The Sustainability Imperative
As organizations struggle to define a strategy that balances purpose and profit, opportunities are increasingly emerging to take the lead in sustainability initiatives. Front-line advances in areas such as net-zero emissions, AI-powered solutions for the underserved, precision agriculture, digital healthcare, and more are delivering business benefits, while simultaneously contributing to the realization of the UN’s 17 SDGs. We provide the expert thinking, debate, and guidance to help your organization reposition and transform in the era of sustainability.
Insight
A conversation is taking shape about the role of ethics in software projects, all the way from the algorithms that implement those projects to the projects themselves. Interest is especially focused on autonomous vehicles, the cyber espionage and cyber warfare fields, and many consumer products such as the Web and video authoring tools that have played essential roles in new media and publishing projects — as well as terrorism and child pornography. Note that “software projects” and “system development” are used in a very broad way to encompass apps on mobile devices, complex systems running across an elaborate network of hosts, and websites and Web apps of all types and sizes.
The world of civic apps is much like any other corporate philanthropic effort, but when there's corporate involvement (perhaps involving some of your corporation's specific skills), the efforts can help highlight your capabilities and can provide new opportunities for developing corporate expertise and resources.
Advisor
Empathy-Based Systems Design
Taken together, Head, Heart, and Hands (HHH) form an holistic, integrated framework that enables organizations to review, assess, and improve human-centered processes and constructs. It can be applied vertically from the senior executive to the front-line staff level, and horizontally across many points in an applicable value chain.
THE NEW EXPECTATION IN CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
The explosion of connected devices has set a new standard in consumer expectations, in that the "standard" is a moving target. Everything is connected, everything is digital, and everything is real time. There is no tolerance in the market for a company that produces great products but offers a poor service experience around that product or vice versa. The experience with your firm's products and services must be at least as good as the best experience a consumer has ever had with anyone else.
Article
Empathy for Business
Empathy-based software design makes sense, but like many apparently sensible ideas, most will miss it. The right way to start is to put yourself in your customers' shoes, look at the world from their perspective, and feel for yourself the delight and frustrations your end user might feel. Listen and understand the reasons why users will want to engage, will want to use this application, and what their context and intentions are. You then focus on creating an effortless and situationally appropriate experience. Respect the consumers' preferences.
Waste is worse than loss. The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly. The scope of thrift is limitless.
It's been increasingly evident over the past three to four years that "going green" is a business movement that is here to stay -- partly out of necessity as businesses struggle with increasing costs from fuel and energy. But also partly out of having an environmental conscious. Certainly organizations, publications, activist groups, and news stories are making the masses aware of our duties to help protect and preserve the world we live in.