Welcome to my annual article featuring customer service and customer experience (CX) trends and predictions. This year is another two-part article divided into two specific categories. Part One features trends and predictions that have little or nothing to do with AI. It may be that technology, including AI, helps drive the trend, but the overarching concept is not specific to AI. Part Two (coming next week) will include my AI and technology predictions. With that in mind, here are the first five of my 10 predictions:
When it comes to customer service and CX, customers continue to be smarter. I’ve opened with this same trend for several years, and it is becoming more relevant each year. Our customers know what great customer service is. They don’t compare you to your direct competitor. Instead, they compare you to their favorite company or brand to do business with. That sets a subconscious benchmark for what they consider good service. Brands like Amazon, Apple, Costco, Ritz-Carlton and others known for delivering a great experience are who you are now compared to.
Proactive service will become a new competitive advantage. Convenience and speed have been important competitive differentiators. Now, we can add the concept of proactive service. Proactive service equates to “no service,” meaning customers don’t have to reach out because you’ve already fixed the problem or communicated with them before they needed to. For example, you receive an email or text message from your internet provider informing you of an outage, with updates on the progress they are making to repair the problem. Or the airline that informs you of a travel delay and automatically re-books you so you don’t have to pick up the phone and wait on hold to talk to an agent.
Customers will expect companies to value and respect their time. My annual customer service and CX research finds that the importance of a company valuing its customers’ time is increasingly important. Customers equate speed with respect, and anything that they consider a waste of time, such as waiting on hold, repeating themselves, being transferred numerous times or anything else that steals their time away, is inconvenient friction that will cause customers to switch to a competitor, hoping for a better experience.
Employees will expect the same experience internally that customers expect externally. Getting and keeping good employees has never been more important—and difficult. Customer experience starts on the inside of the organization. Treating employees the same way you want customers to be treated sets a standard. In addition, employees can’t deliver a great experience if they are struggling with broken systems, unclear processes and outdated tools. While I’ve written about this many times over the years, it seems to be one of the topics that comes up in almost every conversation I have with the leadership of a company.
Trust will be recognized as part of the customer experience. Of course, the customer expects you to do what you say you will do. It’s always been that way. Customers want to do business with a company that delivers what it promises, with integrity and aligned values. And when companies deliver a better customer experience, they earn greater trust from their customers. (According to my annual CX research, 83% of consumers said a good customer experience increases their trust in a company or brand.) However, no matter how friendly and nice a company treats its customers, if the customer doesn’t get what they expect or there are ethical issues, it’s game over.
Most of these trends and predictions shouldn’t surprise you. The customer’s knowledge and experience with companies that excel in CX play a role in putting these trends and predictions in the spotlight. To make these trends actionable, consider the following:
Don’t compare your service experience to your direct competition, but instead to your favorite companies to do business with outside of your industry.
Be proactive and fix problems or communicate with customers before they contact you.
Identify the friction that causes customers to “waste time,” and work to eliminate or mitigate the friction.
Treat your employees the way you want your customers to be treated. Your CX strategy starts on the inside of your company.
Do what you promise. Whenever a customer decides to do business with you, there is an implied contract. In addition, an ethical breach becomes a bigger issue than just losing one customer. It puts your company’s reputation in jeopardy.
These trends aren’t complicated, but they are important. When companies focus on what customers value most (ease, honesty and consistency), they earn trust, loyalty and repeat business.
This article was originally published on Forbes.com.
Image Credits: Shep Hyken
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If it feels to you like the world has shifted into overdrive of late, you’re not alone. As a futurist, I observe that we’ve crossed over from the familiar Information Age and have entered the Age of Acceleration. Since COVID, the pace of change has become exponential, rather than linear, increasing at an ever-increasing rate.
In the next ten years, we will experience more change than in the past hundred. That’s not hyperbole; it’s the reality of compounding and converging technological, geopolitical, social, and environmental forces.
These MegaForces of Change are rewriting the future in real time. They are creating new winners and losers, reshaping industries and institutions overnight. They are exposing how ill-prepared we are to navigate the whitewater rapids just ahead.
After three decades advising corporate managers around the world on strategies for driving growth through innovation, I’m shifting my practice. My new passion is to accelerate human flourishing in light of this accelerated age. My goal is simple: I want to assist not just managers but everybody to regain a sense of agency, purpose, and hope amidst the biggest deluge of change we’ve experienced in our lifetimes. In short, I aspire to change the direction of humanity by helping people change their mindset.
The World Is Changing — But So Can We
Yes, the world is changing crazily, but here’s the good news: the same forces that threaten to destabilize us also contain the seeds of renewal and abundance. From my research with hundreds of innovators, entrepreneurs, and futurists, I’ve found that what separates those who flourish from those who falter isn’t intelligence, resources, or position — it’s mental hygiene.
Among the seven mindsets I explore in Build a Better Future, two feel especially urgent today.
The first is the Preparedness Mindset — the discipline of scanning the horizon, challenging assumptions, and thinking several moves ahead. Prepared leaders don’t wait for the next crisis; they actively anticipate it. They train themselves and their teams to see weak signals of change before they become tidal waves.
When you start thinking like a futurist, something remarkable happens: you start thinking about the direction, implications, threats, and opportunities in change. You begin to see the connections between events rather than reacting to them one headline at a time. You learn to differentiate signals from noise. You stop being a passive consumer of the future and start proactively shaping it.
The discipline of forward-thinking prepares you to make decisions, manage risk, and allocate your attention to what matters most. You begin to pounce on opportunities earlier, adapt faster, and feel less anxious because you have a framework for making sense of the chaos. The future stops being an abstraction — and becomes something you influence, moment by moment.
From Overwhelm to Agency
The second mindset is what I call the Human Agency Mindset. As A.I. grows ever more capable, the winners will be those who focus on nurturing what makes us uniquely human: our empathy, creativity, moral judgment, and the ability to imagine future possibilities no machine can conceive.
We now possess technologies that our ancestors could scarcely imagine. We can split atoms, edit genes, and train machines to mimic human cognition. But as technological capabilities soar, our wisdom capabilities have lagged. The real question isn’t whether we can unleash a certain technology, but whether we should, and what the implications are. How to ensure that progress serves humanity, not the other way around, will be a huge issue going forward because we can’t outsource wisdom. We must cultivate it. The danger isn’t that AI will become “smarter” than us — it’s that we’ll stop exercising our own capacity for creative thought and reflection.
Reclaiming Our Dreams
At the book launch party in Santa Barbara, I told a story about starting as a young journalist working from a tiny San Fernando Valley apartment. It was so small, the joke was you had to go outside to change your mind. But I didn’t mind because I was on fire with how journalism allowed me to subsidize my curiosity. I interviewed and profiled the visionaries and thought leaders of that era, and the experience of being around these tomorrow-builders changed my life. The big thing I became aware of was the importance of mindset in realizing your potential, and in turning visions into reality.
Today, 40 years later, I believe we all need new mindsets for what’s ahead. We need loftier visions that transcend fear and fatalism and misinformation. We need to reclaim a vision of a world that works for all — a world where technology amplifies human creativity, where wisdom keeps pace with innovation, and where we dare to believe that we can solve even the most vexing problems.
With a new set of mindsets, we can see that our best days lie ahead. That our children and grandchildren are not resigned to live lives of quiet desperation. With renewed mindsets, we can believe that nothing about the future is written in stone. The future is what we make it. It’s not something to fear or flee from. It’s something we can build — one mindset, one decision, one act of imagination at a time.
Image credits: Pexels
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I recently worked with a European client to map their innovation challenges and opportunities, particularly focusing on how they align with global trends in leadership and team dynamics.
As businesses face increasingly complex challenges, innovation – especially in how teams are structured and how leaders respond to change – has become a critical differentiator for long-term success.
Below are some key trends that we are exploring further in this context. We plan to narrow these down to 4-6. Which ones do you think are the most important to keep in mind? And why?
1. Leadership Agility and Adaptive Decision-Making
Leaders today must navigate complex, fast-moving environments. One key innovation trend in leadership is the ability to shift between strategic, operational, and entrepreneurial mindsets. This agility allows leaders to respond to uncertainty while driving innovation forward, particularly in ambiguous or volatile conditions. Adaptive leadership enables organizations to experiment with new ideas while managing operational excellence.
2. Innovation as a Team-Driven Process
The top-down approach to innovation is giving way to more team-driven processes. Leaders are increasingly leveraging cross-functional teams that work in agile frameworks to co-create solutions. This decentralization not only improves innovation speed but also empowers teams by giving them ownership over the innovation process. Teams are no longer just executing on leadership directives; they are actively shaping organizational innovation strategies.
3. Purpose-Driven Leadership and Team Motivation
In the context of innovation, aligning leadership and team efforts with a larger organizational purpose is proving to be a powerful motivator. Purpose-driven leadership focuses on innovation that not only drives profitability but also addresses broader societal and environmental challenges. Teams motivated by a sense of purpose are more engaged and creative, which fosters a culture of continuous innovation.
4. Remote and Hybrid Collaboration for Innovation
With the rise of hybrid work models, teams are innovating how they collaborate remotely. Leadership needs to ensure that innovation thrives in distributed teams by adopting digital collaboration tools, fostering a culture of open communication, and using technology to bridge physical distances. Effective remote collaboration also involves maintaining team cohesion and ensuring that all voices are heard, regardless of location.
5. Building a Culture of Psychological Safety
For innovation to thrive, leaders must cultivate an environment where team members feel safe to take risks and share unconventional ideas. Psychological safety is essential for fostering creativity within teams, especially when it comes to innovation. Leaders who encourage experimentation and tolerate failure as part of the innovation process tend to build more resilient and dynamic teams.
6. Data-Driven Leadership and Innovation
Leaders and teams are increasingly leveraging data to drive innovation decisions. Data analytics and AI-powered insights are being used to forecast market trends, optimize team performance, and identify areas for innovation. By building data-driven cultures, organizations can make informed decisions faster and enhance both team dynamics and leadership effectiveness.
7. Diversity and Inclusion as Innovation Catalysts
Diverse teams bring a wider range of perspectives to the innovation process, which enhances creativity and problem-solving. Inclusive leadership that emphasizes the importance of diversity in innovation efforts not only reflects societal values but also produces better business outcomes. Diversity in teams accelerates the generation of new ideas and encourages out-of-the-box thinking.
8. Sustainability as a Leadership Priority
Sustainability has emerged as a top priority for leaders, impacting how teams innovate. Organizations are now focusing on sustainable innovations that address environmental concerns while also driving business growth. Leadership that prioritizes sustainability tends to inspire teams to develop long-term solutions that benefit both the organization and society at large.
9. Collaboration with External Partners
Open innovation models, where companies collaborate with external partners, startups, and even competitors, are becoming increasingly popular. Leaders are building ecosystems of innovation that go beyond internal teams, involving external stakeholders to co-develop new solutions. This trend broadens the scope of innovation and helps organizations tap into a wider pool of ideas and expertise.
10. Learning and Development for Innovation Skills
For teams to remain innovative, continuous learning and upskilling are essential. Leaders are now focusing on creating environments where team members can constantly update their skills in areas like AI, digital tools, and design thinking. By embedding a learning culture into the team’s DNA, organizations ensure they remain competitive in the ever-evolving innovation landscape.
A key observation for us is that innovation today requires a holistic approach, one that integrates leadership vision with team dynamics to foster environments where creativity and agility can thrive.
By narrowing down to the most impactful trends, we can better equip organizations to innovate effectively in a world that demands both speed and sustainability.
Image Credits: Stefan Lindegaard, Pexels
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At the beginning of each month, we will profile the ten articles from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Human-Centered Change & Innovation. Did your favorite make the cut?
But enough delay, here are January’s ten most popular innovation posts:
If you’re not familiar with Human-Centered Change & Innovation, we publish 4-7 new articles every week built around innovation and transformation insights from our roster of contributing authors and ad hoc submissions from community members. Get the articles right in your Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin feeds too!
SPECIAL BONUS: While supplies last, you can get the hardcover version of my first bestselling book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire for 44% OFF until Amazon runs out of stock or changes the price. This deal won’t last long, so grab your copy while it lasts!
Have something to contribute?
Human-Centered Change & Innovation is open to contributions from any and all innovation and transformation professionals out there (practitioners, professors, researchers, consultants, authors, etc.) who have valuable human-centered change and innovation insights to share with everyone for the greater good. If you’d like to contribute, please contact me.
P.S. Here are our Top 40 Innovation Bloggers lists from the last four years:
At the beginning of each month, we will profile the ten articles from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Human-Centered Change & Innovation. Did your favorite make the cut?
But enough delay, here are December’s ten most popular innovation posts:
If you’re not familiar with Human-Centered Change & Innovation, we publish 4-7 new articles every week built around innovation and transformation insights from our roster of contributing authors and ad hoc submissions from community members. Get the articles right in your Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin feeds too!
SPECIAL BONUS: While supplies last, you can get the hardcover version of my first bestselling book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire for 44% OFF until Amazon runs out of stock or changes the price. This deal won’t last long, so grab your copy while it lasts!
Have something to contribute?
Human-Centered Change & Innovation is open to contributions from any and all innovation and transformation professionals out there (practitioners, professors, researchers, consultants, authors, etc.) who have valuable human-centered change and innovation insights to share with everyone for the greater good. If you’d like to contribute, please contact me.
P.S. Here are our Top 40 Innovation Bloggers lists from the last four years:
Looking back at the beginning of this decade now that we’re closing in on the halfway point, it’s clearly been a wild ride!
We’ve had a global pandemic, groundbreaking technological breakthroughs, geopolitical shocks, supply chain disruptions, and so much more.
These challenges have revealed a critical truth: organizations need to adapt and innovate faster than ever before.
Add to this the tough economic climate, shrinking capital availability, the disillusionment many business leaders feel toward their innovation teams (sometimes justified, sometimes less so), and we’re looking at a highly turbulent environment for corporate innovation.
The mandate has never been so clear: deliver more results, faster, and with fewer resources. For seasoned innovators, that’s just business as usual. However, structural shifts are poised to reshape the innovation management landscape.
With that background, here’s our take on the top trends to watch in the coming years.
1. Innovation as a Distributed Core Capability
With tighter budgets, the rise of AI and other transformative technologies, the pressing need for organizations to reinvent themselves, and you can see why innovation is increasingly owned by individual business units.
This shift can arise from necessity—businesses needing to transform—or simply from a desire for better strategic alignment and more measurable outcomes.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a need for innovation expertise, but the role of corporate innovators is undoubtedly evolving. Instead of driving innovation directly, they are now enablers and educators, equipping the broader organization to innovate effectively. Embodying this phenomenon is TD Bank, for example:
“The program is truly driven by each line of business—we’re here as a tool to empower their innovation, not to direct it.”
– Josh Death, VP of Intellectual Property and Ideation at TD Bank.
To pull that off, every organization needs to have 3 key elements in place:
Innovation is now at a similar transition point as IT was during the digital transformation era a couple of decades ago: the exact method and approach can be debated, but one thing is clear: every organization must embed innovation as a core capability. Just as some organizations are “digital natives,” the situation is the same for “innovation natives.”
Frameworks, toolkits, and best practices: Innovation isn’t (always) rocket science, but you still need to know what you’re doing. To pull this off, the organization needs to provide its employees with practical tools, frameworks and practices, preferably in the format of a well-designed Innovation System or Program. The recently published ISO 56000 series of standards is now a great starting point, but they need to be complemented with tools that innovators across the organization can use.
Education, coaching, and enablement: A good framework serves as an efficient and effective launching pad, but without proper education, most employees won’t benefit from it. This is where corporate innovation leaders play a key role. They need to organize education and enablement for innovators across the organization, and coach people on how to get past common obstacles. However, doing that at the scale of a large organization is complex—that’s where programs such as The Innovation System, which is included for all HYPE software customers, can be highly effective.
Scalable and adaptive system support: To get measurable outcomes from innovation, you need to operationalize your program. Even the best designed programs with highly effective leaders and coaches can struggle to scale their work and get the outcomes they want without proper system support. That’s where a holistic innovation platform, such as the HYPE Suite, can play a key supporting role.
Generative AI has been the focus of most of the hype around AI lately, and for good reason, but there’s more to AI than that. When you combine the latest generative AI models with proven innovation best practices, more traditional machine learning algorithms, and data from your innovation ecosystem, you have a powerful toolkit that enables a variety of different use cases.
AI can:
Analyze and structure large datasets.
Provide actionable recommendations.
Help users locate relevant information more efficiently.
Detect market signals earlier.
Generate novel ideas.
Coach innovators to enhance their work.
The common denominator for all of them is that AI can help streamline, automate, and accelerate work, and provide easier access to information and skills that used to be the domain of only a few experts within the organization.
However, scaling AI’s benefits isn’t without challenges. Most employees aren’t going to be expert prompters or data analysts that know all the right innovation best practices. So, to unlock the real benefits of using AI, you’re going to need a capable system that is specifically designed for corporate innovation and deeply integrated with AI across the board. When deployed right, AI can help democratize, scale and accelerate innovation like never before.
3. Democratization of Innovation
The third trend builds on the first two. As innovation becomes a core capability better supported by tools, processes, and technology, it will also become more democratized.
Here are the three key shifts are driving this transformation:
Innovation tools, frameworks, and best practices are becoming more widely available, understood, and easier to use: This makes it easier for anyone that wants to be an innovator to get started on the right path and avoid many of the common beginner mistakes.
Technology reduces barriers to entry: Thanks to technologies such as 3D printing, low or no-code software, and Gen AI, it’s never been easier, faster, and cheaper to prototype innovations, whether focused on digital solutions, physical products, or process improvements.
Organizations are looking for more bottom up, employee and team-led innovation and intrapreneurship: Corporate innovation is no longer solely driven by top management. While management needs to set the strategy and targets, more and more organizations are looking towards empowering their employees to help them get where they want to go. It all starts from ideas, but self-organized teams, business units, and intrapreneurship programs are all on the rise. Companies increasingly want to encourage employees to think and act more like entrepreneurs.
When you put all three together, they create a powerful combination that can propel organizations to new heights of innovation and growth.
4. Partner Innovation and the Venture Client Model
No organization, no matter how large or powerful, can house all the best talent on every topic. That’s why the “Not Invented Here” syndrome can be particularly dangerous.
When you need to move fast, and do so with a lower budget, your best bet is to leverage talent from outside your organization.
The trick? Partnering with leaders and early movers in your area of interest to accelerate time to market and gain valuable insights. These partners can include research institutes, universities, or, increasingly, startups.
Historically, large organizations have relied on accelerators or Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) investments to engage with startups. However, both approaches have limitations:
Learning is indirect and secondhand.
They often fail to directly contribute to strategic business goals.
CVC investments require significant capital that could be allocated elsewhere.
The better approach? The Venture Client Model. This approach allows organizations to act as customers and development partners to startups that align with their strategic goals, resulting in:
Lower costs and faster time to market.
Accelerated learning through direct engagement.
Quick ROI by leveraging the organization’s existing scale.
To succeed with this model, you need a systematic approach, the right tools—like HYPE Partnering—and a clear focus on addressing real business problems, not just nice to haves.
The Venture Client Model, featured in Gartner’s latest Hype Cycle for Innovation Practices, brings all these elements together, making it a proven and effective strategy for driving innovation.
5. Cross-industry Collaboration
Building on the trend of partnering, companies are increasingly looking beyond their industries to find innovation opportunities.
Experienced innovators know that there’s no such thing as a new idea. Every idea is simply a combination of previous concepts and ideas applied to solve a specific problem. By partnering with organizations in different industries, companies can leverage highly advanced, specialized capabilities to uncover surprising opportunities and tackle the often-difficult execution phase of innovation.
As such, we’re seeing more and more strategic partnerships between companies from different industries, such as automotive or life science firms partnering with tech companies, to not just learn from one another, but to cocreate hybrid solutionsand products that unlock new value for customers and enable breakthroughs that neither industry could achieve alone.
6. Sustainability and ESG-driven Innovation
Last decade, ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) was all the rage. In the last couple of years, many of these initiatives took a backseat due to economic pressures and growing disillusionment with some of the failures associated with many of these programs.
The problem was that many organizations implemented ESG at a superficial level—promises and policies with little real-world impact—leading to skepticism about the value behind the topic at large.
However, the fundamental need for transformation remains critical. From addressing government deficits to combating climate change, the urgency for sustainable innovation is greater than ever.
What’s different now? The drivers and enablers are firmly in place:
Regulatory Pressure: Many governments across the globe are introducing stricter mandates for sustainable practices.
Technological Advancements: Breakthroughs in renewable energy, electrification, AI, and circular solutions provide tools for real change.
Consumer Preferences: Shifts toward sustainability are influencing demand and shaping circular economic models.
For innovators, this is a perfect storm—a unique opportunity to create breakthroughs that move the needle for both their organizations and the planet. Sustainability has been through the Hype Cycle, and is now nearing the plateau of productivity. For many, it’s no longer a “nice-to-have” but a strategic imperative, making ESG-driven innovation one of the most significant trends shaping the future of corporate innovation and strategy.
Conclusion
These trends highlight a clear shift toward more agile, sustainable, and externally focused innovation practices. For many organizations, they’re not just a nice addition, but a must to stay competitive in increasingly complex and fast-moving global markets. What hasn’t changed, is that those organizations that master innovation, unlock new opportunities to create value, drive impact. They will be able to future-proof themselves and leave the competition in the dust.
This article was originally published in HYPE’s blog. Images from Unsplash and Pixabay.
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Greedflation — an insidious blend of greed and inflation — has silently been eroding the purchasing power of consumers, escalating economic inequalities, and tarnishing the trust we place in markets and institutions. This practice, where companies exploit inflationary trends to excessively hike prices, detaches from economic principles and delves into unethical opportunism. While inflation in itself, when moderate, plays a functional role in the economy, greedflation skews the balance, enriching the few at the expense of many. Here’s why this must end and how consumers can play a pivotal role in its demise.
Why Greedflation Must End
Economic Inequity: Greedflation exacerbates economic disparities, widening the gap between the rich and the poor. While executives and shareholders prosper, average citizens struggle more to afford basic commodities. This vicious cycle traps lower-income families in a relentless financial squeeze, robbing them of opportunities for upward mobility.
Erosion of Trust: Trust is the bedrock of a functional economy. When consumers perceive that companies are exploiting inflationary pressures to rake in excess profits, trust in those companies and the broader market erodes. This lack of trust can lead to decreased consumer spending, hampering economic growth and stability.
Reduced Consumer Purchasing Power: As prices soar disproportionately, the real purchasing power of consumers dwindles. Households find themselves paying more for the same goods and services, which can lead to indebtedness and reduced quality of life. This reduction in purchasing power compounds the already significant challenges faced by middle and lower-income families.
Market Distortion: Greedflation distorts market dynamics by creating artificial price structures that don’t accurately reflect demand and supply. This conflation of legitimate inflationary factors with opportunistic price hikes undermines true market efficiency and the ability to allocate resources effectively.
Social Unrest: When people feel unfairly squeezed by relentless price hikes, social tension can build. Such unrest not only affects social harmony but can also lead to broader economic and political consequences. It’s a recipe for instability that we can ill afford in a complex global environment.
Identifying specific companies definitively engaging in “greedflation” can be complex, as it often involves nuanced economic analyses and data that may not always be readily available or clear-cut. However, certain sectors and companies have faced accusations and scrutiny over seemingly disproportionate price hikes, especially during periods of broader economic instability. Here are five examples based on public scrutiny and anecdotal evidence:
Amazon: During the COVID-19 pandemic, Amazon faced criticism for significant price increases on essential items such as hand sanitizers, masks, and other health-related products. While some of these price hikes were attributed to third-party sellers on the platform, the company was scrutinized for not doing enough to regulate prices during a global crisis.
Pharmaceutical Companies (e.g., Martin Shkreli’s Turing Pharmaceuticals): One of the most notorious cases of alleged greedflation in the pharmaceutical industry involved Turing Pharmaceuticals, where the price of Daraprim, a life-saving medication, was increased by over 5,000% overnight under the leadership of Martin Shkreli. This incident highlighted how companies could exploit patent protections and market monopolies to drastically inflate prices unethically.
Oil Companies (e.g., ExxonMobil, Chevron): Oil giants like ExxonMobil and Chevron have been accused of leveraging geopolitical tensions and supply chain disruptions to raise gas prices disproportionately, thereby generating record profits during periods when consumers are already struggling with inflationary pressures.
Grocery Retailers (e.g., Kroger, Albertsons): Major grocery chains like Kroger and Albertsons have faced allegations of increasing food prices beyond what could be justified by supply chain issues and general inflation. With essential goods being a critical part of everyday life, such actions appear particularly exploitative.
Telecom Companies (e.g., Comcast, AT&T): Telecom giants such as Comcast and AT&T have been criticized for raising prices on internet and cable services, despite relatively stable or reduced operational costs due to advancements in technology. Consumers often feel trapped because of limited competition in many areas.
While these examples showcase sectors and companies that have faced scrutiny, it’s important to note that conclusive evidence of greedflation can be difficult to establish due to the complexity of market forces and individual company strategies. This underscores the need for informed consumer activism to hold companies accountable.
How Consumers Can Help End Greedflation
Shop Smarter: Consumers wield significant power through their purchasing decisions. By being more discerning and opting for alternatives when prices seem unjustifiably high, we can signal to corporations that unethical pricing won’t be rewarded. Supporting smaller, local businesses and cooperatives can also help counterbalance big players who may indulge in greedflation.
Promote Transparency: Demand greater transparency from companies about their pricing strategies. When transparency becomes a social norm, it’s harder for businesses to hide behind inflated prices. Use social media and other platforms to press for clarity and accountability.
Support Policies for Market Oversight: Advocate for stronger regulatory frameworks and more stringent oversight bodies that can analyze and address unethical pricing practices. By supporting politicians and policies that prioritize consumer protection and market fairness, individuals can influence systemic change.
Educate and Mobilize: Consumer education is crucial. Share knowledge and resources about how to spot and combat greedflation. Community groups, educational institutions, and social networks can serve as platforms for educating others about prudent consumer practices.
Leverage Collective Bargaining Power: Form or join consumer advocacy groups that can collectively negotiate for fair prices and better market practices. Unified consumer voices can be a powerful force for change, pushing corporations to rethink their pricing strategies.
Conclusion
The end of greedflation is not just an economic imperative but a moral one. It’s about creating a fairer society where prosperity is shared more equitably, trust is maintained, and economic stability is preserved. Consumers hold immense power as the primary drivers of market forces. By making informed, conscious choices and demanding greater accountability, we can collectively put an end to greedflation and forge a more just economic future.
As an independent thinker and human-centered innovation and transformation thought leader, I firmly believe in the power of consumers to act as agents of change. Together, let’s take that necessary step to ensure markets function with integrity, fairness, and a sense of shared prosperity.
#EndGreedflation #ConsumerPower #EconomicJustice
Image credit: Unsplash
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Fall is in the air, which brings to mind the season’s favorite sport—no, not football, strategic planning! Let’s face it, 2023 has been a tough year for most of us, with few annual plans surviving first contact with an economy that was not so much sluggish as simply hesitant. With the exception of generative AI’s burst onto the scene, most technology sectors have been more or less trudging along, and that begs the question, what do we think we can do in 2024? Time to bring out the strategy frameworks, polish up those crystal balls that have been a bit murky of late, and chart our course forward.
This post will kick off a series of blogs about framing strategy, all organized around a meta-model we call the Hierarchy of Powers:
The inspiration for this model came from looking at how investors prioritize their portfolios. The first thing they do is allocate by sector, based primarily on category power, referring both to the growth rate of the category as well as its potential size. Rising tides float all boats, and one of the toughest challenges in business is how to manage a premier franchise when category growth is negative. In conjunction with assessing our current portfolio’s category power, this is also a time to look at adjacent categories, whether as threats or as opportunities, to see if there are any transformative acquisitions that deserve our immediate attention.
Returning to our current set of assets, within each category the next question to answer is, what is our company power within that category? This is largely a factor of market share. The more share a company has of a given category, the more likely the ecosystem of partners that supports the category will focus first on that company’s installed base, adding more value to its offers, as well as to recommend that company’s products first, again because of the added leverage from partner engagement. Marketplaces, in other words, self-organize around category leaders, accelerating the sales and offloading the support costs of the market share leaders.
But what do you do when you don’t have company power? That’s when you turn your attention to market power. Marketplaces destabilize around problematic use cases that the incumbent vendors do not handle well. This creates openings for new entrants, provided they can authentically address the customer’s problems. The key is to focus product management on the whole product (not just what your enterprise supplies, but rather, everything the customer needs to be successful) and to focus your go-to-market engine on the target market segment. This is the playbook that has kept Crossing the Chasm on entrepreneur’s book lists some thirty years in, but it is a different matter to execute it in a large enterprise where sales and marketing are organized for global coverage, not rifle-shot initiatives. Nonetheless, when properly executed, it is the most reliable play in all of high-tech market development.
If market power is key to taking market share, offer power is key to maintaining it, both in high-growth categories as well as mature ones. Offer power is a function of three disciplines—differentiation to create customer preference, neutralization to catch up to and reduce a competitor’s differentiation, and optimization to eliminate non-value-adding costs. Anything that does not contribute materially to one of these three outcomes is waste.
Finally, execution power is the ability to take advantage of one’s inertial momentum rather than having it take advantage of you. Here the discipline of zone management has proved particularly valuable to enterprises who are seeking to balance investment in their existing lines of business, typically in mature categories, with forays into new categories that promise higher growth.
In upcoming blog posts I am going to dive deeper into each of the five powers outlined above to share specific frameworks that clarify what decisions need to be made during the strategic planning process and what principles can best guide them. In the meantime, there is still one more quarter in 2023 to make, and we all must do our best to make the most of it.
That’s what I think. What do you think?
Image Credit: Pixabay, Geoffrey A. Moore
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Providing Foresight to Turn Fear into Fuel for Future-Proofing Your Business
GUEST POST from Teresa Spangler
As a business leader, it’s crucial to have a futurist vision and navigate the world of extreme consequences with optimism. Maintaining good morale and motivation within the organization can be challenging as worldly events may create fear and anxiety. These issues can compound when navigating through company or organizational traumas.
“Trends are only useful when we look at them through multiple lenses as we gaze across all six time zones. We must think of trends as signposts that can illuminate the conditions we will likely encounter at some point in the future, even if that future is a century away. Or, as we’re about to see, as close as 1.3 light seconds.”
What strategies could be used to turn fear into fuel and lead through these tough times?
One effective method is through what I call “signal crafting.” Signal crafting involves diving deeply into futuristic scenarios. Crafting both the best-case and the worst-case outcomes is a healthy exercise that provides insights beyond your day-to-day and even your year-to-year planning. Signal crafting exercises help you anticipate future scenarios of global events, giving life, and a 360-degree view of circumstances. In turn, by building out these signaling exercises you are equipping your organization to better plan. Diving even deeper, combining different factors that affect not just your business’s future but humanity’s future, can help leaders envision various potential outcomes and make strategic decisions based on the most likely scenarios. Signal exercises provide a foresight into the future in many cases alleviating fear and turning that fear into fuel.
What are the benefits of signaling in planning for the future?
Signal crafting is an exercise that helps businesses prepare for the future by creating scenarios based on different factors that affect their industry.
Companies must focus on attuning to signals of change in the world, including industry trends and emerging technologies, changing consumer behavior, social and cultural shifts, political and regulatory changes, and economic conditions.
By combining different factors that affect a business’s future, it can envision various potential outcomes and make strategic decisions based on the most likely scenarios.
The exercise helps businesses identify potential risks and opportunities and develop strategic plans considering different possible outcomes.
The exercise fosters cross-departmental collaboration and gains multiple perspectives.
The exercise can be repeated periodically, allowing companies to adapt to new signals of change and remain future-ready planners and strategists.
Signal Crafting Exercise
To reinvent the future, leaders should be attuned to the signals of change in the world. These signals may come from internal and external factors, such as:
Industry trends and emerging technologies: Businesses should keep a close eye on industry trends and emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and automation, that may potentially transform the industry.
Changing consumer behavior: Businesses should stay abreast of evolving consumer preferences, such as a growing focus on sustainability and ethical practices.
Social and cultural shifts: Businesses should keep up with social and cultural shifts, such as changes in attitudes towards diversity and inclusion.
Political and regulatory changes: Businesses should be aware of political and regulatory changes, such as new regulations around carbon emissions and sustainable practices.
Economic conditions: Businesses should monitor economic conditions and prepare for potential changes in the market, such as recessions or fluctuations in currency.
Here are twenty-five (25) possible signals of change that may impact the world in 2035:
Climate change: The effects of climate change are expected to become more severe, with more frequent extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and widespread impacts on ecosystems and human societies.
Artificial Intelligence: The development of advanced artificial intelligence systems will have a transformative impact on many industries, including healthcare, transportation, and manufacturing.
Automation: The increasing use of automation in manufacturing, agriculture, and other industries is expected to displace many workers, creating significant social and economic challenges.
Internet of Things: The widespread adoption of connected devices and sensors, known as the Internet of Things, will enable more efficient and data-driven management of everything from supply chains to energy systems.
Energy transition: The world is moving towards a more sustainable energy mix, with renewable energy sources such as wind and solar becoming increasingly essential and fossil fuels declining.
Space exploration: Human exploration of space is set to accelerate, with more missions to the moon, Mars, and beyond, as well as the development of commercial space travel.
5G and beyond: The rollout of 5G and other advanced communication technologies will enable faster and more reliable connections, leading to new applications in areas such as autonomous vehicles and virtual and augmented reality.
Quantum computing: The development of quantum computing could enable breakthroughs in cryptography, drug discovery, and climate modeling.
Synthetic biology: Advances in synthetic biology are expected to lead to new forms of agriculture, medicine, and materials science, as well as ethical and regulatory challenges.
Nanotechnology: The ability to manipulate materials at the nanoscale could lead to breakthroughs in areas such as energy storage, medicine, and electronics.
Gene editing: The ability to edit genes could lead to new treatments for genetic diseases and improvements in agriculture, but it also raises ethical and regulatory concerns.
Virtual and augmented reality: These technologies are expected to transform industries such as gaming, entertainment, education, and healthcare.
Autonomous vehicles: The development of autonomous vehicles could lead to significant changes in transportation and urban planning, as well as in industries such as logistics and shipping.
Cybersecurity: As more critical systems connect to the internet, the threat of cyber attacks will become increasingly significant.
Blockchain: The development of blockchain technology could lead to more secure and efficient financial transactions and new applications in areas such as supply chain management and voting.
Wearable technology: The widespread adoption of wearable technology, such as smartwatches and fitness trackers, is expected to enable more personalized and data-driven healthcare.
Bioprinting: The ability to 3D print living tissues and organs could revolutionize medicine and lead to new forms of regenerative therapies.
Vertical farming: Developing vertical farming techniques could enable more sustainable and efficient food production in urban areas.
Smart cities: Using sensors and data analytics in urban planning and management is expected to lead to more efficient and livable cities.
Universal basic income: The idea of providing a guaranteed income to all citizens, regardless of their employment status, is gaining traction as a potential response to the challenges of automation and job displacement.
Circular economy: The concept of a circular economy, where waste is minimized, and resources are reused and recycled, is gaining momentum as a more sustainable alternative to the traditional linear economy.
Mental health: The growing awareness of the importance of mental health is expected to lead to new treatments and interventions and changes in social attitudes and policies.
Aging population: The increasing proportion of older adults in many societies is expected to create new challenges and opportunities in healthcare, housing, and social services.
Social media: The impact of social media on society is expected to continue to evolve, with potential changes in areas such as politics, privacy, and mental health.
Biometric authentication: The use of biometric data, such as facial recognition and fingerprint scanning, is expected to become more widespread as a means of authentication in areas such as finance, travel, and security, raising concerns about privacy and security.
Geoengineering: As the impacts of climate change become more severe, the concept of geoengineering, such as solar radiation management and carbon capture and storage, is gaining attention as a potential solution to mitigate the effects of climate change, but it also raises ethical and environmental concerns.
Start the exercise:
Focus teams on attuning to signals of change in the world, including industry trends and emerging technologies, changing consumer behavior, social and cultural shifts, political and regulatory changes, and economic conditions.
Choose a signal of interest: Each team member choose 1 signal ea member
Details are important:
Who is affected?
What are the effects of this change/trend?
What does it feel like to people?
How are people interacting?
How will this impact businesses?
How will this impact the political environment?
Go as deep as you can to envision how the world is affected by this signal of change.
What will you be doing? How will this signal affect your world/life/family?
Keep going as deep as you can.
Include how will it impact your company.
Envision the signal including the details above in the scenario…it’s 10 years from today what happening?
Write a futuristic story about that signal. Write about two different outcomes 10 years from now.
Construct a positive outcome.
Construct worst-case outcome.
Finally, share your stories both positive and worst-case scenarios. Talk about these and the impacts that each signal may have on your business, on your people, on individuals, environments, governments …etc.
Company teams can create scenarios based on the categories they choose to work with. The teams can then present their scenarios to other groups, fostering cross-departmental collaboration and gaining multiple perspectives. The exercise can be repeated periodically, allowing companies to adapt to new signals of change and remain future-ready planners and strategists.
By creating a range of scenarios that identify potential risks and opportunities, businesses can develop strategic plans that consider different possible outcomes. This enables the company to be better prepared for the future and proactively prepare for different outcomes instead of reacting to events as they unfold. The approach will ensure you maintain a competitive advantage but moreover, you may experience a calming of fear and anxiety in the organization. So many benefits come from this one exercise but overall is a future-planning exercise to help the organization achieve long-term success.
Image credit: Unsplash
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Did you get the panic out of your system? Feel better?
Good.
Because AI is also creating incredible opportunities for you, as a leader and innovator, to break through the inertia of the status quo, drive meaningful change, and create enormous value.
Here are just three of the ways AI will help you achieve your innovation goals:
1. Surface and question assumptions
Every company has assumptions that have been held and believed for so long that they hardened into fact. Questioning these assumptions is akin to heresy and done only by people without regard for job security or their professional reputation.
My favorite example of an assumption comes from the NYC public school district whose spokesperson explained the decision to ban ChatGPT by saying, “While the tool may be able to provide quick and easy answers to questions, it does not build critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, which are essential for academic and lifelong success,”
Buried just under the surface of this statement is the assumption that current teaching methods, specifically essays, do build critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
But is that true?
Or have we gotten so used to believing that essays demonstrate critical thinking and problem-solving that we’ve become blind to the fact that most students (yes, even, and maybe especially, the best students) follow the recipe that produces an essay that mirrors teachers’ expectations?
Before ChatGPT, only the bravest teachers questioned the value of essays as a barometer of critical thinking and problem-solving. After ChatGPT, scores of teachers took to Tik Tok and other social media platforms to share how they’re embracing the tool, using it alongside traditional tools like essays, to help their students build skills “essential for academic and lifelong success.”
2. EQ, not IQ, drives success
When all you need to do is type a question into a chatbot, and the world’s knowledge is synthesized and fed back to you in a conversational tone (or any tone you prefer), it’s easier to be the smartest person in the room.
Yes, there will always be a need for deep subject-matter experts, academics, and researchers who can push our knowledge beyond its current frontiers. But most people in most companies don’t need that depth of expertise.
Instead, you need to know enough to evaluate the options in front of you, make intelligent decisions, and communicate those decisions to others in a way that (ideally) inspires them to follow.
It’s that last step that creates an incredible opportunity for you. If facts and knowledge were all people needed to act, we would all be fit, healthy, and have absolutely no bad habits.
For example, the first question I asked ChatGPT was, “Why is it hard for big companies to innovate?” When it finished typing its 7-point answer, I nodded and thought, “Yep, that’s exactly right.”
The same thing happened when I asked the next question, “What should big companies do to be more innovative?” I burst out laughing when the answer started with “It depends” and then nodded at the rest of its extremely accurate response.
It would be easy (and not entirely untrue) to say that this is the beginning of the end of consultants, but ChatGPT didn’t write anything that wasn’t already written in thousands of articles, books, and research papers.
Change doesn’t happen just because you know the answer. Change happens when you believe the answer and trust the people leading and walking alongside you on the journey.
3. Eliminate the Suck
Years ago, I spoke with Michael. B Jordan, Pixar’s Head of R&D, and he said something I’ll never forget – “Pain is temporary. Suck is forever.”
He meant this, of course, in the context of making a movie. There are periods of pain in movie-making – long days and nights, times when vast swaths of work get thrown out, moments of brutal and public feedback – but that pain is temporary. The movie you make is forever. And if it sucks, it sucks forever,
Sometimes the work we do is painful but temporary. Sometimes doing the work sucks, and we will need to keep doing it forever. Expense reports. Weekly update emails. Timesheets. These things suck. But they must be done.
Let AI do them and free yourself up to do things that don’t suck. Imagine the conversations you could have, ideas you could try, experiments you could run, and people you could meet if you no longer have to do things that suck.
Change is coming. And that’s good news.
Change can be scary, and it can be difficult. There will be people who lose more than they gain. But, overall, we will gain far more than we lose because of this new technology.
If you have any more doubts, I double-checked with an expert.
“ChatGPT is not a sign of the apocalypse. It is a tool created by humans to assist with language-based tasks. While artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies can bring about significant changes in the way we live and work, they do not necessarily signal the end of the world.”
ChatGPT in response to “Is ChatGPT a sign of the apocalypse?”
Image credit: Pixabay
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Drum roll please…
