Brian Solis (author of 'WTF: What’s the Future of Business’) swaps predictions for what he sees as major trends and shares the top five areas that his Altimeter group will be focusing their research on in 2014.

This is an excellent barometer of things to come, both this year and next, from one of the world’s foremost thought leaders in the subject of Digital Transformation and Social Business.

Companies that fail to keep up with the changing face of tech and customer experiences and expectations will be killed off by what he describes as ‘Digital Darwinism. I tend to agree with that philosophy.

A couple of quotes that really stand out for me in his piece:

"Everything begins not with replacing legacy systems in favor of shiny new objects, but instead with the recognition of how customer and employee expectations and values have changed.”

Also:

"This work will create new roles starting at the top with someone owning the customer experience.... While seemingly trendy, this function will unite marketing, sales, service and also IT. New areas of expertise will also be necessary to support these new efforts ranging from experience architects to digital anthropologists to data scientists to cross media strategists."

Bringing the IT team into the wider Social Business, Internal Comms, Sales and Marketing conversation (I SOO can’t wait for these to finally converge!) is absolutely key to promoting transformation and innovation from within.

Oh, and if all this sounds very technical to you, think about it this way: if a menu was updated in line with a restaurant’s IT policy, how often would you go back hoping to be delighted by something new?

Yeah, that.

Please feel free to leave a comment. And if you enjoyed reading this you may like other related posts listed below. To receive future posts don't forget to subscribe via email (just enter your email above), or by RSS, or why not follow me on twitter @mykitchensync.