“All grown-ups were once children –though few of them remember it.”

-- Antoine de Saint Exupery, The Little Prince

Recently, I attended one of my favorite events -- the EG conference in Monterey, California. Speakers ranged from musicians to rocket scientists to pickpockets and everything in between. Embracing the theme of “everything is learning, learning is everything,” the presenters encouraged us to embrace our inner child’s imagination and curiosity. Amanda Hill, CBO of BBC Earth was a particular inspiration. She reminded me of many things that we here at Cisco are striving to achieve, especially as we reimagine the Internet of Everything (IoE), a world in which everything is connected.

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Tags: #EGconf, #IoE, BBC, cloud, collaboration, EG, innovation, Internet of Everything, IoE, jabber, learning, WebEX

Preparing for tomorrow’s panel at Fast Company’s Innovation Uncensored event in New York has been an interesting process. That’s because I’ve been asked to describe how I predict the future rather than what the future will look like. This topic caused me to focus my attention inward, rather than looking outward as I usually do.

Accurately predicting the future can be challenging. As Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist who received the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics, once said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”

While predicting the future isn’t an exact science, it can be accomplished with surprising accuracy. Here’s how I do it. Read More »

Tags: Fast Company’s Innovation Uncensored, futurist, innovation, Internet of Everything, IoE, Niels Bohr, predicting the future

Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers penned a message for 2013 college graduates in the San Jose Mercury News this weekend. Chambers will receive an honorary doctorate from San Jose State University on Friday, April 26th and offered these words of advice for new graduates…and all those of us looking to succeed in the 21st Century: “Never stop learning.”

In part, he wrote:

… “In speaking of new graduates, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman recently wrote that “given the pace of change today, even they will have to reinvent, re-engineer, and reimagine that job much more often than their parents if they want to advance in it.” He says these young people must be “innovation ready,” not just able to find a job, but invent one.

San Jose State University is part of this reinvention. This month, the university announced an expansion to its collaboration with edX, the not-for-profit online learning enterprise founded by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The result is that online courses will be made available to as many as eleven other California State University (CSU) campuses and thousands more students across California.” …

… Everyday across the world we are seeing this type of innovative teaching and learning, setting the stage for a different kind of lifelong training.

That’s what it takes in today’s fast moving, data driven Internet of Everything world. All of us must be innovation-ready, and realize that career growth will go to those who continue to leverage the 21st Century Mind by adapting, discovering, and learning new skills. To all graduates, I say congratulations and offer these three words of advice: Never stop learning.”

You can read his full op-ed here.

Tags: 21st Century Mind, advice to graduates, Harvard, IoE, john chambers, MIT, neverstoplearning, SJSU

We’re entering the age of the Internet of Everything (IoE), which is about connecting the Internet to the physical world (people, process, data, and things). We’re early in the process, with approximately 10 billion devices already connected. By 2020, Cisco projects that this number will reach 50 billion “things.” One of the key areas of impact identified in the Cisco Internet of Everything Economy report, “Embracing the Internet of Everything To Capture Your Share of $14.4 Trillion,” is customer experience. The report estimates that IoE-driven customer experience advances — based on increasing customer lifetime value and growing market share by adding more customers — will drive $3.7 trillion of the estimated $14.4 trillion of IoE Value at Stake globally over the next decade.

IoE is enabling organizations to engage with their customers in whole new ways and to create new business models. IoE is all about making new connections possible: interactions among people, and between people and devices. It’s also about the ability of devices to communicate with each other, with applications, and with digital services, and then empowering those technologies to take action based on these communications.

When more of the world is connected, expect the delivery of your customer experience to shift beyond the boundaries of your current web and mobile sites, and past the walls of your offices and stores. New technologies connected to the Internet — including things like Google Glasses, IP-enabled lightbulbs, new gesture technologies, and sensors — will form the foundation of IoE. However, it is the data stream produced by all of these new connections that will have the greatest impact on your relationship with your customers.

With IoE, you will be better able to build customer loyalty and delight — creating emotional brand connections, personalizing the experience, and targeting offerings based on the data generated by IoE. Just think about what the IoE-powered future might look like across your customer journey.

• Transform the process of building awareness and encouraging purchases,by bringing together data from various sources, including sensors that pick up signals to help anticipate customer needs. Target these customers in real time based on history, location, and activity.
  • Apps move from performing cross-brand product comparisons to enabling customers to determine where to find items based on criteria they set, including best price, product ratings, and the most convenient retail location to shop (automatically taking traffic and wait times into consideration).
  • Connected vending machines, digital signage, and other surfaces will recognize customers and deliver customized content at the point of need.
  • Items will be ordered on — and delivered to — a customer’s mobile phone, wherever it is located.

• Post-sale, connect with the personal side of customers’ lives to help them achieve their goals. This will enable you to add post-sale value to create new revenue streams and drive new insights for innovation. Look for ways to be proactive, anticipate and prevent issues before they happen, or make suggestions that will improve a customer’s life.
  • Mobile devices or sensors react to the environment and are set to receive personalized messages placed by you or your customers’ social circles.
  • Sensors on clothing monitor customers’ health, enabling them to analyze and collect information about themselves, optimize their personal behaviors, and alert caregivers when there is an issue.
  • Connected cars move beyond monitoring an automobile’s performance to collecting data about customers’ driving habits, providing instant insurance quotes, and communicating with things along a route

These capabilities can be offered as services, and the great thing is they can be updated and improved over time. Companies like Nike are already way ahead with products like Nike Fuel. Nike has secured a role in my life around my fitness goals, and given all the history it has collected about me, I am not likely to switch to a competitor anytime soon.

If you want to be in a position to tap in to the potential of IoE, it’s time to get thinking about the role your brand will play in this new world. One of the first steps in designing your customer experience is good information about the needs and trends of your customers. Cisco is helping through primary research such as the Connected Customer Experience Report for Health Care, with more industries to come.  Please also follow us on the new Cisco Customer Experience Facebook page and Twitter for updated information.

In Part 2 of this blog series, I’ll provide specific details on how to get started in realizing the benefits of IoE for improving customer experience. In the meantime, I’d love your thoughts on how IoE will redefine customer experience as we know it.

Tags: Cisco, customer journey, customer loyalty, customerexperience, IBSG, Internet of Everything, IoE, value at stake

Cisco Chief Technology and Strategy Officer Padmasree Warrior offers a commentary on the Internet of Everything today on CNBC.com.

She states in part:

“The Economist magazine cover story recently explored whether innovation was dead. Is it possible that after five years of a tough economy with a slow recovery that we’re done when it comes to new ideas? …

… There are indicators now that we’re about to launch into the next era, driven by what people are calling the “Internet of Everything” or IoE. It’s the next stage of Internet growth with the intelligent connection of people, process, data, and things. …

There is a lot at stake here: $14.4 trillion to be exact—just for the private sector. That’s the amount that our research shows could be gained globally in the next decade from the intelligent connections.” …

Read her full commentary here.

Additionally, read Cisco’s white paper on the Internet of Everything…and, our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document.

Tags: $14.4 trillion, cnbc, innovation, Internet of Everything, IoE, padmasree warrior