Apple Watch is coming, and it's going to have a big impact on brands.  

The Apple Watch, available on April 24, 2015, has been praised, vilified, and dissected by a wide-ranging audience, including everyday consumers, technology geeks, Apple fans, and fashionistas. The new product has also injected some strong style mojo into the Apple brand. But should businesses care about the Watch? Absolutely. Apple Watch will have far-reaching impacts on several industries, from healthcare to automotive and retail. The Watch, which blurs the line between mobile and wearables, will pressure brands across the board to make mobile experiences more personal and less intrusive. 

How did Lexus meet the challenge of rolling out training to launch a new vehicle quickly and effectively? 

Lexus, a division of Toyota Motor Sales (TMS), wanted to create a digital tool that could quickly ramp up its sales team on two new models in the highly competitive market for sports sedans and crossover SUVs.

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.” 

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. 

After founding and running Web 2.0 conferences for a number of years, John Battelle was fed up. The co-founder of Wired had had it up to here with status quo conference rooms and generic hotel ballrooms. So, while mountain biking with friend Brian Monahan, the two came up with an idea that would turn the conference on its head. 

 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. 

Ensuring that guests have a consistent, memorable experience is paramount to building your brand in the travel and hospitality space. To achieve this goal, many companies are putting their technology to work in a variety of ways—from location-based promotions to performance support that helps staff deliver high-touch service. As experts in the travel and hospitality space with a deep understanding of human experience, we see three ways brands can capitalize on new technology to deliver next generation guest experiences.