CMO’s Notebook: Digital Disruption ‘Top Of Mind To Everyone’
TiE, the world’s largest network of entrepreneurs, recently held its 23rd global TiEcon event in Silicon Valley. The opening keynote was given by Shantanu Narayan, president and CEO of Adobe. Here are the key points.
TiE, the world’s largest network of entrepreneurs, recently held its 23rd global TiEcon event in Silicon Valley. In attendance were 4,750 entrepreneurs from more than 20 countries. They heard from 239 breakthrough thinkers about topics including the Internet of Things, the data economy, trending technologies, and social entrepreneurship.
The opening keynote, “The Experience Business Era,” was given by Shantanu Narayan, president and CEO of Adobe (CMO.com’s parent company).
These, I thought, were Narayan’s key points. The video of his entire presentation is embedded at the end of this article.
Digital Experiences Disrupt And Differentiate Businesses
“Today, digital experiences are merging the online world with the real world. Life today is being made better and different through digital experiences. But it is relevant only when it is done right. These digital experiences are developed to blow our minds while blending into our daily existence. All powerful digital experiences today must be personal, must be predictive, and must work flawlessly and brilliantly. In all of my meetings with CEOs and business and government leaders around the world, there is one theme that is top-of-mind to everyone, and that’s digital disruption. We all know that consumer expectations as technology advances are causing every single organization in the world to rethink their digital strategies. Maintaining the status quo of any business today is just not an option.”
‘Experience Business Wave’ Is Here
“As history has shown, when there are new consumer expectations and there are technology advances, to somebody who is innovative, all of this represents a huge opportunity. It represents a huge opportunity in B2C and B2B. Following the ‘back-office wave’ and the ‘front-office wave,’ we believe that we are at the third wave of enterprise disruption, and we call it the ‘experience business wave.’ It is not internally focused on the company’s operations but rather meeting ever-increasing customer demands. Consumers now expect the experience they want, when they want it, and how they want it. They expect every single touch point with a company to be consistent, continuous, and compelling, and personalized and secure. We think the experience business wave is the new competitive battleground and that it represents a tectonic shift that will cause every business to transform in ways that they haven’t had to for decades. This will create a massive opportunity for people who want to be entrepreneurial and take advantage of this trend.”
Great Content + Insightful Data = Great Experiences
“Great experiences are always powered by great content and data. Beautiful design, aesthetics, and eye-catching imagery have always had the power to move, to educate, to inspire people, to create that emotional connection with a business. Today all digital experiences have to be integrated with all of the physical experiences. This is more important than ever before. It takes data and intelligence to get this right, [to get] personalized and customized experiences to the right person at the right time and right place.”
The Power Of ‘Man Plus Machine’
“The truth is, robots will never do great marketing, and human intuition can never be replaced. But if you can harness the power of computing—man plus machine—to make these things work faster and smarter, I think we, as a community, can make great things happen. Look for ways to create, manage, measure, monetize, and mobilize all of your digital content.”
Key Questions In The ‘Experience Era’
“As tech entrepreneurs and leaders of established businesses, all of us in this room have a unique take on how technology defines businesses and strategies. Each of us living in the Experience Era should be asking ourselves a set of questions:
- Is there a unique opportunity for us as a company to compete in this Experience Era?
- Is my organization aligned and structured to put the customer at the center of everything that we are doing?
- What role does technology platform play in enabling me and my entire organization to make this happen?