innovation Archive

Companies today hold all business functions to a mandate for innovation. Innovation should create business value (a better experience for employees, customers, and partners). It should create agility and speed. It should make business functions more easily adaptable, easier to change. And it should also lower the cost of the functions over time. The

Imagine you’re the new CIO at a global vehicle manufacturing company (with industry-leading products) that now faces stiff competition from new players in its market. The CEO brought you in to lead the company transformation to enable dramatic growth quickly. The management committee had already developed a vision of its future state and developed

Why are many service providers struggling to sell new technology in volume through traditional channels? If the provider’s sales team challenges the buyer with a new concept such as the Internet of Things and the buyer understands how it will change their business, why don’t they take action and buy it? The answer is

The innovation dance floor is getting awfully crowded with a lot of eager participants. CIOs want to re-establish their traditional role of custodian of technology driving innovation. CMOs wants to be at the forefront of using innovation to change the customer experience and outreach. Data scientists are using the new analytics tools and want

At the request of a BPO provider, we did a fairly exhaustive study of all vendor/provider-funded innovations and their impact on the business growth. The data were startling. Our study clearly revealed that the hundreds of millions of dollars that providers invested in innovation yielded very disappointing returns. Although they often succeeded in taking

I must confess I look askance at how some services customers think. They want to keep their cake and eat it too. But it’s batty and preposterous to think you can have something both ways if the two ways conflict. We’re seeing schizophrenia in the marketplace. Customers look to the provider community for insight

The lack of innovation from service providers is a constant and mournful refrain echoing around the industry. This plaintive and mournful dirge reminds me of Sisyphus, who was cursed to endlessly roll a boulder up a hill, only to watch it tumble back down, never achieving satisfaction. Likewise, the unending efforts of service providers