I live several lives. As a digital analyst and futurist, I study disruptive technology and its impact on businesses and markets. As a digital anthropologist, I study the effects of disruptive technology on societies and us as individuals. In both cases, I am frequently asked to share the “state of” industries and also play out defined scenarios over the next several years. Recently, I took a break from my industry work to focus on the personal side of digital disruption…
The Marketing Centre – The Marketing Centre book club: Essential summer reading
Digital analyst, sociologist and futurist Brian Solis scans the horizon to see what’s next for businesses. Solis doesn’t just explore trends and theories, but offers his vision as to how you can get ahead in uncertain times.
Why Jason chose this book: “Though this was written in 2013 I still think it’s very relevant today. It talks about the ‘dynamic customer journey’, and how every consumer touchpoint on that journey adds or subtracts from the overall customer experience.
“Given that context, it strongly recommends that as a business you need to ‘innovate or die’ with clear priorities on what to address. Solis has written three other books on innovation and consumer trends. ‘What’s the future of business’ is his second one, and he has written two more subsequently expanding on his work. So depending on your knowledge on the subject area, you could start at a different point in Solis’ bibliography.”
Digital Darwinism: What Killed Borders, Blockbuster and Toys R Us and How to Survive
We live in an era of “digital Darwinism,” a time when technology and society are evolving faster than the ability of many organizations to adapt. It is for this reason (along with a myriad of other problems of course) that in fact killed Borders, Blockbuster, Toys “R” Us and the like. Not only did digital Darwinism cost us close to a half billion job, it’s only accelerating. As Leon C. Megginson once said in paraphrasing Charles Darwin’s Origin of the…
Sharing a Personal Story – A Rare Glimpse into What Inspires Me and How I Got Here
Believe it or not, I’m a private person. I know it seems ironic. After all, I was one of the early group that worked to bring social media to the forefront in the early 2000s. But, I still tend to not share personal information online. I do however, share my work freely with everyone in the hopes of creating a community of betterment in business, government and society. There are rare occasions however when I do open up to share stories that…
An Intern’s Review of WTF: What’s the Future of Business
One of the little known stories about my previous book, What’s the Future of Business: Changing the way businesses create experiences, is that I wrote and published it after I had started my latest book, X: The Experience when business meets design. While it stands on its own, WTF is technically a companion book to X and can be read as a part 2 of sorts. One of the lesser known facts about WTF, is that it wasn’t even on my docket….
12 Innovation Imperatives
Innovation suffocates in a culture of mediocrity. Here’s how to breathe life into company culture to compete for the future. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Everyone seems to have one or more. I just wish that more organizations would appreciate how plentiful and beneficial ideas are to the future of their business. The challenges are all too common. Often, ideas are shared in fleeting moments with the same zeal as observing the weather. Once expressed they recede from view,…
Announcing My Next Book: X, The Experience When Business Meets Design
It is with great pride, relief ,mixed with a bursting sensation of anxiousness, that I announce my next book, X: The Experience When Business Meets Design. It’s been a long road to get here. I started writing this book 3.5 – 4 years ago. I couldn’t get my mind fully around the subject matter and instead willfully embraced my avoidance behavior syndrome and ended up writing a book that wasn’t in my plan at all, What’s the Future of Business…
Why Customer Experience is The Catalyst for Digital Transformation
As a digital analyst, I spend a lot of his time thinking about the future of customer experience. So much so that my next book attempts to rethink the term “experience,” X:The Experience of Business Meets Design. “X” explores experience architecture the various ways companies can design meaningful and shareable experiences in every moment of truth. I recently spent time with the team at VisionCritical as part of the prep for its their upcoming conference in Chicago, 2015 Vision Critical…
The Importance of Artistry in Business and Everything
I am a big fan of Chase Jarvis and I’m also proud to call him a dear friend. As I was preparing for the launch of my next book, I found this gem of a video from 2013. I can’t believe I lost this. In what is either a serendipitous or coincidental discovery, this video was shot as part of the official debut of CreativeLIVE‘s studio in San Francisco at the same time I was introducing What’s the Future of…
When Hospitality Becomes an Art, It Loses Its Very Soul
The title is credited to Max Beerbohm, English essayist, parodist, and caricaturist best known today for his 1911 novel Zuleika Dobson. Taken from his 1918 work, Hosts and Guests, I interpret his work for a new era of hospitality. We live in a connected society now and as such, guests and the experiences they have and share, form the foundation of marketing and service. If we try to scale experiences for the sake of doing so, we miss the essence…
