Why Elastocalorics Will Redefine Our World

The Silent Revolution

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

Here at Human-Centered Change & Innovation our focus is always on the intersection of human needs, innovative solutions, and the transformative power of change. In a world clamoring for sustainable answers to pressing problems, it’s easy to get lost in the hype cycles of AI and quantum computing. But sometimes, the most revolutionary advancements are quietly simmering beneath the surface, waiting for their moment to redefine our future. Today, I want to pull back the curtain on one such unsung hero: Elastocalorics.

This isn’t just another scientific curiosity; it’s a profound shift in how we might manage temperature, offering a genuinely human-centered approach to a challenge that impacts every facet of our lives – from the comfort of our homes to the efficiency of our industries.

The Unseen Revolution: Why Elastocalorics Matters

Let’s cut through the jargon. At its core, elastocalorics harnesses the fascinating property of certain materials (often shape-memory alloys like nickel-titanium) to absorb or release heat when subjected to mechanical stress. Stretch them, and they warm up. Release the tension, and they cool down. Think of it as a solid-state heat pump, a silent, elegant dance between material science and thermodynamics.

Why is this a game-changer? Because the status quo of cooling and heating is fundamentally unsustainable. Traditional vapor-compression systems, while effective, are energy hogs. They rely on refrigerants with high global warming potentials, contribute significantly to our carbon footprint, and are far from the ideal solution for a planet grappling with climate change.

Elastocalorics offers an alternative that is:

Energy-Efficient: By directly converting mechanical energy into thermal energy, these systems promise significant energy savings, drastically reducing the power required for cooling and heating.
Environmentally Friendly: No harmful refrigerants means zero ozone depletion potential and vastly reduced global warming potential. This is a truly green technology.
Compact and Quiet: Without the need for bulky compressors and fans, elastocaloric systems can be significantly smaller and operate with minimal noise, opening up new design possibilities for appliances and buildings.
Durable and Reliable: Solid-state systems typically have fewer moving parts, leading to increased longevity and reduced maintenance needs.

This isn’t just about saving a few bucks on your utility bill; it’s about fundamentally rethinking our relationship with temperature control in a way that aligns with our collective human responsibility to the planet.

Case Study 1: Reinventing Refrigeration – The Quest for a Greener Kitchen

Imagine a refrigerator that hums along silently, using a fraction of the energy of its conventional counterpart, and with no harmful chemicals circulating within its coils. This is the vision that elastocaloric technology is bringing to life in the appliance sector.

For decades, refrigerator design has been constrained by the limitations of vapor-compression cycles. Engineers and designers have been forced to work around bulky compressors, noisy fans, and the specific requirements of refrigerants. With elastocalorics, the paradigm shifts.

One pioneering effort, though still in research and development phases, involves startups exploring elastocaloric refrigeration units for commercial and residential applications. These companies are developing prototypes that utilize a series of stretching and relaxing bands of elastocaloric material, perhaps arranged in a carousel or linear array. As the material stretches, it releases heat to the ambient environment; as it relaxes, it cools down, absorbing heat from the refrigerator’s interior. This cyclical process efficiently moves heat out of the insulated compartment, maintaining a consistent low temperature.

The human-centered innovation here is profound. Beyond the obvious environmental benefits, elastocaloric refrigerators could lead to entirely new kitchen layouts. Imagine integrated cooling drawers that disappear into cabinetry, or silent, compact mini-fridges that fit seamlessly into any office or bedroom. The absence of noisy compressors enhances domestic tranquility, and the peace of mind knowing your appliance isn’t contributing to climate change is an intangible, yet powerful, benefit. This isn’t just a new fridge; it’s a new living experience.

Case Study 2: Precision Cooling for Tomorrow’s Data Centers – A Silent Revolution in Silicon Valleys

Data centers are the beating heart of our digital world, consuming staggering amounts of energy, with a significant portion dedicated to cooling the thousands of servers that power the internet. The heat generated by these machines is immense, and traditional cooling methods are expensive, inefficient, and often involve large-scale water consumption.

This is where elastocalorics enters as a potential game-changer. Consider research initiatives funded by major tech companies and government grants aimed at deploying elastocaloric cooling solutions directly within server racks. The idea is to move beyond room-level air conditioning and bring the cooling mechanism closer to the heat source itself.

Imagine elastocaloric cooling chips or modules directly integrated into server motherboards or mounted within individual server units. These tiny, silent heat pumps could efficiently draw heat away from processors and memory modules, transferring it to an external heat sink or a liquid cooling loop. This “point-of-source” cooling approach drastically reduces the energy wasted moving cool air across an entire data hall.

The human-centered aspect here might seem less obvious, but it’s critical. Efficient data centers mean less energy consumption, reducing the overall carbon footprint of our digital lives. For the engineers and operators, it means potentially smaller, quieter, and more reliable cooling infrastructure, reducing operational costs and freeing up valuable floor space. For society, it means a more sustainable digital future, allowing us to continue innovating and connecting without exacerbating our environmental challenges. It’s about enabling the human endeavor of connectivity and information exchange in an environmentally responsible way.

The Architects of a Cooler Future: Elastocaloric Market Leaders and Startups

The field of elastocaloric cooling, recognized by the World Economic Forum as a top emerging technology, is still largely in its research and development phase, but a number of key players are beginning to define the market. Established companies like Carrier and Daikin are actively exploring elastocaloric systems as a sustainable alternative to traditional HVAC, leveraging their existing expertise in heat pump technology. Additionally, materials science and industrial giants such as Ferrotec Holdings Corporation and Coherent Corp. are leading the way in developing the specialized alloys, like Nitinol (nickel-titanium), that are at the heart of this technology. On the startup and academic front, there’s a hive of innovation. A German consortium led by the Saarland University and the Center for Mechatronics and Automation Technology (ZeMA), with partners like Irish company Exergyn, is pioneering prototypes for residential and automotive cooling. Meanwhile, researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have made a significant breakthrough with the world’s first kilowatt-scale elastocaloric cooling device, pushing the technology closer to commercial viability. These innovators, both large and small, are laying the groundwork for a future free from environmentally harmful refrigerants.

The Road Ahead: From Lab to Living Room

Elastocalorics, while incredibly promising, is still in its nascent stages. There are challenges to overcome: optimizing material fatigue life, scaling up production, and integrating these systems seamlessly into existing infrastructures. However, the pace of innovation is accelerating. Researchers are constantly discovering new materials with even better elastocaloric properties, and engineers are devising ingenious ways to harness these effects efficiently.

As a thought leader in human-centered change and innovation, I see elastocalorics not just as a technology, but as a paradigm shift. It challenges us to rethink fundamental aspects of our built environment and industrial processes. It invites us to imagine a future where temperature control is not an environmental burden but an elegant, efficient, and almost invisible part of our lives.

The beauty of elastocalorics lies in its elegant simplicity and profound potential. It’s a testament to the fact that true innovation often lies in rediscovering and re-engineering the basic principles of physics in new, more sustainable ways. Keep an eye on this space; the silent revolution of elastocalorics is coming, and it has the power to cool our world in more ways than one.

Disclaimer: This article speculates on the potential future applications of cutting-edge scientific research. While based on current scientific understanding, the practical realization of these concepts may vary in timeline and feasibility and are subject to ongoing research and development.

Image credit: Gemini

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Building a Business with Feelings and Emotions

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Building a Business with Feelings and Emotions

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

If you use your sane-and-rational lenses and the situation doesn’t make sense, that’s because the situation is not governed by sanity and rationality. Yet, even though there’s a mismatch between the system’s behavior and sane-and-rational, we still try to understand the system through the cloudy lenses of sanity and rationality.

Computer programs are sane and rational; Algorithms are sane and rational; Machines are sane and rational. Fixed inputs yield predicted outputs; If this, then that; Repeat the experiment and the results are repeated. In the cold domain of machines, computer programs and algorithms you may not like the output, but you’re not surprised by it.

But businesses are not run by computer programs, algorithms and machines. Businesses are run by people. And that’s why things aren’t always sane and rational in business.

Where computer programs blindly follow logic that’s coded into them, people follow their emotions. Where algorithms don’t decide what to do based on their emotional state, people do. And where machines aren’t afraid to try something new, people are.

When something doesn’t make sense to you, it’s because your assumptions about the underlying principles are wrong. If you see things that violate logic, it’s because logic isn’t the guiding principle. And if logic isn’t the guiding principle, the only other things that could be driving the irrationality are feelings and emotions. But if you think the solution is to make the irrational system behave rationally, be prepared to be perplexed and frustrated.

The underpinnings of management and leadership are thoughts, feelings and emotions. And, thoughts are governed by feelings and emotions. In that way, the currency of management and leadership is feelings and emotions.

If your first inclination is to figure out a situation using logic, don’t. Logic is for computers, and even that’s changing with deep learning. Business is about people. When in doubt, assess the feelings and emotions of the people involved. And once you understand their thoughts and feelings, you’ll know what to do.

Business isn’t about algorithms. Business is about people. And people respond based on their emotional state. If you want to be a good manager, focus on people’s feelings and emotions. And if you want to be a good leader, do the same.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Boring AI is the Key to Better Customer Service

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Boring AI is the Key to Better Customer Service

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Boring can be a good thing. When something works the way it’s supposed to, it shouldn’t be a surprise. There shouldn’t be friction or drama if a customer has a problem or wants a question answered. It should just be easy. And when it comes to customer service, “easy” and “boring” are good. The experience should just happen the way the customer wants it to happen. You might call that boring. I call that excellent.

That was the beginning of a conversation I had with Damon Covey, general manager of unified communications and collaboration for GoTo, on Amazing Business Radio. GoTo is one of the leading cloud communications companies, providing software and solutions to companies of all sizes and helping them implement AI systems that work, without the complexity and stress that can come from new technology. Covey’s goal for our conversation was to demystify AI, cutting through the noise and complexities of flashy AI and taking it down to a practical level. Boring was the word he liked to use, emphasizing it should be easy, simple and uncomplicated.

In our discussion, Covey said that large companies used to make six- and seven-figure investments to implement AI. Today, AI technology is far superior and, at the same time, much less expensive, so even the smallest companies can afford it. They can get advanced technology for hundreds of dollars, not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Covey said, “For example, a small bike shop or an automotive dealership can now provide the same advanced customer service options as large corporations.” With that in mind, here are the main takeaways from our conversation:

Conversational AI

Until recently (within the past two or three years), a basic chatbot had to follow pre-set rules. Conversational AI provides a much broader opportunity, allowing a computer to interact with people in a natural, human-like manner. Today, AI can understand and respond to customers’ questions and issues with much more flexibility. It has the capability to recognize different languages and understand fumbled phrases, much like a human would. By using conversational AI, businesses can provide 24/7 service, allowing them to respond to customer queries and schedule appointments even when the customer contacts them outside of regular business hours.

Treat AI Like a Team Member

If you hire a new employee, you train them. Treat your AI solutions the same way. Covey said that, similar to training an employee, you need to set specific parameters and provide the AI with the necessary information to ensure it stays within the scope of your business requirements. He emphasized the importance of making sure the AI only draws from the information provided by your business, such as your website, FAQ pages, product manuals, etc., rather than pulling from a source outside of your company, to maintain accuracy and relevance. Covey said that AI should be continuously optimized and trained over time to improve its performance, much like you would train and coach a human employee to expand their capabilities.

Productivity: Automating Processes

Covey talked about automating processes. Anything you do more than three times can be a candidate for AI automation. For example, AI can integrate with a business’ telecommunications system to automate the process of taking notes during calls. It can then summarize the call, put the information into the customer’s record and create a list of next steps, if appropriate. This is a simple function that helps employees be more productive. Instead of an employee typing notes and summarizing the call, AI can handle the task so the employee can move on to helping the next customer.

Augmenting the Business

AI can help businesses do things they don’t normally do, such as remain open for certain functions (like customer support) after hours. It can act as an after-hours receptionist, answering phone calls, setting appointments or providing basic information to customers after business hours. That turns a business that’s typically open during traditional hours to a 24/7 operation.

It is Easier Than You Think

At the end of the interview, Covey dropped a nugget of wisdom that is the perfect way to close this article. For many, especially smaller organizations, deciding what technology to use and how to best use AI can be a daunting decision. It shouldn’t be. Covey says, “Start with the problem you want to solve, and solve for that problem.” He added that you should start using the technology for small problems. Once you understand how it works, the more complicated issues will be easier to solve for.

And that brings us back to where we started. AI doesn’t need to be complicated or flashy. It should be boring—in a good way. Start small, focus on one problem at a time and let AI do what it’s supposed to do: make customer service easier and more efficient. When done right, your customers won’t be amazed by the AI—they’ll just be amazed by how easy it is to do business with you.

Image Credit: Unsplash

This article was originally published on Forbes.com

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Strategizing Market Power

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Target Market Initiatives

Strategizing Market Power - Target Market Initiatives

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

Market power derives from addressing an urgent mission-critical use case in a particular vertical industry requiring a specialized solution that the incumbent vendors either cannot or will not provide. Power aggregates around a single vendor who is the first to provide an end-to-end solution (what Ted Levitt taught us to call the whole product), typically with the support of partners whom the vendor has recruited to the task. Once success has been verified, prospective customers rally around the new solution, making it the de facto standard for that market segment, effectively excluding all other competition. This dramatically lowers the cost of acquisition and maximizes the lifetime value of the addressable market.

The mechanism for obtaining market power is called a target market initiative. It begins with the selection of a target market segment. Here the criteria for selection are three:

Big enough to matter. The goal is to win well over 50% of the total segment within a three-year horizon, with the resulting revenue providing a material portion of the organization’s total revenue, and an even more meaningful portion of its profit contribution.
Small enough to lead. Again, if your organization is going to win over 50% of the segment within a three-year period, the segment must be small enough to make this feasible given your current size and funding.
Good fit with your crown jewels. To address an intractable problem requires breakthrough capability that others do not have, or what we like to call your “crown jewels.” These accelerate your path to success and provide a barrier to entry to protect your market segment leadership position once it is attained.

The playbook for running a target market initiative is described at length in Crossing the Chasm. It is organized around the following set of factors:

Target Customer. The bullseye target is the business process owner for the broken mission-critical process. They will provide the subject matter expertise. A secondary target is their executive sponsor. They will create budget to fund the effort.
Compelling Reason to Buy. The use case has to be both mission-critical and urgent, in order to overcome a pragmatist’s normal inertial resistance to embracing anything categorically new. Here pain, not gain, is the source of the trapped value that moves the customer to lean in and collaborate, and all your sales and marketing should be focused on the relevant pain points and their remedies.
Whole Product. This is the bill of materials for the complete solution, everything the customer needs to take the problem off the table, with nothing extra added. It is designed backward from the customer’s problem, not forward from your supply chain or your financial goals and objectives.
Partners and Allies. Whatever is on the whole product’s bill of materials that is not provided by your company must come from a partner. One of the functions of a target market initiative is to orchestrate the coming together of such partners to ensure timely delivery of the whole product. The focus is on completing the solution, not adding sales coverage.
Distribution. Target market initiatives require a direct sales channel to execute a consultative sales process, organized around a diagnostic/prescriptive approach, supported by marketing that speaks directly to the business process owner and their executive sponsor. This must not be outsourced, as it is through these direct interactions that you establish your company as the market segment leader.
Pricing. Pricing is value-based, calibrated by the consequences of the current as-yet-to-be-fixed broken mission-critical business process. Discounting is never appropriate as the customer is far more concerned about addressing their urgent needs than saving on the purchase price.
Competition. There are two classes of competitors in play. The first is the incumbent vendor who is not solving the problem satisfactorily at present but who could throw people at it in an attempt to get to “good enough.” The other is a vendor with breakthrough capabilities similar to yours who has not made the commitment to deliver the whole product but who has a partner that might try to do so.
Positioning. You are the breakthrough vendor who has made the whole product commitment, meaning you have demonstrated a deep understanding of the customer’s industry and its problem process, and you have developed a repeatable solution that will get better as each new instantiation leads to more useful features and a more engaged ecosystem of partners.
Next Target Customer. For start-ups, this will normally be an adjacent segment, either a new use case from the same customer base or the same use case from a different segment. For established enterprises whose size dictates that target market segments can never be material to total revenues, winning a target market segment creates a hook for M&A as well as makes you a lot more knowledgeable about which companies are worth acquiring.

Target market initiatives are the most reliable play in the B2B innovation playbook, as witnessed by the staying power of Crossing the Chasm, currently in its fourth decade of being in print, pushing two million copies in total sales worldwide. In closing, then, let me leave you with eight great reasons for building one into your next annual plan:

Gain market adoption for a disruptive technology. This is the classic chasm-crossing play.
Penetrate a new geography. Establish your reputation as a worthy vendor.
Get out from behind the market leader. Gorillas can never defend themselves against highly focused chimps. All they can do is try to isolate you from making any further progress.
Anchor a turnaround. When your enterprise has been on a losing streak, it is critical to “win one for the Gipper.” Target market initiatives are your best bet.
Solve for the “stuck in neutral” problem. When the macro economy is in the doldrums, and customers are slow to buy anything, a truly problematic use case overcomes their hesitancy.
Capitalize on a great niche opportunity. There are use cases where the size of the market is small, but the trapped value is enormous, and you can build a major franchise without ever leaving the segment, as has happened in CAD, Wall Street, health care, and aerospace.
Exploit the “granularity of growth.” In mature markets where average growth rates are in the low single digits, there are always pockets of double-digit growth around problematic use cases. You just need to target them directly.
Capitalize on a market in transition. As markets are working through long-lead transitions, short-term progress can be made locally rather than globally. The evolution of the hybrid workplace would be a current example.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

Image Credit: Pexels, Geoffrey Moore

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3 Secret Saboteurs of Strategic Foresight

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3 Secret Saboteurs of Strategic Foresight

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

You’ve done everything to set Strategic Foresight efforts up for success. Executive authority? Check. Challenging inputs? Check. Process integration? Check. Now you just need to flip the switch and you’re off to the races.

Not so fast.

While the wrong set-up is guaranteed to cause failure, the right set-up doesn’t guarantee success. Research shows that strategic foresight initiatives with the right set-up fail because of “organizational pathologies” that sabotage even well-designed efforts.

If you aren’t leading the right people to do the right things in the right way, you’re not going to get the impact you need.

Here’s what to watch out for (and what to do when it happens).

Your Teams Misunderstand Foresight’s Purpose

People naturally assume that strategic foresight predicts the future. When it doesn’t, they abandon it faster than last year’s digital transformation initiative.

Shell learned this the hard way. In 1965, they built the Unified Planning Machinery, a computerized forecasting tool designed to predict cash flow based on trends. It was abandoned because executives feared “it would suppress discussion rather than encourage debate on differing perspectives.”

When they shifted from prediction to preparation, specifically to “modify the mental model of decision-makers faced with an uncertain future,” strategic foresight became an invaluable decision-making tool.

Help your team approach strategic foresight as preparation, not prediction, by measuring success by the improvement in discussion and decision-making, not scenario accuracy. When teams build mental flexibility rather than make predictions, wrong scenarios stop being failed scenarios.

People are Paralyzed by Fear of Being Wrong

Even when your teams understand foresight’s purpose, managers are often unwilling “to use foresight to plan beyond a few quarters, fearing that any decisions today could be wrong tomorrow.”

This is profoundly human. As Webb wrote, “When faced with uncertainty, we become inflexible. We revert to historical patterns, we stick to a predetermined plan, or we simply refuse to adopt a new mental model.” We nod along in scenario sessions, then make decisions exactly like we always have.

Shell’s scenario planning efforts succeeded because it made being wrong acceptable. Even though executives initially scoffed at the idea of oil prices quadrupling, they prepared for the scenario and took near-term “no regrets” decisions to restructure their portfolio.

To help people get past their fear, reward them for making foresight-informed decisions. For example, establish incentives and promotion criteria where exploring “wrong” scenarios leads to career advancement.

Your Culture Confuses Activity with Achievement

Between insight and action, the Tyranny of Now reigns. In even the most committed organizations, the very real and immediate needs of the business call us away from our planning efforts and consume our time and energy, meaning strategic foresight is embraced only when it doesn’t interfere with their “real” jobs.

Disney’s approach made strategic foresight a required element of people’s “real jobs” by integrating foresight activities and insights directly into performance management and strategic planning. When foresight teams identified that traditional media consumption was fracturing in 2012, Disney began preparing for that future by actively exploring and investing in new potential solutions.

Resist the Tyranny of Now’s pull by making strategic foresight activities just as tyrannical – require decisions based on foresight insights to occur in 90 days or less. These decisions should trigger resource allocation reviews, even if the resources are relatively small (e.g., one or a few people, tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars). If strategic foresight doesn’t force hard choices about investments and priorities, it’s activity without achievement.

How You Lead and What People Do Determine Strategic Foresight’s Success

Executive authority, challenging inputs, and process integration are necessary but not sufficient. Success requires conquering the deeper organizational and human behaviors that determine whether strategic foresight is a corporate ritual or a competitive advantage.

Image credit: Pexels

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Change is More About Power Than Persuasion

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Change is More About Power Than Persuasion

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

The greatest misconception about change is that it’s about persuasion. All too often, we think that once people understand our idea, they will embrace it. Nothing can be further from the truth. Anybody who’s ever been married or had kids knows how difficult it can be to convince even a single person of something.

Clearly, if you intend to influence an entire organization — much less an entire society—of something, you have to assume the deck is stacked against you. Still, organizations routinely pay armies of change management consultants to spend endless billable hours wordsmithing internal marketing campaigns. No wonder change so often fails.

The truth is that change isn’t about persuasion, but power. If you want change and can access the power to implement it, it will happen. If not, it won’t. That’s why effective change agents learn to leverage multiple sources of power. They mobilize people to influence institutions that can further their cause. That’s how you bring genuine transformation about.

The Paradox Of Hard Power

In early March, 2022 the prominent political scientist John Mearsheimer gave an interview to The New Yorker in which he argued that the United States had blundered greatly in its support of Ukraine. According to his theory we failed to recognize Russia’s role as a great power and its right to dictate certain things to its smaller and weaker neighbor.

That conclusion had a shelf like of about a week. Very quickly, the idea that America should have left Ukraine at the mercy of Russia became not only morally questionable, but patently absurd. How could such a respected expert of foreign affairs get things so wrong? Part of the reason has to do with his misinterpretation of key facts, but perhaps an even greater problem is his misunderstanding of power.

Mearsheimer’s error is that he focused on hard power—the power to coerce—to the exclusion of everything else. The problem with hard power is that the more you use it, the weaker it gets. After brutalizing its neighbors and meddling in the affairs of western nations for over a decade, Vladimir Putin had unleashed forces whose power greatly exceeded Russia’s.

Wise leaders, whether in a political or a business context, must learn to wield coercive power wisely. Use it too little and you undermine your authority and effectiveness, but use it too much and you undermine trust, which eventually will undercut and dilute your capacity. Hard power works best when combined with other sources.

The Attraction Of Soft Power

One factor that Mearsheimer failed to consider is soft power, which Joseph Nye, who coined the term, defined as the ability to influence others without coercion. To do that requires that you build up confidence and stature, which is no easy task. You can’t simply bully or bribe people into admiring and trusting you.

For years, Putin had wielded hard power, including Russia’s military, energy assets and intelligence services, with considerable skill and alacrity. Yet by doing so, he undermined his ability to attract others to his cause. In fact, many found Russia’s actions to be so repugnant and objectionable that they became determined to work against its interests.

Businesses, especially large corporations, are increasingly attentive to soft power. Consider Apple, which is no stranger to wielding hard power. It is known as a ruthless competitor, especially with regard to its supply chain. Yet it also works hard to position itself as a consumer advocate for privacy (while taking a shot at its competitors, of course).

One reason why protestors target corporations is that they are especially vulnerable to attacks on their soft power. When activists wanted to campaign against restrictive new voting laws in Georgia, they didn’t target the politicians who wrote the legislation, but companies like Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines. The firms quickly took a public stance against the laws.

Networked Power

As Anne-Marie Slaughter explained in The Chessboard and the Web, “Power in networks flows from connectedness: the number, type, and location of connections a node has… the most central nodes have the most connections and the highest likelihood of gaining more.” It is this power that Russia may have feared most in Ukraine.

It’s a salient fact that Russia sparked Euromaidan protests in 2013 not in response to any military moves, but because of an economic agreement between Ukraine and the EU. At the same time, Russia was trying to create its own network through a Eurasian Customs Union. Deeper connection between Ukraine and the EU would have undermined the centrality of that project, which had deep significance to Putin’s plans.

One of the biggest misperceptions about power in networks is that it depends on the number of connections. It doesn’t. What’s often far more important is your position in the network. Just like Ukraine’s position in between Russia and Europe increases its importance—and hence, its power—a person’s position in an organizational network or a company’s position in a market network can give them influence that far exceeds their hard or soft power.

In a now famous essay, Lina Kahn, who currently heads the Federal Trade Commission, pointed out that Amazon has attained massive network power by making itself the central node in then American retail industry. It’s not just Amazon either. The Federal Reserve has found that corporations have been increasing their power over the US economy in recent decades, leading to excessive market concentration in most industries, with lower competition and dynamism.

This is, of course, exactly the opposite of what we expected from the digital era, which was supposed to be a democratizing force. Nevertheless, here we are …

The Revenge Of Power

In 2013, the political scientist Moisés Naím published The End of Power, in which he argued that because of the increase in mobility and technology and decrease in poverty, the power of institutions was diminishing. Power hadn’t ended exactly but, as he put it, power was becoming “easier to gain but harder to use or keep.”

However, in his more recent book, The Revenge of Power, Naim points out that autocrats, governments, corporations and other institutions have been able to combine hard power, soft power and networked power to wring back control. It is the coordination and combination of the three, rather than a particular strength in any one, that yields results.

Unfortunately, few seem to learn this basic principle of change. The Occupy Movement focused exclusively on mobilizing people in the streets and, predictably, had no effect on institutions. Common Core activists, on the other hand, focused on institutions, left themselves open to mobilizations from grass-root activists and ran into serious problems.

To make a significant impact, you need to mobilize people to influence institutions and the best way to do that is through leveraging networks. In the final analysis, it is small groups, loosely connected, but united by a shared purpose that drives transformational change. As leaders, it’s our job to help those groups connect and to inspire them with purpose.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credit: Pixabay

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Neuroplastic Entrepreneurs

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The surprising power of reframing as an innovation tool

Neuroplastic Entrepreneurs

GUEST POST from John Bessant

Neuroplasticity. Not some weird creation of a mad 3D sculptor intent on creating a strange new species with which to threaten the world in another zombie apocalypse story but instead a wonderful feature of our brains. Research increasingly confirms our ability, in the face of unexpected shock or challenge, to rewire ourselves, make new neural connections. Defined as ‘the ability of neural networks in the brain to change through growth and reorganization’ it’s visible in the ways in which people can recover speech or movement after traumatic brain injury and it’s now understood to be critical in the process of early cognitive development in babies. It’s even offered as one explanation for the impossible and unpredictable lifestyls of teenagers; their penchant for lying in bed all day and mooching aorund may be down to their working hard at the synaptic level to reconstruct their brains!

It’s also a good description of a key capability which entrepreneurs have. Being able to reframe, seeing the world in a new way opens up significant new possibilities. Provided, of course, that you are then able to follow through, solving problems and enabling the new connections necessary to bring about that state.

Think about Malcolm Maclean, sitting on the dock of the bay one afternoon and imagining an alternative approach to shipping. Instead of the laborious loading and unloading with all its costs, its wasted time, the security challenges and so on – why not use containers? The vision involved a stretch of the imagination; the actual realisation of it considerably more but in the end you have a game changer. Reframing and then realising the possibilities.

It’s an old story; the challenge of transportation and logistics was one which engaged James Brindley 200 years earlier as the Industrial Revolution began to reshape the British economy and the landscape in which it took place. You can’t get a manufacturing-led transformation off the ground unless you can move tings around – raw materials in and finsihed products out of your factories. Which, given the worn-out and primitive state of many of the roads and tracks criss-crossing the country at the time was a big problem. Brindley was one of the pioneers of the idea of creating waterways – canals – as an alternative, providing fast and straight connections between factories, cities and ports.

Image: Watercolour of Barton aqueduct by G.F. Yates 1793, public domain

Just like Malcolm Maclean, this was an inspirational idea which required a deal of systems thinking. Not just one which could imagine an alternative world built on waterways but also one which would need a lot of practical problem solving to bring it into being. Dealing with multiple questions around how to enable the different elements of the system to come together and deliver ‘emergent properties’ where the whole has an impact much greater than the sum of its parts.

His efforts extended well beyond the map making and route planning through to the detailed construction, involving tunnels, cuttings and viaducts. He also had to think through the big challenge of hydraulics, how to fill the canals with water and keep them full – which meant, amongst other things, solving the problem of lining the canal with a water- saving clay. He also reduced the water demand by cutting narrower canals and then designing narrow-boats to navigate them. And since the country is not level means that in places vessels using the canal have to climb up or down slopes which necessitated development of intricately engineered locks and sluices.

Brindley’s work on connecting up the dots of his system into something which changed the transportation world of its time even extended to thinking in the same direction as Malcolm Mclean came to do much later. Faced with the problem of loading and unloading coal as a key bulk item Brindley devised a system involving specially built wooden containers which could be prefilled and transhipped quickly from specially-designed boats!

Above all Brindley was a systems thinker, seeing connections and working on how to best join up the dots to deliver major change. Which his legacy over 350 miles of canals criss-crossing the country and powering the Industrial Revolution seems to have done.

There’s still plenty of scope for such system rethinking today – giving opportunities even in the face of crisis. Take the example of Gridless, founded in 2022 and already a successful and growing business in the energy sector of Africa.

First the vision. Africa is the coming continent, with a huge population of around a billion largely young people and rapidly accelerating development. This creates an engine for growth through both domestic demand and – with sufficient investment – the possibility of increasing exports, not just of raw materials but of finished goods and services.

It has enormous potential – and it has a track record as a place where radical innovations can emerge and scale. Take the example of M-PESA. Where the idea of mobile money still seems fresh and exciting for citizens of the industrialised world learning to use cashless payments by phone it’s actually rather old hat to many people in East Africa. M-PESA (the word means mobile money in Swahili) is coming up towards celebrating its 20th birthday and has moved a long way from being an experiment to try and improve access to basic financial services for the largely unbanked population of Kenya. Now the M-PESA network carries 60% of GDP and delivers a growing range of services across the economy.

But Africa is also unevenly developed; not least in the case of energy. Whilst much of the population is now connected this is not the case everywhere. Over two thirds of the population – 600 million people – have no access to electricity. Mini-grids (relatively small local power stations and networks) can help solve this energy access problem, not least by tapping into the huge potential which renewable energy – solar, wind, hydro and biomass – has for the region.

There’s no shortage of technology to help construct mini and even micro-grids, and there are plenty of power sources which could potentially be tapped. The problem is economic; in order to finance the construction of such a micro-grid a lot of capital is needed up front. That needs a reasonable return to cover operating costs and recoup the investment costs – but in the short term the market to pay for this isn’t there.

When the power starts to flow there is relatively little demand to hook it up to; people who’ve survived without electricity don’t suddenly become active consumers. As Eric Hersman, one of the founders of Gridless points out, ‘ … if you’re a smallholder farmer in a rural village in Africa you’ll likely buy an LED light bulb and charge your phone at first. These don’t draw a lot of electricity, but they do change your life considerably. It might be a few years before you invest in that refrigerator, TV, irrigation pump, or electric oven’.

The consequence of this slow demand growth is that the provider ends up throwing away 80% of its energy and having to charge too high a price for the rest. What could be an important way of helping local communities develop runs aground because that high price effectively throttles the emerging demand at birth. Catch-22.

Gridless represents an entrepreneurial way of reframing this problem. Given such a stalemate their business model asks a simple question. What if there were a consumer who would guarantee to buy electricity at the necessary market rate to support the project and then gradually retreat as the prices fell and the connections rose? A stepping stone approach, essentially a temporary scaffolding to enable an infrastructure to emerge and grow. Using a horticultural metaphor it’s like putting in place a trellis to support an early sapling until the plant is able to survive and thrive on its own.

That’s the vision part of the Gridless approach – to help Africa with micro-grid development. Their website describes it simply: ‘By combining small-scale bitcoin data centres and renewables-based mini-grids they aim to develop the foundation of a new model to expand profitable electrification to communities in emerging markets without the need for charity, aid, gifts, or government subsidy…’

Bitcoin mining – the energy intensive operation of multiple computers beavering away at solving complex mathematical puzzles to earn rewards in the form of bitcoins – does not have the best of reputations in terms of sustainability. By its nature it involves consuming huge amounts of energy whose generation often contributes to pollution and global warming. But Gridless have reworked the story so that it makes a positive contribution to both sustainability of operations and community development.

It does so in a simple a practical way. It hooks up a bitcoin mine with a source of sustainable energy provided by local renewables like hydro or solar. And it deals with the ‘stranded energy’ problem by joining in the system as a ‘buyer of last resort’. Their bitcoin mining operations provide plenty of demand for energy and those operations are profitable enough to buy it at prices which are too high for local communities to pay in the short term. But as the market develops so the local demand increases – and this means the provider can reduce prices, recouping their costs over a larger market. They can also invest to extend the grid and bring yet more demand into the system.

Eventually things reach a point where there isn’t enough power left for the bitcoin mining, so Gridless pack up their operations, move on to another site where there is ‘stranded energy;’ and start the whole cycle once again. It’s a business model for development with some important social values underpinning it. The main purpose is to help connect people through micro-grids and to gradually exit as the role of the buyer of first resort becomes unnecessary. It’s a business fuelled by bitcoin profits but these are effectively being reinvested in social development – a powerful alternative vision. By providing a consistent and reliable demand for electricity, Bitcoin mining helps to utilize excess renewable energy that might otherwise go to waste, thereby unlocking the potential of stranded renewable energy projects and contributing to a more sustainable energy future.

An impressive vision – but as Messrs Maclean and Brindley will tell you, the challenge is not in creating the vision, it’s in realising it. Visions like these need a lot of different dots to be joined up, a lot of problem solving to make it all work. The Gridless solution starts with the idea of being ‘geographically agnostic’ – meaning it is mobile and can be moved anywhere, finding and helping develop micro-grids wherever there is ‘stranded energy’ opportunity.

They do this by putting the bitcoin mine in a box – literally, using a shipping container in a way which would make Malcolm Maclean proud. They move it close to sources of renewable power – like a micro-hydro system in Zambia, harvesting the abundant energy from the fast flowing Zambesi river.

They’ve worked hard on adapting their technology – computers, power supplies, software – to operate in what can still be challenging conditions. Rural Africa is a long way from the clinical clean environments of Silicon Valley and they’ve had to learn to deal with the suite of problems this throws up in order to make their system reliable. For example air quality- the dust which the wind blows up as it sweeps across the wide plains means you have to be very careful to fit suitable filters to avoid all the expensive electronics grinding to a halt. Ditto the heat; average temperatures in Kenya hover around 30 degrees Celsius so there’s a big problem in keeping things cool. And then there are the bugs.

In 2022 when they set up their first facility the lights attracted plenty of curious insects and, especially in the rainy season, they flew towards them en masse, only to crash into the ventilation fans and eventually jam them!

Problems weren’t just physical; the economics of buying containers ready made from China or the USA to use as mobile bitcoin mines posed a big challenge. Quite apart from the logistics and transportation costs of getting them to Africa there were bureaucratic costs involved in getting the various permissions needed to import such equipment. And then there were the capital costs – at over $100,000 per container it was too expensive. So the team went back to the drawing board and designed their own container which cost 75% less. It’s also had the side benefit of bypassing many of the import regulations (since it is now a domestically manufactured product)

Their problem-solving also extends to another big issue with their business model – that of micro-grid management. How to balance supply and demand and make sure that the needs of the community are served first? Gridless wanted to make sure that they weren’t using electricity which somebody else needed. They did this by writing their own software – Gridless OS – which allows for real-time response to demand, making sure people get what they need when they need it whilst also stabilising the grid.

Africa Innovation

After three years of such problem-solving the team have a robust model which they have demonstrated can work in a variety of contexts, using whatever renewable power supply is available – solar, hydro or biomass. Theirs is primarily a social mission and so they’ve codified their experience and can offer a blueprint for the same kind of model to be used by others to help African development.

And it works. Not only by connecting people to electric power but by extending the range of possibilities which that then opens up. Once you have power you can have light – which offers more than just illumination, it allows children to study at night and boosts education. Local services become possible because power enables small-scale facilities to operate and deliver healthcare. Business can connect better to markets and small-scale farms and factories can improve their operations and profitability, generating employment.

In an interview with Bitcoin Magazine one of the Gridless founders, Janet Maingi, elaborated on this novel approach which now operates in several countries including Kenya, Malawi and Zambia, ‘…for example, there’s a tea factory in Muranga, Kenya, which is in the highlands. We partnered with the energy generator in the area and they were able to give the factory power. Now, their facilities are able to support the tea factory, which has two benefits: tea farmers can bring their tea to the factory, which means it doesn’t spoil on the farms because they can’t get it to point B in time and more employment has also been created just by that tea factory becoming an electrified space….’

The potential is huge. As Eric Hersman, points out ‘….just 10% – 40GW of the 400GW of hydroelectric energy in Africa – has been developed (and that’s just hydro!). There is a near unlimited supply of energy to be developed in the one place on earth that needs it most… Africa. But how to get the plants built? Despite being home to 17% of the world’s population, Africa currently accounts for just 4% of global power supply investment’.

As he points out mini-grid business models have traditionally focused on having an ‘anchor client’, a single large electricity consumer such as a telecom tower, which consumes the majority of electricity supplied by the mini-grid. The anchor client is the first step in what’s called an ABC strategy (Anchor—Business—Consumers) for mini-grid financial sustainability. The model builds on finding an anchor client with a predictable load profile and then helping develop around that a group of local businesses that can provide stable demand and promote economic growth in the communities. The last step is residential customers, bringing them in gradually by improving access and generating income from them.

Over the last 3 years Gridless has shown that mini-grids can be made profitable using their model of becoming a ‘geographically agnostic anchor tenant’. They’ve done this on 6 sites in 3 African countries, using the stranded (wasted) energy from hydro, biomass, geothermal, some of that augmented by solar. Their numbers prove that it can be done; they are confident that a 5-7 year return on investment is possible on almost any hydro mini grid.

There’s a lot to be done – figures from the World Bank estimate that Africa needs 140,000 mini-grids to help electrify the continent. But as of 2025 only 5000 have been built – around 5% of what’s required. Which opens up a huge opportunity – if we can reframe the problem.

The key thing about neuroplasticity is that it isn’t an instant process of constructing new neural pathways. Instead the connections have to be made and reinforced; only gradually does the new network become fully operational. Patients who manage to recover movement or speech after a catastrophic neural event like a stroke do so by a mixture of hard work and determination. Gradually creating those new pathways.

Fixing problems like Africa’s energy challenge won’t happen overnight. It’s not going to be simple, and it will need a lot of system-level problem-solving, joining the dots. But just like James Brindley imagining a network of canals or Malcolm Maclean picturing container routes spanning the world, it starts with an entrepreneurial vision.

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Five Unsung Scientific Discoveries Driving Future Innovation

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Five Unsung Scientific Discoveries Driving Future Innovation

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In the relentless pursuit of progress, the headlines often gravitate towards the monumental—AI breakthroughs, space exploration milestones, or widely publicized medical cures. Yet, beneath the surface, a vibrant ecosystem of lesser-known scientific discoveries is quietly brewing, each holding immense potential to reshape industries, solve pressing global challenges, and fundamentally alter our human experience. As a human-centered change and innovation thought leader, I believe it’s not just important, but *critical*, to shine a light on these unsung heroes of scientific advancement. Beyond the captivating, yet often abstract, idea of “freezing light,” here are five scientific breakthroughs poised to drive profound innovation, which you might not yet be fully aware of.

1. “Magic State” Distillation in Quantum Computing

The Discovery:

While the broad concept of quantum computing is a familiar frontier, a specific, less-heralded breakthrough known as “magic state distillation” is fundamentally critical. This advanced technique allows quantum computers to generate highly entangled quantum states (the “magic states”) from imperfect or noisy ones. Essentially, it’s a method for error reduction that makes large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computation a significantly more tangible reality. This isn’t merely an incremental improvement; it’s a foundational step towards building truly powerful and reliable quantum machines capable of tackling previously intractable problems.

Innovation Potential:

This breakthrough dramatically accelerates the timeline for practical quantum computing, unlocking possibilities across numerous sectors:

Drug Discovery & Materials Science: Simulating molecular interactions with unprecedented accuracy, leading to the rapid design and development of novel drugs, advanced catalysts, and revolutionary materials.
Artificial Intelligence: Powering next-generation AI algorithms capable of solving complex optimization problems and performing pattern recognition currently beyond the reach of even the most powerful classical supercomputers.
Financial Modeling: Optimizing intricate financial portfolios, risk assessments, and market predictions with vastly greater precision and speed.

It transforms quantum computing from a theoretical marvel into a practical, industry-redefining tool, poised to revolutionize everything from healthcare to finance.

2. Advanced Bionic Limbs with Direct Neural/Muscular Integration

The Discovery:

Moving beyond conventional prosthetics, recent advancements have enabled bionic limbs that directly integrate with a user’s nervous system and residual muscles. This groundbreaking connection allows for truly intuitive control, where the prosthetic limb responds seamlessly to the user’s thoughts and intentions, eliminating the need for cumbersome manual inputs. This innovation extends beyond mere movement; it’s about restoring a profound sense of proprioception (the body’s inherent awareness of its position in space) and even tactile feedback, making the prosthetic feel like a natural, integrated extension of the body.

Innovation Potential:

The implications of this human-machine interface are vast and extend far beyond aiding amputees:

Human Augmentation: Developing sophisticated exoskeletons for industrial workers, significantly enhancing physical capabilities for specialized tasks, or providing unparalleled assistance to individuals with severe mobility impairments.
Rehabilitation & Therapy: Revolutionizing physical therapy by providing real-time, precise feedback and facilitating more natural movement patterns for accelerated recovery.
Virtual Reality & Gaming: Creating incredibly immersive and haptically rich experiences where digital interactions feel physically real, blurring the lines between the virtual and physical worlds.

This technology is fundamentally paving the way for a future where human-machine interfaces are not just functional, but seamless, intuitive, and profoundly enhance human capabilities.

3. Metamaterials: Engineering the Impossible

The Discovery:

Metamaterials are a class of artificially engineered materials designed with properties not found in nature. Their unique, often counter-intuitive characteristics arise not from their chemical composition, but from their meticulously designed sub-wavelength microscopic structures. By precisely manipulating these architectures, scientists can control waves (be it light, sound, or heat) in unprecedented ways, leading to phenomena like “negative refraction” or perfect absorption. Think of them as materials whose fundamental properties are defined by their intricate structural design, rather than solely by their atomic makeup.

Innovation Potential:

The applications stemming from metamaterials are truly revolutionary and span diverse sectors:

Advanced Optics: Creating ultra-thin, highly efficient lenses for next-generation cameras and sensors, or even developing the foundational components for “invisibility cloaks” that precisely bend light around objects.
Wireless Communication: Drastically enhancing 5G and future wireless networks by improving signal reception, significantly reducing interference, and enabling far more efficient data transmission.
Medical Imaging: Improving the resolution, sensitivity, and safety of MRI machines and other diagnostic tools, leading to earlier, more accurate, and less invasive diagnoses.
Energy Harvesting: Designing highly efficient materials that can more effectively capture, concentrate, and convert solar or thermal energy into usable power.

Metamaterials offer a completely new paradigm for material design, empowering us to engineer properties previously considered impossible, opening doors to unimaginable technological advancements.

4. Living Building Materials (Bio-Integrated Construction)

The Discovery:

This groundbreaking and rapidly evolving field involves the deliberate integration of living organisms (such as specific strains of bacteria, fungi, or algae) directly into traditional building materials. Imagine bricks that can literally grow themselves, concrete that possesses the remarkable ability to self-heal its own cracks, or walls that actively absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. These bio-integrated materials leverage natural biological processes to provide dynamic functions that inert, conventional materials simply cannot, offering profoundly sustainable and adaptive solutions for the future of construction.

Innovation Potential:

The impact on architecture, urban planning, and environmental sustainability is truly enormous:

Sustainable Construction: Drastically reducing the carbon footprint of buildings by utilizing materials that actively sequester CO2, require significantly less energy to produce, and can even be cultivated on-site from renewable resources.
Self-Healing Infrastructure: Creating resilient roads, bridges, and buildings that automatically repair minor damage, thereby extending their operational lifespan, drastically reducing maintenance costs, and enhancing safety.
Improved Indoor Air Quality: Designing walls that actively filter indoor pollutants, regulate humidity, or even produce oxygen, effectively transforming buildings into living, breathing, and healthier ecosystems.
Resource Efficiency: Developing innovative materials that can be “grown” from waste products or require minimal energy-intensive processing, promoting a circular economy in construction.

This represents a fundamental paradigm shift from static, inert structures to dynamic, biologically active, and self-sustaining built environments.

5. Precision Synthetic Biology (Beyond CRISPR’s Initial Scope)

The Discovery:

While CRISPR gene editing has deservedly garnered widespread recognition, the broader, more expansive field of precision synthetic biology pushes the boundaries even further. It involves the deliberate design and meticulous engineering of entirely new biological systems (such as cells, microbes, or enzymes) to perform novel functions or produce new materials and chemicals with unprecedented accuracy, efficiency, and control. This isn’t just about editing existing genes; it’s about building entirely new biological circuits and metabolic pathways from scratch, or precisely reprogramming organisms to act as tiny, highly efficient, and sustainable factories.

Innovation Potential:

The implications of this ability to program life itself are vast and truly transformative:

Sustainable Manufacturing: Producing advanced biofuels, fully biodegradable plastics, and high-value industrial chemicals from renewable resources using engineered microbes, significantly reducing our reliance on petrochemicals and minimizing environmental impact.
Novel Materials: Bio-fabricating materials with properties superior to conventionally manufactured ones, such as self-healing textiles, bio-inspired super-strong, lightweight composites, or even living sensors.
Food & Agriculture: Engineering crops to be inherently more drought-resistant, more nutrient-dense, or to produce their own fertilizers, fundamentally addressing global food security challenges. This also includes developing sustainable alternative proteins and lab-grown cellular agriculture products.
Advanced Therapeutics: Creating “smart” cells that can precisely detect and treat diseases within the human body, or producing vaccines and therapeutics more rapidly, affordably, and at scale.

Precision synthetic biology empowers us to program life itself, ushering in an entirely new era of bio-innovation that promises to reshape countless aspects of our world.

The Unseen Drivers of Tomorrow’s World

These five scientific discoveries, while perhaps not yet household names, represent the absolute cutting edge of human inquiry and ingenuity. They are the quiet, yet powerful, engines of future innovation, each with the profound capacity to spawn entirely new industries, provide elegant solutions to humanity’s grandest challenges, and fundamentally improve the human condition. As leaders, innovators, and conscious citizens, our collective role is not only to recognize these remarkable advancements but to actively foster the environments where they can transition seamlessly from laboratory breakthroughs to tangible, real-world impact. By understanding, championing, and strategically investing in these unsung scientific frontiers, we can truly shape a more innovative, sustainable, and profoundly human-centered future for all. 🔬🌟

Image credit: Gemini

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Your Work Isn’t Transformative

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Your Work Isn't Transformative

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

Continuous improvement is not transformation. With continuous improvement, products, processes and services are improved three percent year-on-year. With transformation, products are a mechanism to generate data, processes are eliminated altogether and services move from fixing what’s broken to proactive updates that deliver the surprising customer value.

A strategic initiative is not transformation. A strategic initiative improves a function or process that is – a move to consultative selling or a better new product development process. Transformation dismantles. The selling process is displaced by automatic with month-to-month renewals. And while product development is still a thing, it’s relegated to a process that creates the platform for the real money-maker – the novel customer value made possible by the data generated by the product.

Cultural change is not transformation.Cultural change uses the gaps in survey data to tweak a successful formula and adjust messaging. Transformation creates new organizations that violate existing company culture.

If there the corporate structure is unchanged, there can be no transformation.

If the power brokers are unchanged, there can be no transformation.

If the company culture isn’t violated, there can be no transformation.

If it’s not digital, there can be no transformation.

In short, if the same rules apply, there can be no transformation.

Transformation doesn’t generate discomfort, it generates disarray.

Transformation doesn’t tweak the successful, it creates the unrecognizable.

Transformation doesn’t change the what, it creates a new how.

Transformation doesn’t make better caterpillars, it creates butterflies.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Are Your Customers’ Calls Actually Important?

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Are Your Customers' Calls Actually Important?

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Recently, I wrote an article about the customer service farce. One of several examples I shared was the line we often hear when calling customer support: “Your call is very important to us.” When we hear it, we hope it’s true. We hope it means that the company is going to respect our time, that someone will pick up the call quickly (versus being put on hold for an unreasonable amount of time), and that the agent we talk to will have the knowledge and skills to answer our question or resolve our complaint, and we’ll not have to repeat our story again and again.

In our most recent customer service and customer experience (CX) research, we asked a number of questions about contact centers that convey the message, “Your call is very important to us.” The answers will make you smile – maybe even laugh. I’ve shared some of these findings from surveys from the previous year. Here are the latest with a couple of new ones:

Cleaning the Toilet: Nearly four out of 10 customers (39%) say they would rather clean a toilet than call customer support. (That’s gross!)
A Root Canal Is Better Than This: A third of U.S. customers (34%) would rather visit the dentist than call customer support. (That’s painful!)
Dinner with In-Laws: Half of the customers (53%) say they would rather have dinner with their in-laws than call customer support. (That could be painful, too!)
Glossophobia (The Fear of Public Speaking): Even though speaking in public is one of the greatest fears, often ahead of death, one in four customers (26%) would rather speak in front of an audience of 1,000 than call customer support. (Yikes, that’s scary!)

But seriously … as humorous as some of these findings are, there’s some truth behind them. Consider these three findings from this year’s report:

Half of U.S. customers (51%) say that when they call customer support with a question or to resolve a problem, the company does not value their time.
And speaking of respecting time, over half of the customers we surveyed (55%) say they stopped doing business with a company or brand because it kept them on hold for too long.
Six out of 10 customers (63%) say they have stopped doing business with a company because of the inability to connect with someone from customer support. </li?

It sounds like I’m being negative, but the reality is that this information gives me hope – for the companies that get it right. The more serious findings mean that more than half of customers are ripe to switch companies, and if you’re doing it right, they are hopefully going to switch to you.

Whether your company has just a few dedicated employees to support your customers or a large contact center, this information and the opportunities we take from it are applicable to you. Your customers deserve attention and respect. Don’t make them feel as if their call is NOT very important to you!

Image Credit: Pexels

This article was originally published on Forbes.com

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