The Human API: Access to the single source of truth

We all know that today a mobile device is possibly the most personal thing you carry. If you had access to a person's mobile phone (like apps do via APIs), you would have access to his location, contacts, gallery, and other personal data.

But what if an API existed to access the human data set, i.e. a human API* to access the ultimate, direct data source to understand consumers. What would that mean?

As we are aware brain scans reveal human emotional states, as well as brain stimulation in response to what is being observed. Heart, pulse rate and sweat on the body reveal truth or deception, along with facial expressions.

Today retail uses facial recognition and body scanning to provide personalized services in store. We are already seeing a lot of news about the impact of wearables with fitness devices tracking heart rate, sleep, calories burnt etc.

One of the 5 features in wearables launched in 2015 is Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) sensor technology, commonly used in polygraph testing or psychological research). Basically this tech can identify and track human emotions by measuring the electrical conductance of the skin, i.e. how much micro-sweat is present and determines simple emotions such as whether you are calm or excited!

The intersection of wearable and medical technology is being used to collect data and the human API is making this happen. 

So what is the killer app of the Human API? Think context.

IMAGINE if your target audience was watching one of your marketing videos on YouTube and you wanted to know their reaction. Possible?

IMAGINE you felt happy after watching the video, the wearable device could send a signal to auto-generate a smiley emoticon as a response to the video post. Wouldn't that be the most authentic reaction to track!

Let's take this to a step further...

Imagine a brand communication being tailored or media being programmatically bought based on not only physiological but also psychological data from wearables. Ads will actually become sentient and know how you are "feeling" at any point of time.

Could this become the next version of personalization? Could real time psychological data be used for remarketing? Theoretically yes.

The Human API is the only growth hack that Marketing will ever need. (Tweet this!)

With consumer in control of brands these days, Marketing is now realizing the importance of treating consumers as humans that have emotions. It is also now scientifically proven that ultimately feelings, not facts, overwhelmingly drive our behaviors when making decisions. 

But with the human API gaining access to our emotions, the dilemma we create (once again, after the mobile phone) is that of invasion of privacy. The answer to that is to give control to the on/off switch to the customer. But, in the first place... 

Will you be willing to give away this level of personal data to brands? Will we, humans, let advertisers access our API?

Will the advertising industry go all the way to listen to our emotions directly from the source, only because it can?

Normal people and advertising folks :), what do you think?

@goodthing

(p.s. Three years back when I wrote about the future of media being in the Internet of Things, we discussed how every thing and person around us had the potential to learn and share from each other. The concept of the human API enables technology to directly learn about humans by accessing their data source without human intervention. This is truly enabling the Internet of Me.)

*ref: Brand Quarterly, July 2015

We are Humans, not Consumers (Marketing, listen up!)

In recent years, Brands have started tapping into logic and (not or) emotions to connect with consumers however more recent research shows that ultimately feelings, not facts, overwhelmingly drive our behaviors when making decisions. 

Humans are feeling machines who think and not thinking machines who also feel. (Tweet This!)

So what does this mean for the world of brands and marketing!

1. Let your Story rise above the Medium: As the media landscape continues to evolve, we pay too much attention on the medium instead of connecting with consumers that matter. Consumers are humans. And humans don't connect with media. They interact and connect with emotions and people respectively. So before providing a logical reason for a person to buy into you, you need to emotionally connect with him. So start telling stories that emotionally connect with humans (not consumers). Weave in the story with their lifestyle and help address pain points.

2. Seamless Storytelling: While the story is more important, people do need a seamless experience for consistency in an omni-channel world. Today it might be about mobility and cross platform marketing, the future of media is in the internet of things. As our media becomes more sentient and we head towards a future with the internet of things, seamless brand storytelling will no more be an option. It is the need of the hour and one of the fastest growing trends in media today.

3. Humanize your Brand: It is our thoughts and emotions that define our beliefs and intentions, which in turn drive behaviors and resulting actions. Since emotions play a stronger role than logic in making decisions, we need to understand behaviors of individuals. And hence, if a brand can track behaviors, it can truly influence the emotions and thoughts of individuals to take desired actions that are beneficial for the brand. 

Possible? Would love to hear your thoughts on the above point of view.

Lucy, Internet of Things and The Big Digital Brain

What we learn from Lucy -

Our brain only uses 10% of its celebral capacity.

Should we have the power to fire up unused cells, we will become more capable.
That may not be possible today.

What is, however, possible is - connecting to other people's brains.

How?

The internet is a platform to connect people and things.
Everyday more things and people are getting connected (14.8 billion+ and counting).

Consider each person or thing like a brain cell.
When billions of things starting connecting, talking and learning with each other,
The more knowledgeable we become.

Access to this collective capacity of knowledge results in innovation.
Application of this collective knowledge can take us to the next evolution of mankind.

The earth is like one big brain
that is getting more and more connected every day
providing growing knowledge and opportunities for evolution.

Implications for brands, media and marketing

In the age of digital consumerism, brands need to understand consumers better and more than ever before. Brands today that have the most data on their target consumers have a competitive advantage. 

Besides publicly available consumer data on social media channels and company-owned transactional data, there are also some new technologies, being developed by Neuro-insight and Thync, that are making it possible for us to gain access to the consumer's brain. If brands having access to this data, the possibilities of exceeding consumer's expectations will become limitless.

Is the future of marketing in the Internet of Things? What do you think?

Is it time for Digital to transform into Mobile?

Let's take a look at the top 10 trends for 2015 and what this means for brands, media and marketing. This will be a year when Mobile will strengthen its hold on our industry in a big way, smart data will outshine big data, and real-time marketing will become an achievable goal.

8 out of 10 Digital Trends in 2015 are MOBILE!

#	2015 Trends	Implications for Brands
1	App Downloads Will Surpass Facebook Friend and Twitter Followers for Most Brands	Think Mobility. Mobile First becomes the new normal. Change your business model to become mobile-centric. Mobile is where consumers are making decisions that affect your bottom line.
2	Mobile Departments and Leaders Emerge	Dedicate a Mobile champion for your department who will make key technology and marketing decisions to drive positive customer experiences and marketing ROI. Think mobile solution; don’t split media from creative.
3	Mobile and Location Advertising Will Continue to Accelerate	Build context into every brand communication going forward. Location-based advertising will become the norm this year.
4	Mobile Campaign Management and Platforms Take Hold	Continue leveraging first-generation point solutions for SMS, push notifications and mobile advertising. Next-generation mobile platforms will emerge to offer marketers the ability to connect and communicate with mobile customers throughout the purchase process and across channels.
5	CRM, Social Data Combines With Mobile Signals to Drive Better Experiences	Brands have a wealth of consumer data , both transactional, social and mobile data from past campaigns. Consider prototyping mobile cloud solutions and decisioning engines to make better, smarter decisions in real-time, taking real-time, relevant mobile messaging to the next level.
6	Mobile to drive E-commerce	As consumers continue to increase their confidence in mobile for online transactions, brands can now build marketplaces or tie-up with e-tailers to close the online consumer purchase journey.
7	The Gap Between Digital and Physical Experiences Closes	Brands will have to seamlessly connect and sense and respond to customer needs throughout the customer journey and across both physical and digital channels. With more time being spent on mobile, brands must create consistent cross-media consumer experiences.
8	Content Strategy and Optimization Continue to Be Crucial Focus	Every brand must have a Content strategy and render it smartly and optimally to create a positive multi-channel experience.
9	“Smart” Data Overshadows Big Data	With the volume of data exploding, Brands will shift focus to smart data and embrace robust analytics to better understand consumer events and behaviors, and respond to future needs.
10	Real-Time Becomes an Official Goal/Benchmark (hi-octane alert!)	Competitive advantage for those brands that can facilitate real-time, hyper-relevant marketing communications. The consumer expectation to get any information they need at their precise moment of need on their device of choice will require marketers to re-examine their systems. Capabilities like Command Centers and programmatic buying will become key enablers.

Like if you agree? Drop a comment if you have a point of view.

[Trending] Teens leaving Facebook.. and going to (like) where?

Oh boy.. and we thought Facebook was for keeps (like) forever ever !

So where are the new gen teens residing these days ?

You guessed it!... 

Instant text, image and video sharing apps like whatsapp, instagram, vine, wechat, snapchat. These are some of the key platforms where communities are being built and an opportunity for brands to leverage.

Read more at:

http://venturebeat.com/2014/01/16/teens-abandoning-facebook-yet-the-world-survives/

http://mashable.com/2014/01/16/teens-leaving-facebook/

http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=20739310

Why advertisers shouldn't panic (not yet)?

http://www.businessinsider.com/advertisers-can-still-reach-teens-on-facebook-2014-1

Have a good read!

6 Hot Trends in Mobile for 2014

What other trends do you think will stay in 2014?

STOP [story]TELLING and START LISTENING to Your Customers!

Enough of storytelling! While you can tell the most engaging stories and craft the most immersive experiences for your consumers, are you making an equal amount of effort to [constantly] listen to your consumers? Because just by developing a se*y and innovative digital platform for your campaign may win you awards but may not result in intended marketing objectives!

The Connected Viewer - The End of Disengaged TV Advertising

Many advertisers were worried about the impact that DVR would have on TV ads. Guess what!

The Connected Viewer is changing TV ad consumption.

Going by the growing multi-screen trend, loss of TV viewers from second screen viewing to advertisers is way bigger than the DVR. If consumers are spending time on a second screen, it is quite obvious that the impact of traditional advertising is getting smaller. And this behavior of tuning out from TV ads (generally due to lack of engagement) will only get worse!

So how can advertisers address this changing behavior?

Forget Digital.. Future of Media is in the "Internet of Things"

The foundation of the new digital economy is built on the changed behaviors and attitudes of people who increasingly rely on digital technologies - primarily enabled by the internet. But the Internet is continuing to evolve. Initially it was the static Web, and now it is social, mobile, cloud computing and wireless networks. However beyond the technology (open, simple and distributed), the Internet's culture of collaborative innovation keeps having a transformative impact on companies, communities and institutions.

In 2008, the number of devices connected to the Internet exceeded the number of people on Earth. And these devices are not just smartphones and tablets. They are everything around us - from smart televisions to interactive coke machines, from motivated running shoes to the interconnected cows, bananas and more.

While social networks (network of connected people) is reaching saturation, the 'internet of things' (network of connected things, as well as things and people) is gaining traction. By 2020, there will be 50 billion things connected to the internet! Every person, animal, and thing could be connected.

The (virtually) Real Difference between Old Media and New Media

“I thought the attractions of being an astronaut were actually, not so much the moon, but flying in a completely new medium” - Armstrong told his biographer.

It's always been about the experience in a new medium! And today you don't need to be an astronaut to fly into a new medium. New media technologies are available at the consumer's fingertips. The real question for brands today is how to effectively leverage these consumer technologies in order to take brand experiences to the next level. But before that, it is important to understand the key differences in old and new media:

The New Brand Tree: Growing the Fruits of Earned Media

What is the the new Brand Tree?

The new Brand Tree is inspired by nature.

Building a healthy brand is like growing a healthy tree.

Give Brands nothing, but take from them EVERY THING!

Battle: The Great War of Digital Consumerism
Strategy: Use Digital to connect, engage, and destroy brands, one interaction at a time!
Weaponry: Digital media or media enabled by the converging forces of social, mobile, cloud and internet of things
Incumbent: Brand
Challenger: Consumer

Who will win this war - consumers or brands?

Consumers push Brands forward...
If today brands are feeling that customers change loyalties at the flip of a coin, they have absolutely no idea about the Great War that is only beginning to take shape. This War will be started by the Digital Consumer and will inspire the entire consumer base to rise and win the war of consumerism if brands don't act now!

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. 

4 Tactics to influence the new, SOCIAL consumer!

Traditionally the value of a customer was measured by his ability to purchase a company's products and services or CLV (customer lifetime value). But now with consumers recommending products and sharing experiences on social networks, the purchase cycle has changed. It is becoming increasingly necessary for companies to measure their social influence. Therefore, as shown below, value of a customer increases with customer revenue as well as social influence, also known as social CLV or CLV 2.0.

So what tactics can Marketing deploy to influence the social consumer?
There are 4 tactics that can be deployed depending on level of customer's revenue and social influence.

4 tactics to influence the social consumer

CLV 3.0: Measuring Co-Creation Value of a Customer

credits: redheadedfrog

While social media finds a way into the enterprise, it is imperative for companies to take a look at an essential metric that measures how much each customer is worth in monetary terms - CLV or customer lifetime value (you may also refer to HBS' CLV Calculator).

However with social CRM's capability to centrally store data that measures and reports on social media activities, there comes a need to revisit how we measure the value of our customers on the basis of two primary actions that they are actively performing -

• Referring actions - Like, share, recommend existing products and services resulting in Customer Referral Value
• Innovation actions - Co-create new products and services  resulting in Customer Innovation Value

Customer Referral Value:

With customers liking, sharing, recommending, influencing our products and services, we need to add the customer's referral value (CRV) to the current CLV metric. (sources: definition by Daniel, Oracle's Tara Robert) 

So CLV 2.0 or social CLV looks something like this: 

CLV 2.0 = CLV + CRV, 

where CRV is Customer Referral Value.

Customer Innovation Value (new metric):

While a very large percentage of users recommending our products and services, there is also a small yet relevant base of customers willing to co-create our next product or service (ref: Starbucks, Dell). These are truly high value, high potential customers. Companies that are able to strengthen relationships with such customers will gain sustainable competitive advantage. And this is the future of competition!

So CLV 3.0 would look something like this:

CLV 3.0 = CLV + CRV + CIV, 

where CIV is Customer Innovation Value.

So how do you think companies can measure CIV? Is there a science to it yet?

And should companies tweak their loyalty programs to reward customers who have made contributions of outstanding significance to a company's profitability, measured in terms of monetary, social, and innovation value? Maybe call it "Customer Lifetime Value Rewards" :) ?... what do you think? (Pardon the analogy to Grammy's Lifetime Achievement Awards!)

(Check out my next posting on how companies can leverage the purchasing power and social influence of their consumers.)

Social media's big push within the enterprise (finally!)

Six years after the term Web 2.0 was defined, it's extremely heartening to know that social media is finally entering the enterprise in a big way with the blessings of Oracle and Salesforce.com!

With Oracle's acquisition of Virtue and Collective Intellect, and Salesforce.com's acquisition of Buddy Media, social media and the new facets of customer engagement and innovation will finally begin to see the light of day within the enterprise in the form of social CRM - a key customer relationship management offering that will plug into social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, etc and provide the missing piece of the 360 degree view of the customer.

Through these acquisitions — and the eye-opening price tags behind them — Oracle and Salesforce.com show that the business world is getting ready for social media. It’s no longer considered a fad, definitely not just hype, and not going away any time soon. Businesses must care about social media because it’s clear that consumers already do. - Forbes

What does this mean for Marketing and IT teams?

Marketing will now be able to centrally create, publish, moderate, manage, measure and report on social marketing campaigns and activities on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+.

So suit up, IT... and get ready to shake hands with Marketing and drive the social CRM story forward...  what say?

Digital Pandey: Rise of the underdog from your IT backyard

When Bollywood star - Salman Khan - decided to take on the role of Chulbul Pandey in the blockbuster – Dabangg, little did anyone foresee the impact of social media and customer segmentation in the film industry. While many corporations still stayed resistant to tweet or create a fan page, here was a fantasy hero breaking records with more than 19,000 followers in one day and tweeting his experience live during the shooting of this movie. The positioning of the brand – Chulbul – was strategic, and marketing of ‘Munni Badnam Hui’ was extravagant. Touching the hearts and minds of a target audience, this movie set out to become a lesson for businesses to learn, consume, and act upon.

Can the real Chulbul please stand up? Let's be honest. The PC age, Y2K phase, and Dot com era have come and gone; each of them highlighting the relevance of effectively managing Information Technology (IT) in the business environment. Despite multiple attempts to prove its worth, the IT department in many organizations is still undermined and under-funded. It continues to struggle to change its perception of being merely a support function for the business.

So what is it going to take for IT to prove its worth and come in the limelight? When will companies truly believe in IT as a strategic driver for the business?

Well, the time has come!

Today there is a lot of pressure for IT to innovate in support of their businesses and help drive new product development, increase operational efficiencies, and improve customer satisfaction. Similar to social media, other disruptive trends such as cloud and mobility have also emerged. IT is now on the forefront of business. It seems as if it’s now or never.

While the time to rise and shine has come for IT, the expectations to drive business strategies have also increased dramatically. IT will need to continue to act as a support function for the business. But now with the expectation to drive technology-driven strategic changes in the enterprise, IT seems to officially have an added responsibility of playing the role of Chulbul Pandey in today’s business context.

Here are three ways to Dabangg-ify your IT department to meet new business expectations:

1. Get business-savvy. If IT wants to lead fearlessly, then it will need to develop its business acumen as well as understand the business well. Going forward, IT will increasingly be invited to present their innovation plans at board meetings. Skills such as financial forecasting and budgeting will become imperative to justifying large investments. These new IT investments are bound to face resistance from CFOs if IT is unable to demonstrate their value in a clear and measurable way. IT will need to develop business cases and explain how new technology investments will make the company more profitable and competitive in the marketplace.

2. Effectively align IT with business. IT will not only need to talk business but also closely work with business to understand their goals and effectively apply new technologies to meet their goals. However, in order to work closely work with business, IT leaders will firstly need to build strong relationships with key business stakeholders and patiently listen to their current concerns and future needs. In doing so, IT will be able to become a trusted partner on the journey to innovation.

For instance, it is not uncommon to find companies these days adopting customer centricity as the means to sustainable business growth. As consumers spend increasing proportion of their time connecting and expressing themselves on the internet today, companies are looking for ways to leverage these social behaviors to understand, acquire, and retain their customers across digital channels. These intensive data collection and analysis efforts can only be successful if IT effectively partners with business teams – Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service. IT should not just provide technology services and tools but use the opportunity to effectively apply these consumer-facing platforms and technologies to meet the goals of the business. To ensure effectiveness, reduce risk, and justify cost of a radically new technology investment, a detailed technology assessment (including a proof of concept) should be collaboratively conducted and reviewed with business. Once the project is approved, releases should be incrementally rolled out. To build further credibility for such efforts, tying technology metrics to business metrics is also strongly recommended.


3. Sustain innovation capabilities. Social media, cloud computing, mobility, analytics, and Green IT are some of the emerging zones of technology heroism. This is only the beginning of an age of enterprise innovation. Tomorrow there will be a new wave of technologies and trends coming our way that companies will want to leverage in order to refine their business processes or even redefine their business models. 

To drive the business with IT-enabled innovation, IT leaders will need to embody creative leadership and inspire others to walk the path of innovation. 

They will need to develop the right long term strategy and supporting structure, such as creating a nimble, high performance team of business-savvy IT resources and dedicating time to assessing emerging technologies on a regular basis.

To summarize, if you are a part of the IT department in your organization and are excited about innovation, chances are that there is a Digital Pandey in you. So why not take this opportunity to transform yourself, put measurable value from innovation on the enterprise table, and change the perception for IT in your organization!

Your company's Facebook makeover: A social face with skin deep value

Two years back when I wrote a point of view on the business value of social media and what it could mean for business, I pointed out 4 underlying concepts - social networking, collaboration, broadcasting, and rich user experience. With Facebook becoming a clear leader on the web today] that leverages all these concepts, CEOs, please be advised that "Facebook is not going anywhere!".

Many wise digital marketing experts will tell you that Facebook is NOT a strategy but merely a platform for effective consumer engagement, brand management, and marketing efforts. While this is quite true (technically speaking), Facebook is no more a matter of choice but a necessity for companies today.

CIOs need to seriously take a look at leveraging Facebook as an initiative to enhance consumer engagement and viral outreach. In today's web where the network is your customer, the power of 'Like' and other social plugins must not be underestimated.

Before jumping on to the Facebook bandwagon, it is advisable to first understand your consumers and build your presence around them with a 360 degree marketing strategy that connects both online and offline worlds.

In one way, it actually a good thing that the web is dead! With users spending more time on Facebook than other websites, it makes it easier for CIOs to develop an integrated online strategy. You should nevertheless take a look at your company's online ecosystem more holistically and build the right structure and processes to continuously refine it for sustainable benefits.

Product Innovation 2.0 - The new facets of innovation in a virtually boundaryless enterprise

It is no unwritten fact that organizations are actively seeking ways to harness the collective intelligence of its employees and customers for product innovation.

The Knowledge Worker

Much of the value added today to products and services comes from knowledge work. This could be streamlining operations for better supply chain management or synthesizing organizational cultures in mergers and acquisitions. Enterprises are looking for opportunities to increase the productivity of workers involved in such complex interactions that constitute 41% of the workforce in the US (according to McKinsey).

The Informed Customer

With information more easily accessible and readily available, customers are getting smarter about products and demanding a say in the design of products. It has become challenging not only to gain the trust of new customers but also retain the loyalty of existing ones. Predicting buying patterns and satisfying the demands of today’s customers are complex business issues that are difficult to define in advance.

Three New Facets of Innovation from the Long Tail

Traditionally, innovation has been internally-driven with a top-down approach where leadership bears the structural authority and controls interactions within the enterprise. Also, traditional innovation is driven by a “go to the customer” corporate strategy and based on market research, surveys, and focus groups. Legacy business models that use such a reactive, structured approach to innovation have failed to effectively address today’s business issues.

Enabled by Web 2.0-based collaboration platforms, today enterprises are seeing the birth of a vibrant, unstructured collaborative ecosystem as entities, within and outside the enterprise, interact with each other (refer to diagram above for a graphical representation of these enterprise interactions). Collaborating, sharing, and learning are rapidly becoming the norms for the next generation enterprise. These interactions are shaping three new facets of innovation:

• Intranovation – employees in the organization collectively provide ideas on products and services in an unstructured yet guided (and not controlled) format
• Internovation – innovation with customers and the enterprise collaboratively design products and services
• Extranovation – innovation with customers designing products and services
  

The table below further describes these new facets of innovation and explains how sustainable value can be created.

	Intranovation	Internovation	Extranovation
Description	This innovation technique will cause innovation, content creation, and control to exist at the bottom of the enterprise. It will turn control upside down. Bottom up innovators usually will not have the structural authority to order people to join a team; instead the innovator will succeed by influencing them and leveraging a personal network – collaborating, sharing, inspiring, and leading.	Customers and the enterprise will collaborate to create new products and services. The size, needs, and engagement of customers in product design and promotion will build a vibrant ecosystem that would continuously help the enterprise to create and improve products and services.	In such an outwardly driven innovation technique, customers come together to define the products and services they need, without interference from the enterprise. The enterprise may provide the platform and facilitate such an innovation.
Innovator(s)	Employee	Employee and Customer	Customer
How is sustainable value created?	Value creation through improved employee productivity and greater employee satisfaction, significant internal shift of control when employees have greater control to easily create or change business processes	Value creation when customers and employees collaborate to build a vibrant ecosystem leading to greater customer loyalty and retention	Value creation with greater customer satisfaction and loyalty when customers create products/services causing a significant external shift of control to customer

These new facets of innovation represent new opportunities for open, continuous innovation driven by the enterprise’s intellectual capital of its employees and demands of its consumers. The fact that the outcome does not tend to have an end state and there is always potential to improve existing products and services, causes the business value generated to be truly sustainable.

The next generation, virtually boundaryless enterprise will leverage these innovation techniques to support unstructured, complex interactions and gain competitive advantage from the knowledge of its employees and customers. The enterprise will become more competitive in the market, build and maintain customer stickiness, be able to respond to market changes and improve employee productivity. Tactically, enterprise applications will need to increase access to data and information, support decisions, improve communications, and support multi-party workflows and collaboration.

So does your enterprise currently employ any these techniques? In what organization functions do you see the potential of these new facets in revealing untapped innovation for your enterprise?

Convergence of Forces are driving Consumer Innovation! (Updated: May 2012) 

Three years after I wrote the above article on the new facets of Innovation, we are seeing forces come together to redefine how business will be conducted, 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 leverage big data. Companies will need to change their systems to conform to the nexus of converging forces - social (behavior), mobile (access), cloud (delivery), information (context) - and shift control to the consumer / end user. 

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!

I recently provided thoughts to the CIO 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 leveraging big data a part your company's innovation strategy? How is your company leveraging data coming from social networks and pervasive technologies?