Satya said to me, “I want you to send me trends & insights for digital transformation.”
I was a deer in headlights.
Is the Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, asking me to share my trends & insights on digital transformation going forward?
Yep.
I had just walked Satya through my mental model for driving digital transformation at the whiteboard.
I asked Satya, “Send them to you? or to your Chief of Staff? or to ???”
He said, “Send them to me… and to my Chief of Staff, too.”
And so I did.
And for the years that followed, I shared with Satya stories, scenarios, trends, and insights on digital transformation and lessons learned in business innovation from around the world.
A lot of leaders are struggling with how to figure out their future.
I hope that sharing my approach helps you find your way forward, or at least “trend” in the right direction.
Note that today I focus on teaching you how to fish, rather than giving you fish (my examples are simply illustrative).
Executive Summary of How I Created Trends & Insights for Satya
- If you want to be more entrepreneurial, then master trends & insights
- Your ability to see around the corners and anticipate the future is a skill you can build
- Insights are the “building blocks” of innovation
- The point of figuring out trends & insights is to create better building blocks for innovation
- One of the most valuable reasons for mapping out trends is to create a shared vocabulary and mental model
- If you do trends well, you can see patterns of change must faster
- If you do trends well, you can anticipate and predict changes better in the market
- The market is a reflection of the consumer’s mind (Or customer, client, patient, student, etc.)
- All things are created twice, first in the mind, then in the market
- To win in the market, win the slots in the mind
- To be relevant to the market, learn how business drivers are changing based on triggers and events
- The more empathy you have for your customer’s pains, needs, and desired outcomes, the faster you can sort and sift through trends
- Business drivers are the basis for brilliant business breakthroughs… there is a challenge in the market or the world, what’s your response?
- Pro tip – if you build 3 Horizon maps, McKinsey style, the key for the 3rd horizon is to identify disruptive trends that will create shifts in the market and then do small business experiments to validate future value today
Why I Research Trends & Insights to Figure Out the Future
Before I present key trends & insights, I need to do my research. Lots of it. The presentation part is still always a challenge, but the heavy lifting I do is researching and synthesizing the trends into useful insights.
I have a pretty deep methodology for researching trends & insights. (In fact, so deep that I got pretty good at predicting future products that would show up on the market, well ahead of time.)
But today I’m not going to go into my research approach.
I’m going to go into WHY I research trends and then walk through how I present them.
Long ago I fell in love with the idea that it’s far more fruitful to create the future than try to predict it. (to be clear, I do both… and my best lesson is that it’s better to have multiple versions of the future so you can play with more possibilities) Note that even if you don’t feel you can create or shape the future, you can still explore emerging trends and that alone gives you a huge advantage in work and life. (Plus, it gives you great conversation starters at parties!)
But more importantly, you gain a lens of insight and foresight that helps you make sense of the world with skill. With this lens of the future, you get surprised less, you can build better things, you can make better bets, and you can connect the dots and exploit opportunities.
This is why I say it’s more fruitful to create the future–It gets you in the game of work and life.
You can create YOUR future better with trends and insights.
Trying to Create the Future Builds Empathy with the Future
The beauty is this – when you try to create your future versus just passively observing you build more empathy with the future.
This active approach of trying to create and shape the future creates deeper empathy with the future that you don’t get any other way.
Remember that all things are created twice, first in your mind, then in the world.
And one way to practice creating the future is to simply mock it up visually.
Simply storyboard it–Storyboard the future.
Bring the future to life.
You will get better at this over time, and your mind is a great practice pad if you use it.
You have infinite space in your mind to dream up how you can make the world better, and actually experiment with it.
Don’t ever let anybody take this power of your imagination away.
And don’t lose it by forgetting to use it.
Trying to Create the Future Helps You Practice Mindfulness
Another surprising benefit of trying to create the future is practicing mindfulness.
When I practice creating the future, it helps me both see things the way they are, and to see things the way they could be.
To see things the way they could be, I use my “Imagine If” approach.
I use “Imagine If”, fairly often, to wonder and wander around while I explore the art of the possible.
I find I pay more attention to little things in my day, whether it’s driving somewhere, eating at a restaurant, shopping somewhere, or watching a movie, etc.
I pay attention to pain points and friction and the end-to-end experiences. I notice when things are off or don’t feel quite right.
And all of this deep empathy I am building is genuine insight that will help me prioritize drivers and trends.
You can’t prioritize effectively without empathy.
While trying to create the future you build more empathy, you get more mindful, and you make more meaning.
How I Share My Trends & Insights
When I share trends & insights, it can look so simple, as if the world was put into a nice and tidy box.
But it’s not.
It takes a lot of work to really learn what the key trends and insights are that matter, that will shape the market, shape the future of business, and change how we experience work and life.
I found a very simple approach to make trends more useful and actionable is through stories and scenarios. And I try to get to the short set of the biggest drivers of change.
Here is a rough summary of how I share my trends & insights in a more useful way:
- Looking Back – I start with a Look Back. I like to use the Principle of Contrast by first taking a Look Back over the past year, and telling a simple story of what was last year about? What were the top scenarios that created value or changed how the value was created? Think of it as an exercise in coming up with 3 highlights of the last year that help portray where the action was. This sets the stage to look for key shifts in terms of the next year (or quarter or whatever time frame you want to use).
- Looking Forward – I then take a Look Forward. What is a simple story of what this next year will be about? This is not meant to be complete. This is meant to be a conversation starter. This is not meant to knock the ball out of the park. This is meant to first get us in the same ballpark, so we can play the game.
- Stories of Transformation – I then work my way through Stories of Transformation. My approach here is to review stories through the lens of “The Challenge, The Change, and the Impact”. That’s the framework I use to help people tell better, more insightful, more actionable stories. It’s important to quickly know what the Challenge is because that helps relate to it, even if it’s a totally different industry or domain. Note that in this article, I’m just sharing examples of extracted insights, that would serve as the lead “hook” that would be worth diving into the stories.
- Business Value at a Glance – This is the balcony view of the high level of the drivers in the market, the key areas of focus for executives, and the business benefits leaders are focused on.
With that in mind, here are examples of how I share trends & insights by industry.
A Quick Tour of Example Trends & Insights by Industry
Let’s take a quick tour of some mockups for illustrative purposes.
I said it before, but I will say it again, these are really just mock examples to illustrate how I present my Trends & Insights, so you get a sense of what it could look like.
You might want to decorate yours with pretty pictures and fancy charts and graphs.
I see people do it all the time.
I tend to keep things pretty raw and bare bones so that it’s easy to pivot and easy to mash up with other work and easy to integrate with other efforts. Plus, because I stay focused on the skeleton of trends & insights, it means I retain a lot of agility and can experiment with multiple presentation formats and structures.
The goal is to make it easy to have better conversations about the future and to turn insight into action.
Example Automotive Trends & Insights for Digital Transformation
| Looking Back… | Last year, we saw a focus on connecting with customers, innovating, managing complex supply chains, and making manufacturing processes more efficient.
As a result, we saw automotive companies reimagine the driver and passenger experiences in vehicles, including ongoing engagement with the dealer, personalized guidance, context-based marketing, and productivity We saw automotive companies reimagining their employee experience by providing platforms and tools that support broad collaboration, knowledge management, sharing, and rapid prototyping. We saw automotive companies reimagine their operations with connected manufacturing ecosystems, reducing waste, reducing downtime, reducing maintenance costs, and enabling remote management. |
| Looking Forward… | This year, we see automotive companies focused on new competition, retail experiences, and the rise of the market for fit-for-purpose mobility solutions and alternatives to traditional vehicle ownership. Customers are also seeking to empower drivers and passengers with richer, more personalized self-service experiences, and innovation continues to be a focus for driving competitive advantage.
As a result, we see automotive companies reimagine their customer experience by investing in personalized mobility services, continuing to evolve the driver and rider in-vehicle experience, supporting communication and productivity, increasing safety, and providing seamless interaction with the dealer, partners, and merchants. We see automotive companies reimagine their employee experience in manufacturing by investing in human-robot collaboration, enabling efficient, close, cooperative manufacturing and assembly work, with humans and robots learning from each other. We see automotive companies reimagine their operations by investing in integrating their supply chain to precisely track components and sourcing, generate greater insight for improving efficiency, adapt with agility, and reduce waste. We see automotive companies reimagining product development processes and strategies by providing channels for customers, dealers, employees, and suppliers to share ideas and proactively engage in our product design and development. |
| Stories of Transformation |
|
| Business Value at Glance | Business Drivers
Key Focus Areas for Executives
Benefits
|
Example Banking Trends & Insights for Digital Transformation
| Looking Back,,, | Last year, we saw a focus on meeting customer expectations for mobile and online banking, increasing customer insights and personalizing service, managing risk, and enabling partners to use bank services.
As a result, we saw banks reimagining the customer experience to be seamless and to provide services and support anywhere, anytime. We saw banks reimagining how to enable employees to proactively identify customer needs and collaborate more effectively with colleagues to provide service and to market offers. We saw banks reimagining operations with data insights for more effectively managing risk. We saw banks reimagining how to broaden |
| Looking Forward,,, | This year, we see banks focusing on personalized customer experiences, conversational interactions with intelligent assistants to support both customers and employees, seamless transactions, and new revenue opportunities from banking and non-banking partnerships.
As a result, banks are investing in personalizing customer engagement, providing trusted advisors, as well as AI and digital assistants, to help guide customers, personalize products, make investments, spend wisely, and plan for the future. We see banks investing in digital personal assistants to empower bankers with insight and autonomy, and to enable them to easily obtain the information and guidance they need, when they need it. We see banks investing in capabilities to digitize multi-party transactions within their business networks, making transactions faster and more secure. We see banks investing in ways to seamlessly participate in the everyday lives of customers and to connect them with partner offerings, and add value from a larger business network. |
| Stories of Transformation |
|
| Business Value at a Glance | Business Drivers
Key Focus Areas for Executives
Business Benefits
|
Example Education Trends & Insights for Digital Transformation
| Looking Back… | Last year, we saw a focus on expanding the reach of institutions, delivering curriculum using digital channels, enabling students to collaborate and share ideas, and augmenting computing power to expand research quality and opportunities.
As a result, we saw schools reimagining student engagement by investing in analytics to proactively identify students needing additional support, personalize programs to improve student performance and success, reduce student attrition, and improve teacher effectiveness. We saw schools investing in an ecosystem and apps to support students in effectively planning, connecting, collaborating, researching, and gaining insight from others, whether physically or virtually on campus. We saw schools reimagine the scale with which they could conduct research and invest in on-demand unlimited statistical and computing capabilities, and become known for research credibility, precision, time to results, and innovation. |
| Looking Forward… | This year, we see schools focusing on augmenting student collaboration using many channels, using analytics to understand students’ needs and identify strategies for improving their performance, reducing operational costs with a connected campus, and offering a dynamic and intelligent curriculum and learning methods adapted to each student.
As a result, schools are reimagining student collaboration for not only enabling students to work together and learn from each other but also for students to obtain insights about projects that support creative and innovative solutions. We see schools investing in descriptive and prescriptive capabilities of AI and ML, and using models that continuously learn how to optimally change a student’s behavior and curriculum for overcoming problems and achieving better individual and classroom outcomes. We see schools reimagining institutional and facility operations, creating a connected campus to support proactive maintenance, increased awareness and safety, and optimized the use of facilities. We see schools reimagining ways to precisely fulfill the educational and career needs of each student; to use the prescriptive nature of AI to personalize learning, teaching, and career guidance; and to adapt the student journey to the interests, strengths, and needs of each student. |
| Stories of Transformation |
|
| Business Value at a Glance | Business Drivers
Key Focus Areas for Executives
Business Benefits
|
Example Healthcare Trends & Insights for Digital Transformation
| Looking Back… | Last year, we saw a focus on serving a growing patient population with chronic care burdens, fragmented patient care journeys and experiences, mergers, and acquisitions, and new challenges for managing resources and generating revenue in the context of new financing models.
As a result, we saw health providers investing in enabling patients to reach care providers and receive guidance and treatment when needed, to more easily access medical records and information, and to have improved and more personalized patient experiences. We saw health providers reimagining how members of care teams, and providers across the care continuum, could be best utilized and could easily access and share data and insights, and coordinate care in real-time. We saw health providers reimagining operations through advanced analysis of clinical and population health data to identify disease patterns, predict outbreaks, determine medical best practices, and improve overall clinical and operational efficiencies. We saw health providers reimagining care delivery by investing in the early identification of patients at risk, using smart devices to generate and convey data, and improving treatment regimens to reduce the risk of hospitalization. |
| Looking Forward… | This year, we see health providers focusing on improving the patient experience and providing care anywhere, adapting the patient journey to new treatments, providing care teams with the training, solutions, and data they need to coordinate care in real-time, and using analytics to develop personalized, precision therapies.
As a result, health providers are investing in ways to keep patients and family members more informed, provide them better guidance, provide care anytime, anywhere, and help patients be more engaged in making decisions We see health providers investing in an ecosystem that enables clinicians to collaborate, have access to the right information at the right time for treating patients improves support and integration of medical device data, provides simulation-based training, accelerates decision-making and time-to-treatment based on AI and data insights, and enables care capacity to be scaled using new staffing on-demand options. We see health providers reimagining operations and investing in data management and analytics to gain insight to identify disease patterns, manage population health, and improve operational efficiencies and clinical outcomes. We see health providers transforming care by harnessing the power of data from sources such as patient smart devices, medical devices, EMR, and community health data to provide personalized medicine and improved treatments, identify at-risk patients, and drive clinical innovation. |
| Stories of Transformation |
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| Business Value at a Glance | Business Drivers
Key Focus Areas for Executives
Business Benefits
|
Example Media Trends & Insights for Digital Transformation
| Looking Back… | Last year, we saw a focus on the rising competition from digital providers and distributors providing better value for advertisers, and developing new products and channels to increase revenue across an increasingly fragmented ecosystem. In addition, we saw a trend toward new business models based less on ad-supported content, and more on subscription revenue.
As a result, we saw media companies investing in capabilities for gathering and analyzing data to gain better audience insights, improve audience engagement and loyalty, increase advertising value, and improve marketing and sales. We saw media companies reimagining how employees create and deliver relevant and inclusive content, and investing in collaboration platforms and workflow solutions. |
| Looking Forward… | This year, we see media companies focusing on personalizing relevant consumer experiences and products; the increasing importance of building subscription revenue; intelligent content production; using the cloud for unique content creation and distribution, and adopting new metrics and business models.
As a result, we see media companies investing in data management, analytics, and AI to personalize audience experiences, customize products, make smart recommendations, provide relevant advertising, and increase audience loyalty. We see media companies investing in global, multi-lingual collaboration throughout the content creation and distribution lifecycle to make workflows seamless and spur creativity, anytime, anywhere. We see media companies reimagining content distribution and investing in real-time, unified, cloud-based TV and online playout from the cloud. We see media companies reimagining their offerings, providing diverse niche programming and content libraries, and investing in direct-to-consumer content and entertainment while increasing monetization via premium advertising and subscriptions. |
| Stories of Transformation |
|
| Business Value at a Glance | Business Drivers
Key Focus Areas for Executives
Business Benefits
|
Example Retail Trends & Insights for Digital Transformation
| Looking Back… | Last year, we saw a focus on customer demand for omni-channel customer experiences, the high level of customer churn, and inefficiencies in inventory and supply chain management.
As a result, we saw retailers investing in omni-channel capabilities to provide a seamless and personalized customer experience, to better understand customer needs, and to supply the right products at the right time. We saw retailers reimagining how sales associates could spend more time with customers, provide personalized assistance and incentives, and increase sales. We saw retailers reimagine ways to optimize operations by investing in analytics for anticipating demand, reducing waste, and enabling employees to make better decisions. |
| Looking Forward… | This year, we see retailers focused on continuing to evolve customer experience as a differentiator, using analytics to generate customer insights and business intelligence, and improving supply chain agility and insight. As a result, we see retailers investing in providing customers with a holistic experience of multi-platform, multi-channel, and multi-stage seamless shopping journeys, and adapting offers and campaigns to customer needs, location, and behavior. We see retailers reimagine how to empower sales associates to delight customers by understanding and anticipating their needs. We see retailers reimagine their operations by investing in supply chain capabilities to provide lightning fast fulfillment and real-time flexible delivery. We see retailers reimagining their retail store models to bring the ease of digital shopping and the experience of brick and mortar together. |
| Stories of Transformation |
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| Business Value at a Glance | Business Drivers
Key Focus Areas for Executives
Business Benefits
|
Example Telecommunications (Telco) Trends & Insights for Digital Transformation
| Looking Back… | Last year, we saw a focus on improving customer experience and satisfaction, generating new revenue from digital products and services, increasing the customer base, and reducing churn.
As a result, we saw telcos reimagine their customer experience by investing in Omni-Channel Customer Experience to provide a seamless and consistent customer experience anywhere, anytime. We saw telcos reimagining their employee experience by investing in service productivity, enabling service reps and field personnel to deliver more pleasant and personalized experiences to customers. We saw telcos reimagine their operations by investing in analytics, AI, and Machine Learning to better understand their customers, and to generate insights for marketing, services, and customer retention. |
| Looking Ahead… | This year, we see telcos focused on adapting to consumers’ increasing use of data hungry internet and mobile apps, improving customer experience and loyalty, building agile and efficient operations, mergers and acquisitions, and generating revenue from new products, services, and partnerships.
As a result, we see telcos reimagining the customer experience by making investments to deeply understand their customers, provide intelligent customer service, delivering deeply personalized experiences and enabling customers to engage confidently in easy and natural ways. We see telcos reimagine their workforce experience to attract and retain digital skills by investing in seamless collaboration, enabling broad collaboration and open innovation across organizational boundaries for employees, suppliers, and business partners. We see telcos reimagine their operations by investing in the cloudification of their infrastructure to create a hybrid cloud environment to create agility, improve operational efficiency and enable new operating models that support the scale delivery of new digital services. We see telcos reimagining their product and service lines, offering services and products a la carte and on-demand, investing in digital platforms and ecosystems for monetizing new digital services, innovating new business models in the sector and beyond, and aggregating value from new partnerships. |
| Stories of Transformation |
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| Business Value at a Glance | Business Drivers
Key Focus Areas for Executives
Business Benefits
|
Explore Business Drivers to Build Empathy for the Market
I find that learning the drivers in more detail always helps to build empathy for the market. I care most about shifts in values that create shifts or changes in the market.
It’s about understanding ultimately what is triggering or driving behavior change.
Here is an example of looking at drivers of healthcare innovation:
- Growing Population, aging & chronic care burdens each day, there are 10,000 baby boomers retiring and they will need more and more care with aging.
- Change Healthcare Financing Model: “Pay for service” model leads to higher and higher costs. So, it is not working properly. “Pay for Quality” makes more sense from both a cost and a health point of view. “Pay for Quality” will dramatically shift cost model and also patient overall health. This drives the industry direction greatly.
- Medical and Care Delivery Innovation: Medical and healthcare innovation is at an unprecedented pace. These innovations come from new technologies and the reuse of technologies from other industries. These innovations offer another key driver for changes.
- Strained budgets, shortage of physicians and nurses, lower reimbursement rates: Due to the shortage, technologies will and must be leveraged to compensate for the shortage. Technology will accelerate the effectiveness of doctors and nurses. And it also will offer analytics which will help both physicians and patients in faster and better care through insights and analytics.
- Technology Silos and legacy technologies: Healthcare providers are using IT systems in which sharing of information is not easy. This makes it difficult for easy interoperability of data. Also, the majority of the Healthcare providers are using legacy systems that are either non-compliant or do not support the interoperability of data. Hospitals now require newer technology solutions that provide greater regulatory compliance and easy sharing and access of data
Again, this is simply for sake of example, this isn’t a real example. If this was a real example, I would do some research to find interesting stories and data to look for key insights and patterns.
But you get the idea. Don’t just know the driver, understand what the driver really means or could mean from a market and business change perspective.
This will help you adapt better and stay relevant, and help you solve the right problems.
Best Books on Trends
Here I’m sharing books that helped shape my philosophy, my approach, my perspective, my insights or at least had some interesting insights I could use:
- Business Trends in Practice: The 25+ Trends That are Redefining Organizations, by Bernard Marr
- Gamechangers: Creating Innovative Strategies for Business and Brands; New Approaches to Strategy, Innovation and Marketing, by Peter Fisk
- Influencers and Revolutionaries: How Innovative Trailblazers, Trends and Catalysts Are Transforming Business, by Sean Pillot de Chenecey
- No Ordinary Disruption: The Four Global Forces Breaking All the Trends, by Richard Dobbs, James Manyika, Jonathan Woetzel
- Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future, by Rohit Bhargava
- Secrets of Economic Indicators, The: Hidden Clues to Future Economic Trends and Investment Opportunities, by Bernard Baumohl
- Tech Trends in Practice: The 25 Technologies that are Driving the 4th Industrial Revolution, by Bernard Marr
- The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies, by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
Call to Action
- Practice your ability to predict the future by exploring multiple futures and mapping out disruptive trends
- Practice your ability to learn shifts in values by learning what people buy more of, or buy less of, and what they talk about
- Practice turning trends into meaningful insights by using “Imagine If” to explore the art of the possible for work, business, and life
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