Five doses of inspiration from the worlds of #Innovation, #Futurism, #Finance and #Utilities — plus one company that is #bringingtheawesome.
Friday 8 June, 2018
#1 Amazon Energy — Feasible or Flight of Fancy?
Amazon wants to be at the heart of all of your consumer spending, and Energy is one of the final pieces of the jigsaw.
In this article, Franck Latrémolière methodically unpacks how Amazon Energy would transform domestic energy consumption; moving from apathetic customers and yearly renewals, to a future where trading energy would be as fluid as filling the tank with petrol — with a little help from Alexa.
Explore voice as part of your business model and see how it has the potential to tie together a new range of possibilities.
📄 2,700 words
Opinion: Amazon would be a good buyer for SSE + Npower
#2 The Queen’s Speech: Mary Meeker
It’s easy to see why Mary Meeker is one of Forbes’ most powerful women as she rattles breathlessly through this year’s barrage of insights.
Were you aware that 38% of Chinese people were open to sharing data, as opposed to just 8% of Japanese citizens and 16% of Brits? How does that affect your product?
This half-hour of relentless facts is Silicon Valley’s ‘State of the Union’ — you can’t work in technology and not watch this.
(Brucey Bonus: if you work in Utilities check out Eliq’s Håkan Ludvigson’s article 5 Takeaways for Utilities from Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends 2018* )
*Great number choice 😃
📺 33 mins
Mary Meeker’s 2018 Internet Trends Report
#3 An Easy Recipe for Tech Success
W. Brian Arthur speaks with the authority and clarity of someone who has worked at the pinnacle of technology for a lifetime.
He spotted early on that technological success goes against the grain of accepted economics and diminishing returns. Once a product grabs a big user base it locks itself into place, then the growing power of Network Effects becomes an insatiable driving force.
This is dominant theory of the venture capitalists at Silicon Valley, and the principles seems to be making sense in China with the likes of WeChat (imagine Facebook became a bank).
How do you capitalise on latent network potential — have a listen.
🎧 65 mins
a16z Podcast: Network Effects, Origin Stories, and the Evolution of Tech
#4 Products are Consumer Junk, Systems are Where It’s At
We don’t usually point you in the direction of older articles, but this one deserves to be resurrected.
People tend to break a question down into its component parts to try and understand companies, situations and systems. But there’s a cost… In analysing the parts, you ignore the bigger picture.
For example, the data aggregators and robo-assistants form the world of finetch are scrutinised on their individual merits, without much thought for their place in the wider consumer experience.
Similarly, the ‘connected home’ was meant to be about safety, comfort and convenience, but as the author states, we’ve lost that point in favour of endless gadgets which have no empathy for practical application.
Emerging technology can resemble a solution looking for a problem. Consumers don’t care about the tech itself — they care if it makes life better. So do we.
📄 2,000 words
Convergence of Systems: Utilities, The Built Space and Transportation
#5 Banks — A Safety Deposit Box For Your Data?
Do you ever click an article on platform banking or Open Data expecting something new only to find the same-old, peddling more info about how, “banks need to open themselves to the new partnership model etc. etc. etc.”
In this article, Chris Skinner pushes us towards a closer definition of what a bank is in the new reality: A safety deposit box for your data.
This secure vault of user-owned data then forms the basis of truly disruptive hyper-personalised services which can deliver savings and tangible benefits.
📄 700 words
#Money2020Europe Day One: Will banks become ‘safes’ for data?
This isn’t business as usual: Digi.me 🎉
A lot of this week’s themes have centred around network effects and turning small fragments of innovation into a meaningful experience.
This is why data is ‘the new oil’ and the companies that can get closest to our behaviours and spending patterns are in pole position — Amazon, Alipay.
Data concerning your purchase history or your home energy usage can help companies provide hyper-personalised experiences, but you need to be in charge.
As a platform which helps us to take control our data, Digi.me is readying us for this new reality, by making our data streams as clear as panes on a dashboard. You own the data, you unlock the value.
Well-played Digi.me👍👊👍👊👍👊
Hppn does what now?
Hppn (ˈhap(ə)n) is a design and innovation agency. We specialise in anticipating evolving customer needs within the Financial Services and Utilities sectors, and then leading the creation of transformative products and services. So whether you want to build radical new products, make drastic improvements to processes, or explore the most difficult questions in your industry, we can help.
- Email: steve@hppn.co.uk
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Curation is the ultimate method of transforming noise into meaning. — Rohit Bhargava (@rohitbhargava)
