WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

Not sure that this new service will transform the broadcast industry but it certainly makes you think about it. Grab over-the-air signals that are available everywhere and broadcast them - freely - over the Internet without paying dues or fees. Sounds like cheating but hey, if it is *possible* at some time someone will do it.

That is why I consider this more a digitization than a transformation of broadcast: digitize the signal to whatch it on your ipad. The first step. True transformation of broadcast comes when you do things like tivo or better netflix, when you can elect to watch what you want when you want, whether it is broadcast or recorded or movies.

Interesting when you compare this with the Boston Consulting survey on same-day delivery which basically says that retailers are embracing same-day delivery but that customers really don't care about it.

Great example of usage of social media beyond a boring facebook page and followers. People that post photos of themselves are more attached to the brand and the other clients. And this can pply to way more than apparel. Think food - pics of your meals or what you've prepared with groceries you bought - or in a B2B environment pics of usage of front loaders or other mechanical equipments. Lots of opportunities to transform the customer interaction, feedback, commitment, and ultimately sales?

Amazing. The origins of "Think globally, act locally". Very interesting way to look at organization to give local resources a lot of flexibility and report the right data to higher ups.

Not sure that I agree that the curated shopping approaches are right but they do raise an interesting question: can the shopping model be "flipped" using digital means?

The current online shopping model is pretty much the same as the paper-based catalog or in-store shopping experience of the old days: browse a catalog, add items to a cart and then pay. The digitized experience can be more efficient (with searching, reviews, additional information, live help, etc.) but optimized does not mean transformed.

Can curated shopping transform the experience by having you pay first (for a curator's help), then receive products and return what you don't need or want? May not apply for apparel but maybe that grocery shopping would benefit from that flipped approach? Have an expert (diet guru, coach, famous chef) prepare recipes and a meal plan and automatically send you the appropriate items, along with the other things you need to run a house (cleaners, pet food, etc.).

What do you think?

Pharma is not a field I know much about. Yet I find it interesting how digital may help transforms the drug development process. This new Pharma tool - InfoDesk - appears to be merely the digitization of pen-n-paper collaboration processes. An improvement but not a revolution.

It brings back memories of Wired magazine Sergey brin's search for Parkinson's cure where a true digital transformation is proposed. Instead of formulating a theory, then painstakingly verifying its results in year long tests, Brin proposes the analysis of very large patient datasets to "look for patterns" which may suggest good investigation paths. And possibly transform the way drug research is done... as well as providing results much faster. That's what I call digital transformation of the medical/pharma world! From Wired:

"Brin is after a different kind of science altogether. Most Parkinson’s research, like much of medical research, relies on the classic scientific method: hypothesis, analysis, peer review, publication. Brin proposes a different approach, one driven by computational muscle and staggeringly large data sets. It’s a method that draws on his algorithmic sensibility—and Google’s storied faith in computing power—with the aim of accelerating the pace and increasing the potential of scientific research. “Generally the pace of medical research is glacial compared to what I’m used to in the Internet,” Brin says. “We could be looking lots of places and collecting lots of information. And if we see a pattern, that could lead somewhere.”

In other words, Brin is proposing to bypass centuries of scientific epistemology in favor of a more Googley kind of science. He wants to collect data first, then hypothesize, and then find the patterns that lead to answers. And he has the money and the algorithms to do it."