Any organization with shared services – regardless of size – can benefit from having a Business Outcomes Officer focused on driving outcomes and value delivery.

Global Business Services (GBS) organizations have shifted focus from just delivering services to driving tangible results and value. Indeed, today’s breed of GBS leaders are becoming an active C-suite who help shape and influence design thinking to drive organizational growth ambitions for the CFO and CEO.

The typical organization chart as we know it often doesn’t fully describe how work gets done. This is affirmed by Deloitte’s 2023 Global Human Capital Trends report that states: “Whatever a hierarchical organization chart says, real, day-to-day work gets done in networks. This is why the organization of the future is a ‘network of teams.’”

To this end, operational leaders are becoming a central force for the success of the organization, with the bulk of transformation effort designed and implemented within their business units and departments.

Busting myths

In order to achieve this ambition, the role of the Business Outcomes Officer has evolved as a dedicated profile led by a senior professional to focus on driving the business outcomes from design to deployment, and help onboard the client thinking into this new paradigm.

As a new role title with a big buzz, there are some myths to bust and realities to re-emphasize on what the role entails and what is expected of the role:

Myth 1: the Business Outcomes Officer will lead the charge for regular service delivery and operational excellence in a GBS organization – this role doesn’t replace service delivery, but complements delivery leaders who can then focus on the operational and day-to-day tasks. The Business Outcomes Officer drives conversations to bring disruptive process changes led with a business first mindset.

Myth 2: the Business Outcomes Officer is an independent contributor with unique ways of working that have nothing to do with the operational environment – this is contrary to the spirit of the “network of teams” approach within the new organizational structure. This role will have a strategic and holistic perspective with specific business outcomes and goals. It also requires a high degree of collaboration and influence across various departments and functions to ensure strategies and initiatives are coordinated.

Myth 3: the Business Outcomes Officer is focused on tracking metrics and KPIs aimed at reducing shared services costs – while efficiency is a key goal, this role focuses on conversations towards adopting innovation, driving business value, and increasing operational influence. This is also the reason why organizations tend to look internally to appoint senior leadership who understand GBS ways of working and can drive the client narrative.

In short, the role of the Business Outcomes Officer drives a fundamental shift in the narrative that “outcomes are better than outputs.”

Getting started

Any organization with shared services regardless of size can benefit from having someone focused on outcomes and value delivery. Here’s how to get started:

• Structuring GBS 2.0 around the outcomes and the experiences you are creating and delivering. This requires a shift in the way metrics and measures are outlined and performances are evaluated. The firms of the future may become self-starters who come together to fulfill mission critical activities – sort of like a Hollywood model of work to bring people to fulfill a project.
• Building committed outcomes into the contracting structure with assigned and measurable results. This will be a mindset shift from the previous version where outcomes were a “design approach” or a value add. This forces the thinking towards creating tangible and results-oriented minimum viable products.
• Having the courage to dismantle time tested assets and methodologies and embrace the massive change in the digital ecosystem. This means having the right investments to create incubators for testing, look beyond the default position of reading use cases, while being ready to create history by becoming the forerunner to drive the change.

Embracing and leading change is not new to Capgemini. As a leader in adopting the business outcomes commercial model, we’ve worked with clients of all shapes and sizes across the globe to successfully deploy enhanced business outcomes from the beginning of our contracting timelines.

To learn more about how Capgemini’s Frictionless Finance can transform your GBS operations through leveraging a business outcomes model to deliver enhanced business outcomes, contact: priya.ganesh@capgemini.com

Leveraging a connected, market-differentiating CX strategy can help organizations in the energy and utilities sector significantly improve their customer services operations.

Utilities are interesting because they fall into several categories. They provide simple commodities, but they also provide critical services. They address public and private sectors alike. They’re used by businesses, and also by consumers.

In this article, we’re going to look at utilities in a consumer context, and how leveraging a connected CX strategy can help organizations improve their customer services operations.

The opportunity for enhancing CX

Like businesses in many other markets, utilities companies face perception challenges. In the UK, for example, customer satisfaction levels dropped over the last 12 months for organizations in most sectors – with the largest drop coming from the Utilities sector. This is happening at a time of increased levels of vulnerability, consumers needing easy and quick access to support from their utility providers, and increased ease to switch suppliers when things are not going well.

According to the Institute of Customer Service, customer satisfaction within the Utilities sector has fallen to its lowest level in eight years, dropping 5.6 points to 67.9 out of 100. The Household Consumer Perceptions of the Energy Market report produced by Ofgem also indicates that perceptions of consumer interactions with suppliers sit at the lowest levels since tracking began:

• 58% of consumers who have contacted or attempted to contact their supplier found it easy to do so
• 57% of consumers are dissatisfied with complaints handling
• 37% of dissatisfied consumers cite long resolution times and 35% not having their query resolved
• Only 45% and 54% of consumers found it easy to contact their supplier via phone and live chat, respectively.

These experiences are driving customer churn. According to Capgemini’s World Energy Markets Observatory report, UK churn rates averaged at 15.8%, but this is expected to grow as product and market choice opens up.

Failure to deliver the right customer experience and meet evolving consumer expectations and needs can put utility companies at risk of financial losses through loss of consumers and long-term reputational damage.

Connected CX – Driving differentiation

From these findings we can infer a set of guiding principles for an effective customer experience strategy. CX needs to be seen as a key differentiator in a competitive market. Utility companies need to adopt a consistent and holistic approach to ensure an effortless, personalized customer journey. This will empower consumers to be supported at any time and on any channel, removing points of friction and enabling low effort, high quality experiences.

Any solution needs to be flexible, enabling consistent interactions across different contact channels; it needs to facilitate a personalized service based on the customer lifecycle and need, at scale; and it needs to enable proactive efforts to build relationships and retain customer loyalty through exploiting and maximizing the utilization of internal and external data points to ensure a hyper-personalized service offering.

The key components of a connected CX strategy

What are the key components of a strategy informed by these principles?

• A best-in-class operating model, leverages the “human in the digital loop” approach that enables support across the end-to-end customer touchpoints based on customer need and complexity. This will provide an effective and efficient value chain, driving scalable, resilient, consistent, and agile operations
• The proactive availability of contextual, personal, customer knowledge across channels, helping customers to resolve their own queries promptly on their channel of choice. The better it works, the greater the take-up of digital self-service will be
• An environment in which customer operations teams are able to own any customer interaction across the customer journey, enabling them to build relationships and see things through to completion
• End-to-end visibility of data, providing a single source of truth for each individual customer and enabling measurement of effort and satisfaction across each touchpoint
• The facility to personalize experience in every customer interaction, by integrating solutions and data points that identify individual customer histories and preferences to deliver a 360° customer view
• Infusing AI and digital solutions into the overall service offering to drive improved, human-like, effortless interactions and immersive experiences, as well as augmenting the support team to provide the right resolution and next best actions as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Partnership drives enhanced business outcomes

These strategic elements can be part of what we at Capgemini call Intelligent Customer Operations – an ecosystem of connected, intelligent solutions working in synergy to enhance overall experience for customers and the organization alike.

A knowledgeable service provider with experience of enterprise-level customer services transformation projects can work in partnership with major utilities businesses and other organizations to improve customer and employee experience outcomes through reducing effort, optimizing processes and journeys, and reducing consumer churn to deliver enhanced commercial outcomes.

In the next article, we’ll look at the kinds of areas such a partner can support and the outcomes organizations can expect.

To learn how Capgemini’s Intelligent Customer Interactions solution can transform your organization to deliver more meaningful, emotive, and frictionless experiences with your customers, contact: parham.saebi@capgemini.com

I was excited to discuss sustainability on ServiceNow’s panel at Climate Week in NYC.

ESG is such a layered topic. The premise may be straightforward – organizations must do all they can to mitigate climate change – but there are so many moving parts. In fact, the first question that Maria Hart, Director Alliances ESG Business Development, of ServiceNow put to us was ‘What makes ESG (environment, social, and governance issues) such a complex, difficult challenge for organizations to solve?

Maria’s colleague, Geeta Jhamb, Senior Advisory Solution Architect, Risk Practice, of ServiceNow presented that in many cases, ESG is the responsibility of a designated team – but in fact, its success depends more on the engagement of the functions on the front line. It is down to the people who own the data to drive the program. It is true. More importantly, it is not as big of a priority as it should be, and there is work to be done by the people to demonstrate its relevance and importance.

How can this argument be made? How can sustainability be moved up on the agenda at board level?

The forces fueling the ESG fire

So, what’s driving this surge in ESG consciousness? Several factors combine to create a flame of change.

A regulatory tsunami

The biggest cause of is regulation. Organizations need to recognize an alphabet soup of laws, guidance, and codes of practice, and it’s getting more and more complex. For example, in 2022, the European Commission adopted a proposal for a directive on corporate sustainability due diligence (CSDD). It includes due diligence and auditing around the sourcing of products. Developments like this simply can’t be ignored.

Brand reputational risk

The negative risk of sustainability on a brand is a major factor. There is an inherent trust associated with a brand, and a lack of commitment to sustainability from the brand, can imperil the trust of its customers.

The war for talent

People gravitates towards employers with values they respect. An organization that doesn’t demonstrate commitment to high ESG standards is going to be a less attractive employer as organizations that do prioritize ESG.

The investor imperative

In our talk, Geeta said that 60% of EU organizations, regardless of the nature of the product or service they seek, are including ESG requirements as part of their RFP process. Shareholders and other investors also expect to see organizations making formal pledges to ESG standards before they commit funds. In short, conforming to ESG principles is clearly not just a box-ticking exercise: it could mean losing out on business, or funding, or both.

A long-term approach – Building an ESG foundation

With so many different imperatives to act on ESG, it’s very tempting for organizations to jump right in. But in my view, simply jumping into the ESG fray without a strategic roadmap can lead to confusion and inefficacy. Here’s where a data-driven, technology-enabled approach comes into play:

Here’s an example I used in our discussion. Let’s call it a shoe manufacturing company based in the US. The raw materials used to produce shoes were a big factor in the business, and the IT team wanted to be prepared because they knew that eventually they would be expected to provide reports including evidence of provenance.

The power of data

Our advice to the CIO was that two types of assessment would be needed. The first was a qualitative assessment: what was the organization’s readiness to embark on this kind of journey? The second was more quantitative: what data do you have that’s measurable? Specifically, as far as IT was concerned, it related to the IT assets and the associated relationships of those assets. Were they aligned in a way that was ready to be measured?

In fact, in the context of sustainability, IT is a two-edged sword. Yes, it provides the data that organizations need to assess their positions and act; but on the other hand, it’s also a significant consumer of resources. It’s said that if IT were a country, it would be the third largest in the world in terms of CO2 emissions, and it accounts for 3%-3.5% of total emissions and growing.

Cross-functional collaboration

Is this a reason for gloom? In my view, no. Instead, it’s a call to action – a demand to place upon us to use IT as effectively as we can, mitigating against its sustainability overheads while at the same time putting it to best use. This means interacting and integrating with other functions in the corporation, including finance, HR, and operations, to create a new foundation for ESG. Because, just as IT is itself the bedrock on which all those business functions are based, so ESG itself will only be effective when it’s built on something that brings all these organizational constructs together.

From insights to action

In our discussion, Geeta pointed out that implicit in this argument was the need for a platform. An effective IT platform, she argued, should bring together data, ultimately yielding information made available to users to gain insights. It should provide a basis for an organizational change management strategy, from which workable policies can be developed – policies that can be tracked in practice, to ensure that teams are doing what’s needed and expected of them in pursuit of ESG goals.

While the challenges may seem daunting, the rewards of embracing ESG are significant. Improved brand reputation, talent acquisition, investor confidence, and even operational efficiency are just some of the benefits of prioritizing sustainable practices.

In the next article of this series, we’ll delve deeper into practical steps organizations can take to embark on their ESG journey, providing actionable strategies and tools to navigate the path towards a more sustainable future.

Ready to unlock the potential of ESG for your organization? Explore how our ServiceNow partnership can help you develop a winning ESG program. Click here to find out more about how the world works with ServiceNow, and about partnering with Capgemini on an ESG program.

Capgemini at ServiceNow Knowledge 2024

Earmarked as the most intelligent Knowledge yet, ServiceNow’s flagship event, Knowledge 2024 will bring together 15,000 brilliant minds from across the globe in the heart of Las Vegas. There you’ll discover new ways to drive digital transformation, unlock new levels of efficiency and innovation by putting AI to work for your people.

Productivity, meet experience. As a ServiceNow partner and a Platinum sponsor, we’ll be bringing to you experiences, demos and sessions to help you explore how to drive organizational success through seamless, people-centric approaches.

Visit us at booth 5208 to reimagine your employee journey.

The European finance sector is heavily digitized and IT dependent, relying on digital technologies to drive significant advancements and foster innovation. However, this IT dependence and rapid digitization are also expanding the potential cyberattack surface area. As a result, banks, insurance companies, investment firms, and other financial-services providers (FSPs) have been forced to enhance their cybersecurity measures, vigilantly monitoring their online ecosystems to protect them against evolving threats.

Currently, cyberattacks are doubling each year, emphasizing the importance of cybersecurity across your IT landscape. According to Check Point’s global reporting, the financial sector experienced a 52% increase in weekly cyberattacks in 2022 compared with the previous year. A regional breakdown also revealed that cyberattacks across all sectors in Europe surged by 26% between 2021 and 2022.

As best-practice guidance to mitigate attacks, many European countries have been developing their own information security standards, such as the Good Practice Information Security document in the Netherlands, the Supervisory Requirements for IT in Financial Institutions (BAIT) in Germany, and the Financial Crime Guide (FCG) in the UK. Despite many proactive measures such as these, it is concerning to observe that cybercrime continues to show an upward trend.

Introducing DORA

The European Union (EU) has responded to the cybercrime acceleration in the financial sector by rolling out a new European standard for IT security called the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA). DORA introduces a framework for information security that applies to financial businesses operating within EU-member states, requiring them to maintain a high level of resilience. According to the EU council, this resilience ensures companies can “withstand, respond to, and recover from all types of Information and Communication Technology (ICT)-related disruptions and threats” in a way that safeguards business continuity and economic interests while protecting customers.

The act is not limited to FSPs – such as European banks and subsidiaries of foreign banks in Europe –operating in EU member countries. It also extends to the third-party technology partners these FSPs work with, for example, data-reporting consultancies or cloud service providers, amongst others. If your business falls under any of these categories, it’s crucial that you ensure it is DORA-compliant by January 2025 to avoid potential fines. This gives you exactly a year to make the necessary preparations.

Key steps for your business’s DORA compliance

At its core, DORA is focused on mitigating cyberattacks. This is achieved by establishing standardized requirements for managing ICT risk, reporting ICT incidents, vetting the ICT risk of third parties, testing digital-operations resilience, and sharing information.

ICT Incident Reporting encompasses the actions you’ll take to enable ‘business as usual’ in the face of disruption. It’s a process that monitors, records, categorizes, prioritizes, communicates, and addresses incidents. It covers areas like communications plans for keeping staff informed, your business’s backups strategy, and incidence-response planning. Meanwhile, Digital Operational Resilience tests should be regular and conducted by an impartial third party, providing you with the latest insights into your company’s vulnerabilities. It involves putting your organization’s threat-detection capabilities to the test. By identifying vulnerabilities, you’ll be better placed to enhance your incidence response planning.

ICT Risk Management involves the documentation of how your company runs business-critical operations, and the digital infrastructure that supports these operations. Establishing frameworks and processes for identification, classification, and mitigation of ICT risks, and creating action plans and recovery strategies to address these risks fall under this area.

Questions you might ask include which individuals are involved in each step of a process, what access control is in place for these staff, and which technologies are leveraged – from multifactor authentication (MFA) and virtual private networking (VPN), to remote desktop protocols (RDPs) and endpoint detection and response (EDR). Detailed operations mapping is crucial if you are to gain insights into vulnerabilities and their potential impact in the event of a cyberattack.

Your business will also need to understand its own risk profile by establishing a framework for classification, documentation, and reporting of cyber threats. In the realm of third-party ICT risk assessment, one of the most challenging tasks lies in assessing the third-party ICT providers your business collaborates with. Contracts with these external vendors need to be regularly reviewed to ensure these providers are DORA-compliant. You’ll need a risk strategy, too, for mitigating the potential knock-on effects on your business of breaches experienced by third parties.

Finally, FSPs must establish processes for deriving lessons from both internal and external ICT-related incidents. DORA promotes participation in voluntary threat-intelligence-sharing agreements.

Supporting FSPs on their compliance journey

DORA-compliance may seem deceptively simple, considering there are only five core areas to focus on – but, as always, the devil is in the details. The reality is that understanding the gaps in your existing digital-security landscape will require expertise in both compliance regulation and technical cybersecurity. This is because each FSP has a unique security landscape at various maturity levels depending on what measures are already implemented, meaning that the compliance process won’t be a one-size-fits-all solution.

Dual-specialty expertise is part of Capgemini’s DORA compliance offering. As a DORA-compliant company, we offer an end-to-end solution for FSPs aiming to meet the act’s requirements. Capgemini’s approach respects the fact that your business won’t be starting compliance from scratch – your organization may have some of the necessary security measures already in place. By assessing your organization’s current state, Capgemini can recommend a tailored, modular solution. This is a more cost-effective way to ensure you are tackling identified areas of vulnerability by building on your existing cybersecurity efforts. Once your risk profile is mapped, Capgemini can craft suitable remediation, response, and mitigation plans to help you prioritize actions and prepare you for worst-case scenarios with confidence.

Capgemini’s team can also assist with third-party vetting and the execution of vulnerability tests, both of which require ongoing attention. In fact, it’s important to recognize that meeting DORA requirements is a continuous evolving process rather than a one-off task. This is why part of the customized solution is to implement secure automated systems for continuous threat monitoring that enables active, real-time responses to potential security issues.

Automation comes in many forms. For instance, Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions can help FSPs speed up collection and analysis of security data from various sources, enabling rapid identification of anomalies or threats. Automated incident response systems are valuable, too, as are automated penetration-testing tools that accelerate and broaden the testing scope to maintain your organization’s security posture. Automated patch management systems are vital as they ensure that the latest security updates are applied consistently across the IT landscape. To strengthen access authorization and change management, automation through an AI-led Identity and Access Management (IAM) solution gives your business better control so you can monitor user access to critical systems. Configuration management tools also offer an automated way for FSPs to maintain records of system configurations, making it easier to track changes and ensure compliance with DORA requirements.

Regulatory compliance plays a pivotal role in the success of organizations in the financial sector, which is why so many FSPs actively seek expert guidance and are keen to adopt AI-led automated tools. The key lies in selecting a DORA-compliant service provider who not only assists in meeting the initial compliance requirements but also empowers you with a comprehensive roadmap for resilience and the essential technology infrastructure to sustain and enhance it.

To know more about our solution, click here.

Today’s workplace has the potential to be far more than a set of tools and technologies. It can be a philosophy, a lifestyle, a community, and a culture that fosters innovation, empowers employees, and truly puts people first.

Developments in immersive technology, artificial intelligence (AI), predictive analytics, machine learning, and cloud have laid the foundations for this new era of work. Advancements in these technologies now provide all people the ability to transcend physical barriers for collaboration and engagement, be more innovative and creative in their daily work, and allow businesses to make better more accurate decisions backed by data.

The driving force behind this was experience. The personal experience of each employee across key moments that matter within the workplace has become the yardstick for success. This shift in focus from productivity to performance, from physical boundaries to borderless connectivity, and from mundane routines to dynamic processes, all revolve around the idea of creating a personalized and enriching journey for every individual within the organization.

If 2023 was the year people realized the power of new tools, then in 2024 the stage is set for unprecedented growth for continued technological advancement, augmented human intelligence, and embedded sustainable practices.

It comes at a time when many of today’s employees are, to some degree, unsatisfied or unhappy with their experience at work. They want to be in the driving seat but their managers are often unaware of this: Capgemini research last year found 92% of leaders say their employees are happy at work, while only 30% of individual contributors and 65% of managers agree. The smartest organizations in 2024 will be those that successfully reimagine jobs and work environments around employees, putting well-being, skills, and culture at the core of business design.

Here are five workplace trends that we expect to take center stage in 2024:

1. The workplace becomes more human-centric by design

Over the next 12 months, the focus will continue to shift from productivity to performance. With many people now working remotely at least a few days a week, many leaders realize that getting the most out of employees is not a reflection of time spent at a desk, but by flexible approaches that allow people to add value in the way that works around their life.

Personalized services, customized learning paths, and adaptive environments based on individual needs will become the norm, and the use of digital assistants such as Microsoft Copilot will increase, augmenting human capabilities in new ways. The broader shift from reactive support to proactive enablement is creating a people-centric approach that will change the way workplaces are designed and operate. Importantly, we expect this to extend to the frontline, where automation will increasingly handle repetitive tasks, freeing workers to focus on shaping outcomes rather than just producing outputs

2. Immersive technology augments employee experience

Immersive technology, and virtual reality in particular, has ridden the hype curve since Facebook rebranded to Meta in 2021. This year, however, we expect the potential of immersive technology to start maturing across industries ranging from medicine to manufacturing.

For example, by using smartphones, tablets, or wearable devices such as the Meta Quest VR headset, factory employees could access a digital twin of the appliance that they are manufacturing, permitting practical training and diagnosis of faults without interrupting or otherwise negatively affecting the production process. Similar simulations can happen in almost any industry to help with onboarding and training with a host of benefits, whether that’s minimizing risks like in surgery or enhancing collaboration in the hybrid workplace.

According to Capgemini research, less than one-third of employees (29%) are happy with the collaboration tools to which they have access to at work. To engage and attract a new generation of workers, organizations will therefore have to leverage the consumer devices launched last year to start testing and creating immersive environments for their teams. Case studies, such as Airbus’s application of digital twins in guiding new hires through complex processes showcase the potential of this approach.

3. Time to deliver on the ‘social’ in ESG

According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), one in four people do not feel valued at work. Yet research has consistently shown that high levels of diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) are closely associated with a variety of business-related benefits, including higher levels of productivity, stronger innovation, improved performance, and better talent retention.

As the ambitious 2030 deadline set by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals approaches, this year companies must not only foster cultures where employees can bring their whole selves to work and celebrate unique perspectives and experiences, they must also take greater account for their responsibility for driving positive social change. They can do this in many ways, but they’ll find that leveraging immersive and mixed-reality platforms will accelerate their efforts.

4. Sustainability becomes more deeply embedded

The workplace of the future is, and must be, a sustainable workplace, and in 2024, we expect to see greater efforts to embed green practices in the digital workplace. Again, this will require a proactive approach that combines skills programs such as Capgemini’s Virtual Sustainability Campus, renewable and circular energy management, and embedding sustainability components into modern endpoint management and Device-as-a-Service offerings. With over 50,000 companies facing new regulatory requirements to disclose the impact of their operations on nature as the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive comes into force, it’s likely that leading brands will need to go beyond reporting their impact to stand out from the crowd

5. The impact of intelligent automation, AI, and data

The marriage of AI, automation, and data sets the stage for continued advancements and ensures that the digital workplace remains at the forefront of innovation. AI, with its ability to analyze vast datasets and derive meaningful insights, empowers organizations to make informed decisions promptly. Automation streamlines processes, eliminating bottlenecks and expediting workflows, and the integration of data ensures that these processes are not only efficient but also adaptive, continuously learning and evolving to meet the dynamic demands of the digital landscape.

The impact of all three will ultimately prove fundamental to accelerating growth, streamlining governance, and ensuring compliance long, long into the future.

In 2024, experience is king

As we navigate the complexities of the digital workplace in 2024 and beyond, one thread becomes clear: AI plus immersive experiences are the new power couple, and a focus on employee well-being, coupled with performance, will become the cornerstone of delivering exceptional employee and customer experiences.

The future workplace is driven by automation, powered by intelligence, and focused on the moments that matter to employees. In essence, the digital workplace of 2024 is a fusion of technology and humanity, creating a thriving ecosystem where employees are empowered, ideas flourish, and innovation knows no boundaries.

Driven by intelligent automation, AI, and data, the digital workplace will continue to be a hotbed of innovation and growth. It’s a world where employees are not just contributors, but key players in shaping their organization’s future, empowered by technology to bring their unique skills and ideas to the forefront.

And, as we prioritize inclusivity and diversity in the workplace, we’re setting the stage for a richer, more dynamic environment. By celebrating unique perspectives and experiences, we’re fostering a culture where employees can truly be themselves, driving higher levels of productivity, creativity, and innovation.

Today, the question leaders should be asking is not whether we embrace the digital workplace revolution, but how quickly can we do it?

Are you looking to create a human-centric, experience driven workplace? Talk to us!

Do we (I) want something other than a smartphone?

This is the question that has been raised with introduction of new device like #RabbitR1 and The #AIpin before it. Do I want something that just does a fraction of the functions of my iPhone? Although these devices now only do a small subset of the functionality, they do intrigue me. It is a new way of interaction, new experience, maybe even just because it does less I’m considering it. Smartphones have been dominating our lives for over 2 decades now, is this the time to get rid of them and take back some control?

All the above questions and thoughts have been circling my mind since I have seen the Launch of the R1 at CES. These to device are just the start but they are small but significant balloons that have been let up by the tech industry to test the waters. Are we ready for a change? Are we ready for less? Or do we just want the same but in a different jacket.

What is your preference, something new or something old? Have you already preordered one of the devices?

Stay curious 🧐