Future of Business: Changing the Game through Simplification

06/25/14 • 57 min

Technology Revolution: The Future of Now

Today’s buzz: Simplification. Complexity is intensifying for businesses, communities and us as individuals. Is this what we really want or need? If the complexity trend perpetuates in established companies, at risk are the agility, adaptability, scalability, and cost-effectiveness that allow leaner, simpler organizations to compete better and win bigger. Before you try to recapture your long-gone simplicity via new organizational design, technology tools and business processes, first figure out how you got this way. If you don’t understand what caused the problem, how will you avoid repeating it? The experts speak. Suzanne Passante, Day & Zimmerman: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler” (Albert Einstein). Matt Healey, TBR: “Never confuse a clear view with a short distance.” David Fowler, SAP Services: “The most important things in life aren’t THINGS.” Join us for the Future of Business: Changing the Game through Simplification.

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Critical Thinking Part 2: To Tell the Truth

The buzz: Thinking. Increasingly, in-demand jobs require proficiency in critical thinking. Without it, how can a company validate the information it uses for decision making? Think about it. The experts speak. Dr. Mark Battersby, Professor: “Learning to think more critically involves developing practices that lead to more carefully thought-out, evidence-based decisions and judgments.” Dr. Sharon Bailin, Professor: “Critical thinkers are more committed to the process of being reasonable than to any particular view or position.” Shirley Calla, Masters Student: “I think the task of figuring out how to combine the best of conscious deliberation and instinctive judgment is one of the greatest challenges of our time” (Malcolm Gladwell). Emily Mui, SAP: “In this age of information overload and demand for instant response and gratification, it’s even more important to have good critical thinking skills so you can make good decisions.” Join us for Critical Thinking Part 2: To Tell the Truth.

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Frictionless Customer Experience: War Stories from the Trenches

Today’s buzz: Customer experience. Is technology the magic bullet to help you give customers everything they want and more – and thus ensure their loyalty? Not quite. Technology can indeed give you real-time insights to be relevant, to respond with agility and speed, to connect collaboratively and transact efficiently. But the perfectly seamless, frictionless customer experience can be elusive. The experts speak. Don Peppers, Peppers & Rogers Group: “Statistics show that customer loyalty is not well correlated with customer satisfaction. But customer disloyalty IS highly correlated with customer dissatisfaction.” Anthony Leaper, SAP: “Many companies believe technology is the only lubricant needed to enable a frictionless customer experience. The individual characteristics needed to deliver a frictionless experience are never consistent, so is its successful delivery to a customer simply guesswork or luck?” Join us for Frictionless Customer Experience: War Stories from the Trenches.