Yesterday your customers loved Facebook, but now they love Snapchat, too. How do you make sure your products and experiences adapt to your customers' changing habits, especially when your customers live all over the digital world? The question arose recently when BeyondCurious CTO Vishal Agarwal and I were interviewed for a recently published Gigaom report, “Enticing The Everywhere Customer.” When asked about Customer Journey mapping (a tool in which a brand literally creates a map of its customers' touch points with the brand), I was quoted as saying, “I think less about taking a flat snapshot of a customer’s journey and more about creating a living story that morphs along with the customer’s experience. I added, “You need to be able to adapt when you discover that your customers are using Snapchat to look at branded content that disappears.” 

Notice something new about BeyondCurious? 

We have unveiled a new logotype that captures the essence of who BeyondCurious is and how we operate as an innovation consultancy: bold, inventive, pragmatic, impactful, and relentless. 

Credit: Jon-Eric Melsæter

 Recently I was talking to a technologist friend who said that he thinks most companies are hesitant to include research into their design process because people fear the unknown. Call me naïve, but I was shocked to hear that. To me, while research may start with unknowns, its task is the discovery of knowledge. And knowledge is power -- especially knowledge about your target user. However, the more I thought about what he said, the more intrigued I became with the idea. 

How does a major automotive brand empower both its customers and its sales associates with the technology to create a consistent experience online and offline? Lexus, a division of Toyota Motor Sales (TMS), embraced that opportunity by working with BeyondCurious to develop mobile applications that supported the launch of the all-new Lexus 2015 NX and RC models. A key to success was Lexus utilizing a BeyondCurious methodology, Innovation@Speed, that disrupts traditional product development approaches.

Changes abound in how Americans are thinking about healthcare. The Affordable Care Act has wrought tremendous changes in the overall healthcare marketplace, as the focus on patients as healthcare consumers—along with the mandate to incorporate digital technology—has led to industry transformation. One sector at the center of the American’s evolving relationship with healthcare is the retail pharmacy. 

 Code Red: A New Approach to Project Planning

At BeyondCurious, we engage a project planning practice called Code Red, designed to uncover the risk, uncertainty, and fears that exist in relation to any project. Code Red helps us align contingency planning to team energy level, gives us optimism when we need it, and vastly increases quality of output while on the way to the finish line. 

As New York Fashion Weeks closes its doors, the impact of technology in fashion is opening entirely new ones. The fashion industry is known for pushing boundaries in both aesthetics and design. It pulls inspiration from unconventional sources that are oftentimes off-kilter, explorative, and even futuristic. And depending on whom you ask, technology can be described using similar words. The relationship between fashion and technology isn’t new, but it's certainly evolving and there are many lessons to be learned by big and small brands alike. World famous designers are showcasing their collections through cinematic masterpieces while tech companies are hiring high-profile designers to spearhead product design.  

Photo Credit Joi Ito/Flickr

If you had looked in my purse in 1999, you would have been able to predict the iPhone. Inside, I had the following items: cell phone, address book, palm pilot, digital camera, pedometer, lipstick, computer, keys. Seven out of eight of those items have now converged, thanks to the smart phone. 

Image credit to Total Innovation Management Foundation 

Innovation isn’t reserved for small start-ups. More and more big brands are developing Innovation Labs and hiring Innovation Consultancies to create game-changing products and services.  Brands increasingly need to engage consumers in unconventional ways, but only a handful of these brands dedicate in-house resources to systematically understand consumer needs and drive new ideas.   

New technologies are helping retailers increase customer engagement, support staff performance, and bring data richness to in-store customer analytics. For example: have you ever wondered what areas of your store get the most foot traffic? Do you wish you could push relevant promotions and recommendations to customers based on their purchase history while in your store? Or have you ever wanted to beam instructions to a sales associate suddenly faced with an unhappy VIP client?