Innovation at Intersections

Most of the innovations are developed incrementally as one person builds on another’s ideas that sometimes cut across regions, disciplines and even generations. Gradually, and consequently, the process takes us all forward and improves our standard of living in small but significant measures. In other cases, there are bursts of disruptive innovation like when Henry Ford decided to make cars in a society that only had horse carts for yardstick. These types of innovations disrupt everything and create new playing field altogether. However, all innovations, incremental or disruptive, happen when someone takes a previous idea or challenge and sees it through a new lens or in a different context. In other words, the person applies an idea in the new context - operates at the intersection of the original thought and the new environment.

Innovation at intersections have never been more active than the recent times. With easy access to the technology and levelling of the playing field, all (be left out at your own peril!) corporates are seeking ways to create value through MASSCLUSIVITY (exclusivity and luxury for the masses). As we move from history of scarcity into an era of abundance, the innovations are galloping along many mega-trends such as Internet of Things (sensors), Big Data, Cloud, Mobility, Social, Robotics etc. However, as expected, most potent innovations are happening at the intersection of these mega-trends. In the following paras I will explain my thoughts further.

Mobility intersects everything:

Since the introduction of iPads / iPhones, we have become more handheld centric society as the devices to consume IT have grown beyond the traditional desktops and laptops to smartphones. More than 80% of world population is now equipped with a mobile phone which have become the main touch point and mobile apps the medium to stay connected with the consumers. Our mobile phones have also become more powerful - modern smartphones have more processing power than NASA in 1969!

Buoyant technology landscape has meant that the employee and customer demands are evolving rather rapidly. Consumers are becoming more sophisticated and they demand enhanced experience at every touch point. Corporates are forced to revisit how they reach out and how they engage with these two critical stakeholders. In response, the corporates are combining the mobility megatrend with social, big data, cloud and IoT to deepen consumer engagement. They use the mobile apps; backed by social data, big data, sensors (IoT); to reach out and improve their understanding of customer preferences, expectations and needs. Through mobile-social-cloud intersection, the businesses allow employees to access corporate data anywhere and improve engagement with better social collaborative tools. A lot of these mobile apps and the data used by them reside on the cloud infrastructure. For consumers, these apps provide real-time contextual relevance.

These apps also turn mobiles into a lot more than a mere phone. By 2015, we expect more than 500 million people worldwide to use their mobile phones as metro / tube and bus tickets (source: https://digitallife.neolabels.com). They are personal assistants; traffic guides; health assistant; photographer; navigators; personal trainers and a lot lot more.

Cloud and Big Data:

We are beginning to see the concept of Big Data as a Service (BDaaS). By that I mean the intersection of cloud infrastructure and cloud services and Big Data capability and functionality. Crashing of memory costs and deluge of connected devices (IoE) has allowed organizations to amass extreme (exponential) amounts of data. In order to extract intelligence from this data, corporates embellish it with external data (social), unstructured data (emails, telephone calls) and build models to predict future scenarios. Many vendors now provide BDaaS on the cloud which has become a viable, mainstream solution for on-demand data processing, storage analysis, modelling and distribution. The combination of cloud and big data can not only create useful insights, but also can create incredible value. It definitely introduces multiplier effect at this intersection.

Big data and new enterprise cloud architectures are revolutionizing every industry in every country in the world. Intel and EMC host a new WebTV show called “At The Intersection” that finds and explores the cutting edge of these trailblazing new technologies. The channel boasts of more than 12 million hits daily and more than 9 terabytes of data generated per episode. Gosh, is that not amazing!

IoT and Standards

It’s predicted that by the year 2020, 50 to 100 billion things will be electronically connected to make what we call as the Internet of Things (IoT). These objects or things will communicate many different types of information with one another. In recent past, it used to be that our phone, the alarm clock, the fridge, TV and the AC were each distinct devices, manufactured in very different environments. Not anymore, though. To me this is the beginning of the blurring of the boundaries of physical and the digital worlds. Smart Homes, Smart Cities, Smart Airports are some examples of connected environments where the physical worlds and the digital worlds entwine.

With so many things capable of being connected throughout the world, the success of IoT will strongly depend on standardization. Many organizations are joining together and forming consortiums to establish standards for this intersection. These consortiums hope to deliver the specifications / standards for hassle-free data flow between devices, regardless of the OS, device type or wireless communication technology.

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Thanks for reading. All thoughts are welcome.

My website: www.gauravgarg216.com
Twitter Handle: @gauravgarg216