The Digital Epicenter: Convergence of Forces to drive Innovation

Three years after I wrote the article on the new facets of Innovation, we are seeing forces come together to redefine how business will be conducted by keeping the consumer in the center of all decisions. 

Multimedia, social media, and the Internet of Things is fueling exponential growth in data for the foreseeable future. To enable the next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity, companies will need to fish where the fish is (on social networks), allow consumers to access information in anywhere, anytime (via mobile devices), and derive customer intelligence from big data. This can only be possible using scalable yet cost-effective cloud infrastructure. 

The digital epicenter, as show in the figure above, is the point of convergence of digital forces - social (behavior), mobile (access), cloud (delivery), big data (context)*. This is the target state that companies should aim for, where true customer-centricity can be realized. 


Companies that are able to leverage this convergence of all these forces will gain a sustainable competitive edge. Key business benefits:

• Top line growth
• Surround business efficiency
• Better decisions from big data analytics
• Better retention with CRM (incl. social CRM)
• Innovative customer engagement at new touchpoints
• Co-creation of new products and services with customers
• Reduced cost of technology operations

Developing a discipline of innovation through information will enable organizations to respond to customer, employee, product or environmental changes as they occur. It will enable companies to leap ahead of their competition in operational or business performance. 

In the foreseeable future, companies who do not leverage big data to innovate will be forced to seize operations!

Here are some additional thoughts I had shared with the CIO / digital community on how big data will drive innovation and beat competition:

Indian CIOs: Big data analytics help beat competition

What's driving business analytics? CIOs ponder

So is your company moving to the digital epicenter? And is leveraging big data a part your company's innovation strategy? How is your company leveraging data coming from social networks and pervasive technologies? 

*based on Gartner's nexus of forces.