Leo Bottary is a well-known author and keynote speaker. He’s also a long-time friend of mine. For several years, I had the opportunity to tour the Vistage conferences as they toured the U.S. I nope to experience the opportunity to meet CEOs and senior executives on their home turf and hear their challenges and accomplishments again soon. Since I last spent time with him, Leo has launched a popular podcast, Year of the Peer, that explores the latest trends driving…
Contrary to Its Name, Digital Transformation is not Digital-First: An Interview with Steve Snyder of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority
“To thrive in a digital economy, create a safe and empowered environment for employees to learn and take risks.” Technology may be at the core of digital transformation, but itâs severely limited in its promise if it’s not influenced by human beings. Yet, every day, companies invest in digital transformation strategies and roadmaps that are absent of human-centered insights and perspectives. On this  episode of Digital Outliers, I sit down with Steve Snyder, CIO, Massachusetts Convention Center Authority to talk…
Brand Innovation and Customer Experience Design: An Interview with Comcast’s Chris Satchell
The potential for breakthrough innovation is at its greatest when there’s purpose. And in an age of disruptive technology, humanity is becoming a killer app. Often in my research on digital transformation and innovation, I find the most compelling catalyst for finding purpose and accelerating change and improvement is customer experience (CX). Think about it. Who owns the customer experience? Yes. The customer owns it. That might seem like one big “duh.” But, believe it or note, many organizations are…
Innovation is a gift worth getting: Competing for the future starts with challenging business as usual
Every day when you get to the office, there is a surmountable volume of work that greets you. The list is usually pretty long, with calls to return, to do items stacked up, emails overflowing, meetings, marketing and sales planning to fill the pipeline. Itâs all in a dayâs work. But what if one day you woke up and noticed that the volume of work was notably less? Iâm sure youâd be relieved for a bit. But then each day,…
Boldly Go: The Confluence of Digital Transformation, Innovation, Culture and Experience
There are almost too many technology trends to track these days and it’s only getting more complicated to keep up. At some point, one must focus, dive deeper and learn. This year, I’m centering my research and speaking on a few different but complementary areas: Corporate Innovation Digital Transformation Digital Culture/Culture 2.0 X – Experience Design Recently, I had the opportunity to present a combination of all of the above at the RocketSpace Corporate Innovation Summit hosted by Docusign. It…
Digital Transformation Needs Change Agents and Leadership Not Just Technology
Over the last year, I partnered with BMC on a new podcast series called “Digital Outliers.” We hand-picked 11 incredible guests working in critical areas of digital transformation and the future of work including IT, humanities and innovation. The result was humbling. Each episode dives into the trends shaping how companies work and compete. Our guests also offer prescriptive guide points for executives and change agents driving digital efforts to modernize culture, productivity, innovation, and experiences. My first guest in Episode 1…
Innovation Begins with a Shift in Perspective; It’s Personal
The team at Ode Management asked me to introductory video for their audience of event planners, speaker bureaus and agents. The topic was innovation and my mission was to keep it casual and brief, with a target length of two minutes. I guess I was too excited. On my first take, I overshot that goal by 10 minutes and needed to re-record it. However, I couldn’t bring myself to delete this though! Instead, I wanted to share it with you here. This video was meant…
Why tech companies are uniting to fight Trumpâs immigration ban
In February 2017, My good friend Matt Kapko of CIO asked a few tech pundits, “Why tech companies are uniting to fight Trumpâs immigration ban?” The result was published here. A group of 127 technology companies, including Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Snap and Twitter, filed an amicus brief (official friend-of-the-court brief) in the pending lawsuits opposing the administration’s executive order. Per the filing, the heavy hitting tech consortium attested that immigration is core to technology innovation. âImmigrants make many…
Culture is Either the Roadblock or Highway to Innovation – We Need Leadership not Management
After studying customer experience, digital transformation and innovation for so many years, I’ve found that the next big thing in business (r)evolution is culture. The other most interesting thing I’ve learned is that while businesses are readying or investing in change, the definition of meaningful culture is elusive or inconsequential. Yet, company culture is either the number one catalyst or inhibitor to progress. Culture needs a champion. As Peter Drucker once famously said, âCulture eats strategy for breakfastâŚâ Like most aspects in business, management…
Dear Startups: Disrupt Yourself To Disrupt The Industry
Here’s something you may not know about me…Before I focused on studying digital transformation, innovation, culture and digital anthropology, I used to exclusively work with enterprise tech companies and startups going back to the (gasp) early 90s. I’ve been through Web 1.0, 2.0, the rise of digital, social, mobile, cloud and every SW/HW/online/app consumer and enterprise trend in between. In all my years, I’ve probably helped launch/advise over 1,000 companies. I’ve even started and exited a few myself (note: I…
