality will get in line to file a suit of their own.

A lesson in sunk costs?

While one would be hard-pressed to find fault in the reasoning that prompted Uber to begin researching autonomous vehicles (it is undoubtedly the future of on-demand transportation), in my humble opinion, it’s time they reconsider their internal calculus on the build-or-buy question. Would Uber potentially lose face by abandoning the project? Potentially. But I think if the company accelerates its transition to profitability, they will be in a more competitive position, with no shortage of “buy” options when the technology matures.

Looking for big corporate innovations? Think small.

Image source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/66/Cabin-Like_Tiny_Home_in_the_Woods.jpg/1024px-Cabin-Like_Tiny_Home_in_the_Woods.jpg

What most people forget about the most game-changing innovations is that, more often than not, they satisfied some unmet basic need in a simple way. The breadth and complexity of the effect of that innovation came later, as more and more people found more and more ways to utilize that innovation to address some variation of the original need. Keeping that in mind, if you’re charged with corporate innovation, there are a lot of reasons to focus on simple, small innovations. Let’s explore!

A small solution can have a massive impact.

The perfect example of this phenomenon is the World Wide Web. According to, The Birth of the Web (wow, that was that the most meta link I’ve ever created), “The web was originally conceived and developed to meet the demand for automated information-sharing between scientists in universities and institutes around the world.” Pretty simple. If you authored an academic paper, and cited prior research papers, HTML and a browser made it possible to quickly access the original cited paper and all of the papers cited in that paper, etc. Hence the term, “web.” 

No one intended the web to be the de facto backbone infrastructure for virtually every modern consumer experience and business transaction. That came later as untold coders, entrepreneurs and global enterprises thought of new things to connect and invented new bolt-on technologies with which to make more complex connections and transactions possible.

Small helps manage exposure to risk.

Ask any scientist about experimental design and the first thing you’ll hear out of their mouth is “controls.” Controls are how you know that what you think is contributing to the results of your experiment is actually the thing contributing to the results of your experiment. If you change too many factors at once, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to truly understand the impact of any single factor. 

This is incredibly important to understand when you are evaluating and testing innovative products or experiences. By limiting the number of attributes around which you’re innovating (staying small), you’ll improve your ability to isolate and quantify underlying factors affecting desirability or adoption. Increased accuracy and specificity can only improve the confidence levels of your pro forma projections and risk assessments.

Small improves time to market.

In virtually every large organization, increased complexity of the innovation being proposed equals increased development and approval times. It makes sense. Every department that needs to make, approve or design some sort of change will be a potential source of delay. It’s not through ill will or stubbornness; it’s simply the result of increasing the number of interdependent decisions and actions required for completion.

Early on in your evaluation of any proposed innovation idea should be a full life-cycle resource assessment. How does the innovation differ in materials or labor cost? Are their operational changes that need to be made? Is there retooling required? Are there digital infrastructure or software updates or changes necessary? Does it affect distribution outlets, costs or partnerships? Try to create the corporate narrative of this new product or service coming to market. The smaller the number of players you need to invoke in your story, the sooner you’ll be likely to launch.

Small is an easier sell.

Initiating change in any enterprise takes a lot of selling. Selling the idea up to management. Selling the idea laterally to enlist the support of peers managing other departments affected by the change. And, depending on the visibility, selling the idea to every employee to ensure their buy-in and/or adoption of new language, behaviors or procedures. Small ideas, by nature, are easier to understand and consequently easier to encapsulate into actionable sound bites. Simpler messages are easier to analogize. They are easier to evaluate in the abstract.

Innovation of any size is always a win.

Regardless if your innovations are ultimately small and evolutionary, or massive and revolutionary, the most important thing for anyone responsible for driving corporate innovation should commit to is the continual drive to make the business more competitive, one small step at a time. 

Corporate Innovation: Breaking Through Organizational Barriers

They say, “To innovate, you need to be more agile.” They’re oversimplifying.

I’m not sure who first promoted the idea that the greatest determiner of whether a corporation could successfully innovate is an ill-defined, immeasurable quality named “agility.” I am sure that the individual in question had a penchant for oversimplification. Just do a search for “agile business” books on Amazon, and the results are well over the 2,000 result threshold where Amazon stops counting. It’s not that a company shouldn’t have the qualities linked to the idea of agility. It’s just that agility is an emergent condition resulting from a number of more easily quantified and measurable behaviors. 

Think of it this way. Asking or expecting a company with no history of innovating to be more “agile” is like asking or expecting a heretofore unexceptional basketball player to be more “LeBron James.” Whether we’re talking about corporate agility or athletic LeBronity, framing the end result as the starting point, is well, pointless. You need to work on improving individual skills—ball handling, footwork, free throws, offensive and defensive strategies, plays, etc.—until the subject exhibits skills that lend to an overall more LeBron James-like impression. But that analogy implies you have to do more work than simply decide to be more agile. Bummer. 

But the good news is that once you understand the common barriers preventing most companies from innovating, it’s much easier to address those issues than it is to try to make any mere mortal into LeBron James. So, let’s start with the three most common organizational barriers to innovation—misaligned goals/incentives, unclear managerial vision and unsystematic evaluation of risk—and how to address them.

They say, “It’s never easy to turn a ship this size.” But it’s not the size that matters.

Before I get directly to talking about incentives, indulge me for a moment while I mix boating metaphors. All it takes to turn a ship, or a rowboat for that matter, is an alignment of forces. Rudders and thrusters. Arms and oars. While that kind of alignment is easier to envision for a waterborne vessel, the rules also apply to the business enterprise. The forces, however, are usually applied more indirectly. Okay, now let’s talk incentives.

If you do any cursory searches online on the topic of this post, you’ll likely find mention of another immeasurable quality that innovative companies must have—culture. But I’ll argue that just like “agility,” culture isn’t something you control directly. It’s something that emerges from the myriad behavioral incentives applied across every individual in the business.

For many businesses, the incentives that drive most employees’ behavior were formulated to maximize the output or efficiency of an employee’s individual business function as it looks today. And while that’s important, it can lead to intractable stagnancy, or waste, within the enterprise. 

One of our clients, for example, spends well into the six-figures for their enterprise license for Salesforce.com. In theory, the sales reps should use Salesforce to catalogue everything they know about a lead or a live account. In theory, that data should be available to Marketing, Product Development, etc., to inform, drive or prioritize outreach efforts, product updates or innovation efforts. But, in practice, the sales reps don’t enter much or any data into the system.

The sales reps are incentivized by commission on sales only. And the most valuable currency in a competitive sales environment is customer/account information. The sales reps rightly fear that if they make their customer/account data accessible across the company, other reps could potentially steal their client. So, the reward structure, which in practice works well to maximize the output of the individual rep, has the unintended consequence of increasing customer opacity all around.

The solution? An equal and opposite force must be applied. The sales rep’s incentive plan should include some bonus based on the accuracy and completeness of his customer data. Further, the rep should be rewarded for the collective success of the sales department, the effectiveness of cross-sell marketing efforts based on the data they entered or the number of data-driven product innovations created by the product team, derived from customer profiles. Sales is but one example. You should review incentives across the board to uncover potential conflicts with innovation initiatives.

They say, “Management has no vision.” But it’s likely a language problem.

Not every decision an employee makes is a result of their incentive plan. Obviously. So, that means if we still want everyone steering the ship in the direction of innovation, we need to have guiding principles everybody knows and everyone can understand. There’s a chapter in my book, Innovate. Activate. Accelerate. that talks about how the language a company chooses to articulate their vision can have dramatic effects on their success in innovating. So, how can you ensure your own mission is at once descriptive, directional and inspirational enough to become the bedrock for an innovation culture? Ultimately, the rules boil down to this:

The mission should be aspirational

Often, companies develop mission statements with objectives that are satisfied entirely by their current offering, positioning the job in the minds of employees as “done.” For an innovation culture, it’s best to always keep the carrot at the end of a moving stick. Instead of asking to be great at what you do, ask for something as important as the transformation of the human condition.

The mission should be broad enough to encompass what’s yet to be created

The point here is that being a company that describes itself as offering “next-generation illumination for the world” provides more opportunity for adapting to new technologies than, say, describing the company as “leaders in incandescent lighting.”

The mission should glorify the pursuit of innovation itself

The pursuit of innovation is as much, or more, about taking risks, iterating, failing and discarding as it is about seizing the reins of the next successful new idea. This suggests the mission should, in kind, elevate the importance of the pursuit as much, or more, than any desired end.

They ask, “What’s the ROI?” But they should be asking, “How can we embrace and manage risk?”

We frequently hear from clients that unless they have a clear minimum guarantee of ROI, the company won’t greenlight a new idea. But innovation can’t be procured like office supplies. Risk and reward are the inseparable sides of the innovation coin. Of course, that means you need to embrace a culture of risk and acceptance of a certain level of failure. And, more importantly, what that level of failure could possibly look like before it occurs.

What makes an innovation culture work is that failures are measured, evaluated and learned from. The good news: There are more tools available now to model risk, even in highly complex markets. Machine learning, for example, can be used to evaluate customer and market data for previously unexposed correlations or motivations. Incredibly detailed, behavior-based, third-party consumer data can be purchased that can peel back yet another layer of the market onion. And, unsurprisingly, you have to do the math. But what should you be calculating?

Calculate the cost of innovating (The “I” in ROI)

You need to quantify what the financial investment would be in developing, launching, marketing and supporting the new venture—both initially and over time. That should include capital expenditures, facilities, technology, R&D, labor, IP (prosecuting patents, filing trademarks), etc.

Understand your market size

You can see a step-by-step breakdown of how to perform these calculations in another post on our blog: ““Math for Marketers: How to Evaluate Growth Opportunities””

Disruption factor (loss of existing revenue streams)

It would be nice to imagine that your disruptive solution would steal revenue from your competitors, but you should assume that any true innovation will be as desirable to your own customers. (See: The Innovator's Dilemma).

At some point, any truly innovative venture will bring with it a great deal of uncertainty—if it’s innovative, by definition, it’s not been accomplished before. And while it may be impossible to nail down exact returns, systematic examination of the risks should increase your chances not only of success but also of getting the green light to launch in the first place.

Even LeBron James wasn’t born as agile as LeBron James.

No one is born a great basketball player. It takes years of commitment. The same holds for companies seeking to become more agile. It takes commitment and practice over time. 

Three signs of success that should make you want to innovate.

Success can be a double-edged sword.

In business, we should always celebrate our successes. We should all find happiness and take comfort in classic, somewhat irrefutable, business metrics, like returning a healthy net profit, growing sales and customer loyalty, to name a few. But there are anecdotal success measures most people repeat that, while they directionally point to good things, should also have you start asking whether they actually are signs of a problem. Let’s look at three of the most common.

There’s a line out the door!

We have all seen it. We have all said it. “That place is so great; there’s always a line out the door!” Is that a sign of success? Sure. For the most part. But it’s also a sign that there are potential improvements to be made in operations, service design or customer experience. I should add here that this is not meant to solely reference restaurants or retail. The idea can easily be seen as an analog to a situation like a general manager of a manufacturing business bragging, “Things are going so great, we can’t fill the orders fast enough.”

In either of these scenarios, despite the feeling of success, it’s likely that the business is, at best, leaving money on the table and, at worst, potentially creating a bad customer experience along the way. So, what should you look at if you experience this kind of success?

First, look at your asset turnover ratio. In other words, are you earning more revenue per dollar invested in the business today than you were before there was the proverbial line out the door? If so, success! If not, move on to step two—look for where you might have scale-related bottlenecks emerging. Does the additional throughput (people in line or orders entering the system) make each individual transaction less time- or resource-efficient? Can you simply not fit the resources you need to process those transactions into your current physical plant? Do your servers bog down due to too many simultaneous requests? Is your fulfillment staff simply overwhelmed? Of course, there may be traditional fixes like expanding the number or size of your locations/physical plant, hiring more staff or building up your technology infrastructure. 

But it may be time to start asking a more foundational question, “Does my business have to work this way?” Can you change the layout of your physical location to improve flow? Can you imagine a service model that could increase your asset turnover ratio without any further investment in space or technology?

No one is complaining.

As noted Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde famously said, “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” Another way to phrase that might be, “The opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s indifference.” Whether you’re running a retail operation, managing employees in a professional services firm or anything in between, if you find yourself in an environment where there are no complaints, it’s not usually because everything is perfect as it is. So, why the silence?

First, customers or employees may not be complaining because you might not be offering a safe, convenient or simple way to provide feedback. If the process feels too onerous, or if they feel like their complaints will be met with derision or indifference, there is little incentive to speak up. Second, and worse yet, it may simply be that your audience has become indifferent to your offering. So how do you know and what can you do about it?

In our experience, this is why every business should invest in ongoing customer-focused research. Understanding how customers (or employees) feel about their interactions with the company creates a better understanding of what’s happening today as well as a foundation of understanding upon which to innovate.

For example, you could develop a customer journey map that documents the touchpoints of your customer (or employee) experience as it currently stands. Done right, it shows how well, and how easily, your customers (or employees) are currently achieving their desired goals. And if they’re not, why not.

Outline (based on research, analytics, experience and expertise) what the customer is thinking, feeling and doing at each moment of interaction. Try to define how the level of satisfaction and happiness, or friction and frustration, fluctuate within the journey. Basically, identify low points, high points, joyful moments and trouble spots throughout the experience.

Only then can you truly know where and how to apply resources and innovate around your experience to transform indifference into engagement. Ironically, you’ll likely see complaints increase—along with accolades—as people become increasingly passionate about the experience you offer.

People spend a lot of time on your site.

If engagement with your web experience is good, more engagement is better, right? Well, maybe. Looking back to the “line out the door” section of this post, if increased time on your site correlates with increased transaction value, then, once again, success! But if the correlation is neutral or negative, it may be time to reevaluate the experience design. How would you start?

First, scour your analytics. Find out if (or where) the experience may be stifling visitors or impeding conversions. You’ll want to look for signs that people are stalled, confused or overwhelmed by choices. Do a significant amount of visitors spend time filling a cart, then abandon without transacting? Do they go through a process of gathering information but fail to download?

For a more literal understanding of those behaviors, you can also use tools like CrazyEgg and Lucky Orange. CrazyEgg provides heat maps that let you visually assess where visitors are engaging and for how long. Lucky Orange lets you actually watch recordings of visitor behaviors. For example, if you received a form fill, and you wanted to better understand that visitor’s journey from initial landing on the site to filling out the form, Lucky Orange will actually let you go back, DVR style, and watch their session. These tools can build a story about your visitors and what they’re really accomplishing, or not. Once you know that story, it should be easier, if not obvious, what interactions need to be redesigned or re-concepted altogether.

The best of times is the best time to innovate.

Everything we talked about in this article falls into the category of good problems to have. But as any innovator can tell you, the most fruitful place to start on any transformative innovation project is by looking at the best-in-class solution and asking, “Could this work better?”

AI Writers: Have we reached peak content?

Image Source: http://www.flaticon.com/free-icon/robot_115339

An AI post written mostly by AI. How meta!

I try to compose a blog post of roughly 700 to 1000 words every week. It takes me anywhere from half a day to almost two days to complete, depending on the complexity of the topic, as well as my personal level of familiarity. The article below was entirely generated in under four minutes using a service called AIWriter (ai-writer.net). The only human input I provided was the headline: “Using AI for marketing creative.” We have done some formatting, like making certain lines bold, so they could be used as a subhead, and taken out a few carriage returns to make the paragraphs look more normal. How did the AI do? Well, I’ll save my comments for the end. Let’s collectively take the red pill and see what the AI created for us.

Using Ai For Marketing Creative

#machine learning  #marketing world #time resources  #cognitive computing #new ways #digital literacy  #higher level

It follows that ai would find his way into the marketing world.

1. Marketing experts agree that AI will have a significant impact on the marketing world in the coming years. (1) At present, many organizations claim to be helping marketing professionals with their tasks, from capturing insights from dashboards to automating ad network spending. (13)

Ai attracts a lot of attention from many different industries, and marketing is no exception. There's a lot of talk about how AI can help companies make their marketing efforts more efficient. When it comes to AI in marketing, the focus is usually on how AI can effectively process big data to make predictions, save marketing professionals time on repetitive tasks, or draw conclusions from large amounts of data. (35)

Ai marketing tools are based on analyzing large amounts of historical records to determine which ads are best for which users. (28) Large datasets contain thousands of variables that have been collected over time so that a marketer can not draw conclusions in the same way that a machine learning model can. (28)

You can also use the artificial intelligence for ad targeting to identify the most effective stage of the customer buying process and apply your knowledge the next time you run a campaign. (28) Ai can analyze huge amounts of data through online advertising and then create ad copy and creative designs based on the best-performing predictions. (1) It can gather data about how consumers interact with advertising, and then use that insight to optimize your campaigns for better performance. (1) And AI can respond to data from consumers and other buyers of ads to significantly streamline and optimize your advertising spend and strategies. (1)

Read on to learn about some of the key AI use cases in advertising.

Machine learning lets you process the data from previous ads and perform predictive analytics on new creatives to determine which motives yield the best returns. (33) Even creating creatives becomes more efficient. (33) Creative remains an area of ​​marketing that can be supported, but not replaced by AI. (33) In addition, marketing professionals have now spent more time expanding the boundaries of creativity for their marketing campaigns. (29) They can use AI and machine learning to create new ideas, create new media platforms, find new ways to tell brand stories, and so on. The challenge for marketers will be to have a higher level of digital literacy and a clear understanding of AI and machine learning than is currently the case. (29) Finally, more time resources for marketing professionals can be spent on the creative side of marketing. (9)

In fact, digital literacy will continue to be in demand, and the future workforce (not just in marketing) needs a higher level of digital literacy than the current workforce. (9) The most interesting way for an AI to shape the future of marketing is to give us more time to focus on decisions that require human input, creative thinking, and building meaningful and deeper relationships with customers (9) It gives them the freedom to focus on content, creativity and strategy to enable these personalized customer interactions. (3)

AIM solutions provide the tools marketers need to deliver increasingly relevant and personalized content at the right time for higher conversion rates. Here are three ways in which marketers can use AI to deliver highly personalized experiences today. (3)

Ai tools are useful in analyzing mass data records to gain insight into potential and existing customers.

The technology helps personalize campaigns and content, taking the user experience to a whole new level. It automates many tasks from content research through competitive intelligence, SEO to paid campaigns. It takes a lot of effort to track competitors' content across a variety of social media platforms. Crayon uses artificial intelligence to analyze the competition across many online channels. The tool consolidates competitive data into a single dashboard and helps marketing professionals make quick strategic decisions. It includes daily e-mail summaries to keep marketers up to date with the latest industry updates. (12)

Predictivebid is a bidding software that claims to be able to market potential new leads on the Amazon and Google Networks. The more people click on a marketing creative, the more PredictiveBid learns which attributes of the creative are best for generating the click. PredictiveBid claims that its software determines the likely driving factor behind the click and then applies that knowledge to future ads to increase revenue. We could not find a demonstration video for the software, nor did we find explicit case studies demonstrating the software's success. (13)

Exceed.ai uses ai technology to simplify lead qualification and help marketing teams qualify leads and accelerate the sales process. The tool acts as a virtual sales assistant, helping to automate email communication and personalize the chat. It addresses potential customers and understands their product needs before a human sales representative can continue the conversation.Exceed.ai tries to replicate human conversations in order to give potential customers a natural experience. (12)

Ai and machine learning through complex systems, advanced analytics and cognitive computing.

Many service providers are already integrating AI components and cognitive computing into their turnkey solutions to help companies make faster and more accurate marketing decisions.  Many companies use AI beyond marketing to drive innovation and drive their industries forward. For example, CureMetrix, one of the startups, uses artificial intelligence algorithms to help hospitals care for their patients. (19)

Okay, back to me, the human.

I have to say, the writing was surprisingly coherent and informative, albeit, lacking personality or any real narrative point of view. Ironically, it also seems unsure when or how to capitalize “AI.” The site that generated the article, ai-writer.net, presents the amalgamated text in a dashboard that provides information on where they source their information (see “Cited Sources” below), plus a view highlighting bits of that text, which the system lifted verbatim from those sources.

ai-writer.net highlights parts of the finished article that have not been rewritten.

Is it good? It depends on your audience.

Subjectively, creatively, it’s not great. Would I use its output (after today) to serve as finished thought leadership? No. But it does in under four minutes the same type of research I would have to set aside a few hours to accomplish when beginning to investigate the consensus wisdom on a topic, such as AI or content marketing. And, in the end, it provides a fairly decent executive summary. That alone might save me a day’s work when diving deep into a complex topic. The more relevant question—one to which I have no answer today—is does the Google search algorithm think it’s good? If the purpose of your content is purely to improve your ranking for search terms, then it might be “good,” or at least “good enough.”

So, have we reached peak content?

In my humble opinion, if we haven’t reached peak content (I might also say “peak search noise”) yet, we can certainly see it coming over the horizon. We will be tracking the organic SEO strength of this post relative to our more bespoke content. So, stay tuned!

Cited Sources (from ai-writer.net)

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How to Develop a Digital Employee Experience Strategy

Image Source: https://pcsite.co.uk/2020/03/10/the-best-free-graphic-design-software-2020/

The shoemaker’s children deserve nice shoes.

It’s a time-worn cliché. Businesses are so busy serving customers that they often neglect to improve the experiences of their own employees. Enter Digital Employee Experience design or DEX.

So what’s the formal definition of DEX?

Simply put, DEX is the sum total of the digital interactions between an employee and the business. As a design practice, it covers the implementation of technology and tools deployed to enhance how employees interface with the company—from how they are recruited and hired to how they are onboarded, how they find and manage resources and how they interact with each other and the business at large. DEX is about using technology to improve the overall employee journey and to support the corporate culture.

Why does DEX matter?

In general, the concept of improving thee mployee experience, digitally or otherwise, seems like an obvious point of focus. If done properly, it benefits employees, operations and HR, alike. In reality, employees are often faced with learning and navigating multiple disparate systems. That could encompass intranets, HR and benefits platforms, shared file storage and management, multiple communications platforms (e.g.,email, Slack, etc.), business intelligence platforms, marketing automation andCRM, basic office productivity suites and more. And those myriad systems were likely sourced and implemented from different departments.

As a result, according to a report from PWC, 90% of the leaders choosing those various software solutions believe they are making their selections with the employees’ benefit in mind. However, only 53% of the staff in those companies perceive that to be the case. A similar mismatch occurs between IT and employees. 95% of IT professionals believe they are providing the digital tools employees need to be successful, but 42% of employees report they do not, in fact, have adequate tools.

But what about companies that are doing it right? According to data presented by VMware, companies who rate highly for digital employee experience are perceived as being more competitive by their employees, index 60% higher for annual revenue growth and engender a 41% higher net promoter score.

So what are some key focus areas in an effective DEX strategy?

The first rule of DEX strategy is that youMUST talk about DEX strategy. You need to generate understanding at the highest levels of the company of the benefits of a smart DEX strategy and the risks of maintaining a less-than-desirable experiential status quo. There’s no shortage of research on the potential ROI emerging. That being said, one way to understand where a solid DEX strategy might improve company performance is by viewing it through various stages of the employee journey:

1. Recruiting, onboarding and HR
   It’s easy to overlook the fact that the first experience most employees have with your culture or environment occurs well before they’re actually hired. How frictionless is it for a potential employee to understand the position being offered? To evaluate their own qualification for that position? To submit an adequately detailed application for consideration? On the enterprise side of the transaction, how smoothly can HR managers sort, sift, search or categorize submitted applications? Once hired, does the digital entity the employee populated during the interview process migrate seamlessly into the digital entity they are now, as a new employee? How automated, convenient, intelligent and personalized is the onboarding? Can every employee easily review and select benefits offerings? How can they navigate approvals of PTO or family leave? A great recruiting, onboarding and HR DEX allows for increased autonomy, self-management for employees while maintaining governance, record keeping and control for the enterprise. A win-win for all.

2. Culture and collaboration
   It used to be the best one would hope for in this arena would have been access to an employee intranet, email and shared network file storage. Thankfully, there is any number of enhanced tools available, from group messaging platforms, like Slack or Microsoft Teams, to cloud-based document collaboration and storage platforms, as well as videoconferencing and telepresence conference rooms. Each, individually, a massive improvement. But any advanced DEX strategy should take into account how those systems might seamlessly integrate, whether through a unified interface or portal.

3. Assessments, skills training and education
   A recent survey showed 70% of employees indicated that job-related training and development opportunities influenced their decision to stay at their job. As part of any comprehensive DEX strategy, you should consider tools for employees to more easily assess their current skill levels; quickly discover what training is available to improve those skills and how that training relates to their career growth; and generally take greater control over their development.

Establish your vision first. Measure second.

According to a recent globalDEX survey conducted by Australian consulting firm Step Two, responsibility for driving the DEX initiative in most companies was distributed across multiple departments, from IT to intranet teams, internal comms, HR and senior leadership, among many others. Given that result, it should come as little surprise what those same companies cited as the greatest challenges to implementing a successful DEX—organizational complexity, competing priorities and a lack of clear vision, to name a few.

To improve your chances of success, it isn’t necessary for a single department (e.g., IT, HR or Comms) to own the DEX strategy. But it is important to have an agreed-to vision of what that DEX will offer employees, how the experience supports broader business goals, what indicators define success and how you’ll objectively measure those indicators.

How can you improve your chances of a successful DEX?

As with any experience design project, the most successful begins with a deep understanding of the needs of those using the solution—in the case of DEX, obviously the employees. But they are not the only stakeholder you need to pay attention to boost your chances of success.

Create an interdepartmental task force.

As we’ve already seen, successful DEX strategy and implementation requires the efforts and input of stakeholders from across the company. You should establish, in advance, formal understanding of how those departments will be consulted or informed, work together and be held accountable for their success.

Engage senior leadership early and often.

Inevitably, creating, deploying and supporting a new DEX will require financial and human resources, as well as interdepartmental coordination. Having buy-in and support from senior leadership from the outset will unquestionably accelerate decision-making and conflict resolution along the way.

Dive deeply into the employee experience as it is today.

Empathy is the foundation of any truly innovative or transformational design project. Before you begin to draft solutions, you should understand the high points and low points of the experience employees undergo today. What they like or dislike about the available tools. What they might want or need to make their work more efficient or rewarding. Interview existing employees. Pore over any available analytics from your current intranet. In the end, you should have a general employee journey covering recruiting, onboarding and day-to-day interactions with current digital tools—all empathy mapped, with positive and negative moments of interaction around which your strategy should prioritize.

Craft a vision for what tomorrow’s experience should accomplish.

As with any project, understanding what success looks like is critical. Crafting a vision statement for your DEX delivers a number of advantages. First, creating a coherent narrative for what the DEX will accomplish for employees and the greater company helps build consensus. Further, there are literally thousands of decisions that will be made throughout the strategy, planning and implementation phases of crafting your new DEX. A clear vision provides an objective standard against which to evaluate or prioritize opportunities and challenges as they arise.

Determine key performance indicators (KPIs).

Your DEX should improve the everyday experiences of employees. And that improvement should be objectively measurable. The best DEX strategies define in advance what improvements will be measured. Those measures could span such indicators as employee satisfaction, retention rates, hours of training completed, etc. There are no default indicators that apply to every DEX or business. You just need to align those indicators with those measures that serve the goals of the employees and the business, alike.

So, why are we all suddenly talking about DEX?

Despite the recent surge in media attention, digital employee experience isn’t a new issue. It’s simply that we’ve reached “peak digital.” Meaning, the digital experience in the workplace is for most employees their primary work experience. How you experience the digital tools and environments provided are how you experience your job. Amplifying employee expectations is the reality that, unlike older generations whose digital lives were confined to the stationary PC or terminal on their desks, today’s workforce is fully immersed in a digital life outside of the office. So, those employees expect the same level of human-centered interaction design and effortlessness they feel when engaging with Lyft or Amazon as they do when trying to schedule a meeting room, navigate a shared document library or adjust their medical benefits. The companies that can deliver that same level of experience will always have an advantage.

The three most important trends in health care experience design for 2019

Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mmmswan/49708427927

We’ve seen 30+ years of shifting trends. And one underlying constant.

Over the past 30+ years, I’ve had the pleasure of working with clients across a variety of industries—from health care to hospitality, industrial equipment to medical devices, household cleaning products to sporting goods, dining cruises to the world’s most highly traded financial derivatives contracts, just to name a few. Each engagement has broadened our collective perspectives while confirming one underlying truth: Regardless of emerging trends, ongoing changes in technologies or the idiosyncrasies of individual markets, the fundamentals of human nature remain constant.

While we are continually working at the forefront of experience design trends, we believe the inspiration for real innovation comes from respecting those trends but also, more importantly, looking to find a deeper understanding of the foundational human motivations fueling them.

To that point, there are three fundamental elements that drive all trends—basic(human) needs, drivers of change (shifts in technology adoption, population changes, etc.) and innovation (newly available tools or methods). But it is perhaps more accurate to say that motivation stems from the tension occurring at the intersection of those forces.

To understand those intersections, we rely on a variety of resources and quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, from ethnography to focus groups, individual interviews, secondary research reviews and data analysis.Further, depending on the scope and time horizon of the project, we may utilize tools such as the trend framework, consumer trend radar or consumer trend canvas. We also consult market research reports and publications from organizations like MINTEL, Kantar, IRI and Nielsen, among others. Ultimately, we design research and analysis strategies and plans that are unique to every project, challenge and budget.

As survey the greater market environment, we see the dominant customer experience trends, regardless of industry category, surround three main thematic pillars: consumer control, data ethics and privacy and automation/personalization. In health care specifically, we must layer onincreased demand for access to care, the democratization of health information and the drive to lower costs (from both the consumer and provider sides of the equation). Specifically, in health care, we see these trends expressed in the following ways:

Consumer Control:

Consumers expect health care experiences to be as frictionless and simple as hailing an Uber … sort of.

Consumers want access to health information and care whenever and wherever they need it.But there’s a catch. While consumers are increasingly expressing the desire to manage their own care, the technologies that enable that control have varying levels of adoption among different generational cohorts. For example, newly available telemedicine solutions that should, in theory, provide increased levels of control and access, have varying degrees of acceptance depending on age and generational and conditional differences. To state it more colloquially, the older and more informed the patient, the less likely the patient is to prefer a technology solution over consulting a physician directly.

Simultaneously, consumers want increased transparency and choice, ostensibly in order to more actively shop for their best care options and control costs. However, it has not been shown that lower cost and improved proximity are as powerful an influence over care decisions than a physician referral.

In short, currently, control-enabling technology is best suited to enhancing personal connections in a health care journey, not replacing it. But that balance should move more toward the replacement side of the equation, as the balance of the population shifts to younger generations.

Data Ethics and Privacy:

Data privacy issues are moving beyond HIPAA.

For perhaps the first time, general concern over data privacy is on the consumer radar. Thanks to HIPAA, privacy rules surrounding traditional medical records and health information are clear and established (albeit under constant review). But the entrance into the market of consumer fitness- and health-related technology companies is creating a new privacy gray area for consumers and health care companies, alike. Quasi-medical devices, like sleep and fitness trackers, heart rate monitors and fitness trackers, while creating a compelling feedback mechanism for consumers, are a vector for data leaks and privacy violations. These products and the data they create should enable a more holistic, long-term understanding of patient well-being and enhance the customer experience. But health care providers and organizations need to be aware of vulnerabilities and create increasingly secure integrations.

Further compounding data privacy issues is the increasing role of caregivers. It’s been estimated that there are more than 40 million family members acting as unpaid caregivers in the U.S., and the number may increase in the coming decade. Among the many challenges in creating a seamless health care experience, a significant challenge arises around allowing caregivers to provision access and permission for personal health information and electronic medical records while respecting the patient’s privacy and security.

Automation/Personalization:

In health care, every patient represents a distinctive market of one.

Health isn’t a simple product or service that can be transferred to a consumer. Each consumer is physically and emotionally unique. Therefore, there is no all-things-to-all-people solution to providing the optimal customer experience.The industry will need to use emerging technologies to provide the right experience for each customer, based on that customer’s needs at any specific point in time. No small challenge, especially given the privacy restrictions mentioned above.

Thankfully, technologies for privacy-compliant extreme personalization are advancing rapidly. We foresee technologies like blockchain increasingly supporting interoperability and personalization while maintaining sufficient control over data leakage. Ultimately, the trends suggest patients should realize higher-quality care experiences such as blockchain and competing crypto-technologies allow seamless sharing of medical records across health care providers while maintaining privacy and control.

The success factor no one talks about in Presidential debates.

As early 2020-election-season rhetoric swells to a roar, obviously the future of health care is a large part of the stump speech for every candidate. All of the candidates talk about the broad brush economics of how a change in the way we as a society pay for health care might affect our pocketbooks (not to mention our individual survival). What you don’t hear is how we might really improve the health care experience beyond cost and basic access. Whether or not we will see universal health care implemented, equal consideration should be given to the quality of the experience itself as will be given to how the money changes hands. That’s surely where the long-term successes or failures of any future system lies.

What is ASMR? (And should your CX team care?)

ASMR: a tingly whisper banned by the Chinese government.

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR)refers to a tingling, or at least pleasant, sensation some people feel whenthey hear what can be best described as soft scraping, tapping or rustlingsounds. Most commonly, those sounds are something like the gravelly sound of awhispering human voice, two sheets of paper slipping past each other, softtapping on a something hollow, a plastic bag being crumpled or just aboutanything similar that is recorded through a microphone placed extremely closeto the sound source. But ASMR can also be triggered by something tactile, likepeeling the protective plastic off of a brand-new television screen, or visualby the movement of hands or lips.

Hiihiii!!! WELCOME {back} to my channel :D Hope this video was relaxing and gave you tingles tingles tingles! ♡ I hope you enjoy so please sit back back back...

For some (not me, admittedly) it’s purported to be audiovisual bliss, delivering an opioid-like rush to the listener/viewer—perhaps it’s the other side of the nails-on-a-chalkboard coin.In any case, the explosive growth of content tagged with #ASMR on social video sites has led to a lot of questions about its triggers, benefits, risks and long-term social impact. And, as mentioned in the header of this section, theChinese government became so concerned, it banned the posting (or at least tagging) of ASMR videos entirely over concerns that the content was pornographic. Which, I have to assume, means someone in the Chinese government really enjoys ASMR videos.

How popular is ASMR?

A Google search for the term “ASMR video” returns more than 98 million results. Digging a bit deeper into GoogleTrends, we see interest growing at an accelerating rate globally. Obviously, there’s a great and growing segment of the population who (unlike me) are finding a deep connection to the subject matter.

So, what are the economics of ASMR?

With more than 640 million views, the leadingASMR channel on YouTube (only one of many), gentle whispering, reportedly generates more than $500,000 in revenue annually. Given those numbers, you likely wouldn’t be surprised to discover that several brands have jumped onto the very quiet ASMR bandwagon.

During the 2019 Super Bowl, Michelob Ultra debuted a commercial featuring Zoe Kravitz whispering, scraping, tapping … you know, all the ASMR things, with a bottle of beer. The idea was to create for consumers a physical experience at a distance.

IKEA did a bit of ASMR homework and produced “Oddly Ikea,” a25-minute-long commercial, featuring the sounds of hands gently caressing some crisp, new bedsheets, dragging along a comforter, rustling clothes on hangers in the closet and the like. At the time of this writing, it has garnered more than 2.6 million views.

If you take a moment to Google ASMR ad, you’ll find somewhere near 100million results. Obviously, the Mad Men have discovered its pull. But what about a more esoteric application in customer experience design? Let’s investigate.

Adding ASMR triggers to UX design

Sound is generally overlooked by most UX designers. But careful use of audio feedback can provide a much richer and more intuitive user experience. And, when considering specific ASMR triggering sounds, one should assume, a more physically satisfying experience. The movement of a mouse or the dragging of a finger across a mobile device may be perfect moments to add a soft scraping sound. Add a soft tapping sound to wait screens? It seems better than a spinning rainbow beach ball. And let’s not forget the possibility of leveraging visual ASMR triggers. Instead of a static portrait of a model, why not a silent shot of that model mouthing a few choice phrases. An interesting potential example of this (and I am unsure if ASMR was the intent) might be answerthepublic.com. From the beard to the big wool sweater to the continuous movement and mouthing of words, it seems like no coincidence.

answerthepublic.com home page

Adding ASMR triggers to physical experiences

Even the most dyed-in-the-wool online businesses are creating physical retail experiences. Warby Parker, CasperMattress, Indochino—even Amazon. With the ASMR trend in kind, it may be time to eschew smooth polished surfaces and incorporate a bit more sand-like texture on checkout counters. Perhaps rustling layers of cellophane between items of clothing and their hangers. Or, punctuating the store experience with extended soft bursts of compressed air. A bead/pellet fountain? I guess I’ll leave the specifics to interior designers who, unlike myself, can actually experienceASMR.

So, you can. But should you?

I wouldn’t consider invoking ASMR for ASMR’s sake, good experience design or smart branding, per se. Every expression of your business and the design of every connection with a customer is to be considered in the full context of your positioning and your goals. However, there's no reason ASMR shouldn’t be one more tool in the experience design toolbox. All other conditions being equal, why wouldn’t you want your customer to be pleasantly tingly inside?

Link:

sleepyasmr.com