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29. – 30. OKTOBER / Köln, Deutschland
18 December 2019 (Paris France) — This past summer I gave myself a 3-month break, ensconced in my seaside home, working a wee bit but pretty much staying off-the-grid to read and write, most of it on ecology, evolution and more specifically the work of Rachel Carson which explores the whole of ocean life from its shores to its depths.
One of the things I wrestled with were the similarities I saw between the dynamics of evolutionary biology and societal change. And more specifically, the idea of evolution by “punctuated equilibrium” which is a relatively new take on how and why evolution occurs.
In his pioneering book On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin proposed that natural selection was the driving force of speciation and evolution. Darwinian evolution is a force of continuous change — a slow and unceasing accumulation of the fittest traits over vast periods of time. By contrast, punctuated equilibrium suggests that evolution occurs as a series of bursts of evolutionary change. These bursts often occur in response to an environmental trigger and are separated by periods of evolutionary equilibrium.
I find the construct of punctuated equilibrium useful as a framework for thinking about disruption in today’s economy. In the technology world, we often think about Moore’s Law providing the foundation for constantly increasing change, much like Darwinian evolution’s constant accumulation of change.
But that’s not the way revolutionary evolution works. Measures of evolutionary growth should not revolve around rates of change of innovations. Instead, they should focus on what brings about those revolutionary changes. History shows that punctuations themselves are occurring more and more frequently, causing more and more rapid upheavals of species and industries alike.
Because when science and technology meet social and economic systems, you tend to see something like punctuated equilibrium. Something that has been stable for a long period suddenly disrupts radically—and then finds a new stability. Examples include the discovery of fire, agriculture, gunpowder, the Gutenberg Press, the automobile, the internet, etc. Each of these innovations collided with stable society, and then a little hell broke loose.
That is the reason this idea has such a compelling parallel in the business world: today we are seeing a burst of evolutionary change, a “mass extinction” among corporations and a mass speciation of new kinds of companies. The “mass extinction” refers to business firms that fail to digitise their operations. Successful digitisation involves mastering four new key technologies: flexible cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things.
And so upon the end of my long summer sojourn it was a delight that my first working event was Deutsche Telekom’s digitisation think-fest “DIGITAL X” in Cologne, Germany (held at the Koelnmesse, the Cologne international trade fair and exhibition center which is simply a perfect event venue). And obviously when you have the brain power at an event like this … Sir Richard Branson from Virgin, Jimmy Wales from Wikipedia, Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, and many more … you cannot help but have some very “deep dive” conversations (at exhibitor booths, at the sessions, in the food queues, at dinner, at the bars) about the cultural aspects of media, politics, trade and social interactions vis-a-vis digital technology and digitisation.
NOTE: Digitisation and digitalisation are often used interchangeably, rightly or wrongly. Technically, digitisation means the process of converting data or information into digital format. But the point here is basic: we are talking about using digital technologies to change a business model and provide new revenue and value-producing opportunities; it is the process of moving to a digital business.
These are subjects you tend not to address at other conferences which are “all-trade” focused. But Deutsche Telekom manages to create that atmosphere with this new digital summit (in only its second year) for business, economics, environment, life-style, politics, social policy. There is no better place to learn about it than DIGITAL X because it is a program of vendor presentations, workshops, master classes and tutorials – everything you need to know in order to create revenue, improve business, replace/transform business processes (not simply digitising them) and create an environment for digital business, whereby digital information is at the core.
Getting the right “slant”
I have done enough reading, gone to enough tech conferences, spoken with enough people, and used enough technology “to know the nature of technology and computation and context”, as Brian Arthur has written, so I can contextualise what I see. Artificial intelligence represents the most recent bundling of data and computation to optimise business decisions, automate tasks, and, from the point of view of a reporter, learn about the world. The relationship between a journalist and AI is not unlike the process of developing sources or cultivating fixers. As with human sources, artificial intelligences may be knowledgeable, but they are not free of subjectivity in their design — they also need to be contextualised and qualified. Because digitisation is affected by inequities, and unknowns, leaving gaps that often reflect the very disparities I, as a journalist, seek to illustrate.
So it is comforting at an event like DIGITAL X to be able to go anywhere, meet anyone, and chat — tech boosters, critics, skeptics, pessimists, but above all optimists. All mixed in together. For that, a word of thanks and a hat tip to Alexander Hachmeyer and his communications team at Deutsche Telekom for facilitating all those meetings.
And to be fully transparent, as a working journalist, some of the reasons why I love events like DIGITAL X is the structure: wide exhibitor aisles, an enormous work area for the press, free food throughout the day, and vendor meeting rooms just off the main floor so no need to schlep up and down escalators or leave the venue.
The key element for digitisation success: partnership
“Win with partners” is one of the key elements of Deutsche Telekom’s strategy. This underscores the importance of cooperation for Deutsche Telekom’s future success. In addition to various units of Deutsche Telekom, I met scores of companies that were either a spin off of Deutsche Telekom and therefore had an existing partnership with them, or were just a straight out partner who had to make a deal pitch.
Deutsche Telekom obviously will continue to develop its own ideas, but is incredibly open to outside innovations and is increasing its emphasis on collaboration which, in the greater tech world, is simply not standard operating procedure. The objective is to offer a wider range of products and services together with partners. Major, global corporations as well as small startups can become partners on equal terms. It is an interesting approach, the use of “smart combinations”. This way, in-house ideas can be enhanced by developments of external partners. Intelligent approaches can often be cleverly combined – so that the blend gives the customer an even greater experience.
But as Hagen Rickmann told me … he is the chap who conceived the DIGITAL X conference format and who is Deutschland Telekom’s Director for Business Customers, and member of the executive board of Deutschland Telekom; my video interview with him is below … the difficulty lies in finding the right partner and deciding how much energy to put in these relationships.
I heard countless positive customer feedbacks. Well, I would, of course. But I did further research after the event, and was able to chat with a few Deutschland Telekom partners that were not able to attend DIGITAL X, and I was also kindly introduced to a few for whom the drum still bangs a bit slowly. I came away with two thoughts:
• Generating revenue from within a partnership ecosystem is, of course, key. Creating one that is sustainable, reliable and profitable is not a piece of cake. Having strong ties into national and European leaders in industries like high-tech, healthcare, security is the keystone to success and by all accounts Deutschland Telekom has been performing incredibly well in this area.
• And quite frankly, adding value by creativeness is an accomplishment in itself.
Cloud management is something Deutsche Telekom excels in
Salesforce invented the software-as-a-service model in the early 2000s – and then cloud computing exploded. One of the key technologies for successful digitisation is flexible cloud computing. Deutsche Telekom knows that cloud computing has created this paradigm shift in IT as data, processing power and IT applications are increasingly moving onto the net.
And I think they nail it. Because they realise that cloud management has become highly complex for many companies, usually as a result of differing user needs. Companies need to use a combination of public and private cloud while still running their legacy systems as well. CIOs face the challenge of giving the best possible solution to their internal customers. Old workloads have to be managed and optimised while developers need access to the possibilities of the public cloud to launch new applications. IT Security demands the enforcement of governance rules regardless what cloud is being used, and management demands efficient operations of all company’s IT.
The Deutsche Telekom cloud computing experts were there to sell, to assist customers, to assist partners. But two of them were gracious enough to give me a good chunk of their time to explain their view on the shift to cloud and the Deutsche Telekom role:
• Cloud computing and virtualization solutions have opened the door for a wealth of new products and services. With cloud computing, clients now have access to information technology services as a turnkey product.
• Data center colocation allows clients to house their sensitive and mission-critical data and information in a dedicated offsite facility. Data center colocation is a huge step for the majority of businesses who need IT infrastructure but cannot or do not want to invest in their own data center. A company’s data center colocation puts the latest technology to work for businesses without requiring prior technical expertise.
My note: I think cloud computing offers businesses the ability to connect to computing resources and access IT managed services with a previously unknown level of ease. At the basic level, cloud services include software and applications on demand so that end users can run programs without having to go through a lengthy installation process.
• Most cloud services are turnkey and offered on demand for dynamic systems that react immediately to businesses needs. Outsourcing IT needs is completed quickly in this new cloud computing paradigm; virtual resources are accessed as quickly and easily as resources in house. Best of all, since cloud computing is offered dynamically; businesses are only paying for what they are using, which greatly simplifies contracts and purchase orders.
• With cloud computing, virtualisation solutions, and data center colocation growing in demand, new industries are being created to service these needs. This is the benefit of digitisation. Instead of companies being forced to enter into extensive licensing agreements for all their computing needs, cloud computing solutions are instantly scalable and easily tailored to meet specific requirements of size and scope. Deutsche Telekom can help determine the required scalability.
• Cloud computing has simply revolutionised how services are provided. It has completely changed the delivery paradigm.
For me, overall, new technologies and services, ranging from cloud computing applications to social media marketing campaigns, are revolutionising the technology landscape and Deutsche Telekom is involved in every aspect, either directly or through a partner.
And one other note since I did not have a place to put this: one of the objectives of attending any conference is to make connections and learn something new. One thing that got my attention was the concept of Progressive Web Apps, or PWAs. PWAs are websites that look and feel like an app. This means users can access all information and capabilities without downloading a mobile app. Instead, progressive web apps use modern web technology to deliver app-like experiences to users, right in their browsers. I’ll be looking for a “Made In Germany” hashtag or moniker 🙂
But communication … and trust … are important, too
Not everything at DIGITAL X is bytes and beeps. Communications is more and more becoming a matter of trust and was heavily discussed. In addition consumers are increasingly looking for individuality. Therefore messenger services like Whatsapp, WeChat, Facebook Messenger are growing faster than more “public” platforms like Instagram, Youtube, etc. and they will be crucial to integrated marketing. This was emphasised by Steven Bartlett, Founder/CEO of Social Chain, one of the leading “social-first” marketing agencies that uses owned media, marketing and technology to build brands. Call it a part marketing agency, part media house. His presentation was a Master Class in social media marketing.
It is also why you need to be content driven, because it’s not only brand over product but actually content over brand over product. Be engaging, tell a story and provide content that makes people happy, said Kaaren Whitney-Vernon, a brand/media expert who seems to have a passion for understanding where content and audiences are moving. She laid out the pre-measurements/research she does for clients – a snapshot of brand awareness, consideration, recommendation, brand perceptions (trust, relevance, familiarity) and emotional engagement. Once the series is complete, she does a post research wave, continuing to look at all these elements, so that she can track whether her suggestions to improve have moved the needles on your core Key Performance Indicators – KPIs in the trade. She apparently knows her stuff. Among her biggest clients are Nokia and Walmart. I have had a long-term relationship with Nokia and I can say the Nokia social media manager raved about her.
Yes, all of this can feel a bit overwhelming and you wonder “what are the key things I should I take away from DIGITAL X?” So before I roll out a series of short video interviews to show you how and why Deutsche Telekom succeeds as a digitisation partner, a few words from Hagen Rickmann – the chap who conceived the DIGITAL X conference format and who is Deutschland Telekom’s Director for Business Customers, and member of the executive board of Deutschland Telekom, Hagen Rickmann. He puts the event in perspective:
We shot 17 in-depth interviews at DIGITAL X and the full versions will roll out in January. The following are short clips from just a few of those interviews to show you the breadth and depth of Deutsche Telekom personnel, the partners/exhibitors that work with Deutsche Telekom, and the event attendees.
And two important notes. I felt the need to stay in the “spirit of digitisation” so:
• For the German language version of this post I used a new German artificial intelligence translation program that I learned about at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
• For the subtitle work in the following videos (we interviewed in both German and English) we used a new AI technology in beta which creates SRT files (SubRip Subtitle files) which are plain-text files that contain subtitle information and allow you to upload captions to your videos.
Yes, there are some translation and syntax errors. And the subtitle work is inconsistent (some sections were not subtitled). But I had a few of my German readers give the work a read and they thought the tech did a fairly good job. And these technologies will improve.
First up is Dirk Dirk Reimold who is a Regional Sales Manager for Deutsche Telekom. In this clip he explains Deutsche Telekom’s emphasis on collaboration and the wide range of products and services it provides its partners. It is an interesting approach, the use of “smart combinations” which I noted above:
Martin Tiani is the founder of Grapevine World, a decentralised, borderless ecosystem for the seamless exchange of health data in a standardised, secure manner. Populated with every stakeholder in health – from patients to pharma, care providers to payers, researchers and technicians – Grapevine World is the backbone of a new global market. In this clip Martin explains what his company is building and his partnership with Deutsche Telekom:
Neuro Flash is another fascinating Deutsche Telekom partner. And my AI program at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology served me well when I met with them. In this brief clip from our longer video to be produced next month, Henrik Büning, a co-founder of the company, explains how they captured the power of a neuromarketing strategy, based on machine learning, and natural language processing:
Another great example of the fantastic partnerships Deutsche Telekom has developed is BVMW-Servicegesellschaft, an extensive and sophisticated networking association for small and medium size businesses across Germany. I spoke with Michael Woltering, the organisation’s Managing Director, who explained what the organisation does and the importance of the relationship with Deutsche Telekom:
I had some time to spend with the Deutsche Telekom security team to learn about the reach of its cybersecurity protection technologies, including its early stages of using artificial intelligence to make systems “smarter” in determining threats. In this brief clip, Edgar Scholl, a cybersecurity expert for Deutsche Telekom (and someone well known throughout the cybersecurity world) gives me an overview on Deutsche Telekom’s cybersecurity capabilities:
In this brief clip from our longer video, Stefan Klocke talks about Volocopter, the global leader in the development of electrical vertical take-off and landing multicopters (eVTOL) as air taxis to fly people safely to their destination, and his relationship with Deutsche Telekom:
Biohax International is the global leader in biochip implantation. As I would learn, their brand exposure far exceeds any competitors. In this brief clip, Charlie Winovich explains what the company does and its relationship with Deutsche Telekom:
An event as vast as DIGITAL X prevents us from interviewing everybody. So here are three very intriguing companies we met that I want to highlight:
Cogia intelligence: social-media-monitoring-and-measurement
With over two billion users on Facebook alone, social media has become the most important branch for public discourse. So companies are quite eager to collect and transform the relevant information into business success. It is natural. There is a lot of traffic in this area … scores of companies have technology for social-media-monitoring-and-measurement.
The key, though, is to have intuitive and well-designed technology so you can analyze in detail the positioning of your company … and your competitors. Because the key is to increase the visibility of your brand/company and thereby raise the level of awareness with the right social media strategy.
Cogia Intelligence (founded in 2010) is one of the leading providers of media monitoring technology and AI-based solutions in a field we hear of … ad nauseam … “Big Data Analytics”. Their technology is used in web monitoring, competitive intelligence, text mining and customer satisfaction.
Why is this important? In my brief chat with their Accounts Manager he summarized it as follows:
-Consumers increasingly rely on online research when considering a purchase. Studies show that 88% of buyers research products online before making a purchase (online or in-store); and 86% will hesitate to purchase from a business that has negative reviews.
-Leaving brand reputation to chance can lead to a crisis. Monitoring your reputation and reacting promptly will help you avoid crises and full-on disasters, and prevent negative news about your business from spreading.
-Your brand’s online reputation can affect your we site’s rankings: Google uses an algorithmic solution designed to de-rank sites that offer poor customer experience.
-Monitoring your online reputation will give you valuable customer insights: what people love about your product, what they wish they could change, and what they feel is missing.
What Cogia seems to have done is make an art form of qualitative and quantitative analysis of internal data. They use text mining … the automatic analysis of text with regard to the topics, the relevant keywords or conceptual relationships as well as their tonality … to detect patterns and conspicuous differences in the answers of the surveyed respondents and also identify “weak” signals which otherwise would be lost in random noise. This helps to achieve hypotheses for future surveys and provides important reference points with regard to a company’s strategic planning.
It also delivers a structured overview of heterogeneous data and visualizes the results in intuitive understandable graphs. Here is just one example:
There are a lot of social media analytic tools out there. Cogia seems to be one of the best. For more about the company click here.
Cognigy: conversational AI software
Cognigy was a company I have known simply because it had been a “Cool Vendor” in Gartner’s “Cool Vendors in AI for Conversational Platforms” 2018 report. In brief, the report evaluates emerging vendors from the field of Conversational Platforms “that application leaders should watch in order to take advantage of the disruption they will bring to all markets”.
One of the more interesting topics I have written about this year has been voice commerce. Such major blogs as Axiom and MediaVillage and TechCrunch and ZDNet now devote separate columns to deal with this topic. As I have noted, the German consulting company valantic has seen significant interest in showcases and webinars about this topic and they have done some implementations using Cognigy, a conversational platform that was created in 2015.
Apart from the positive user experience that voice bots can deliver, one of the main reasons for them to become more prevalent is the increased ease of development and deployment. Platforms like Cognigy are essentially low-code platforms that allow iterative cycles that lead to very fast success.
Essentially, Cognigy is a digital assistant that helps AI bots pick up information from their conversations with real people, making responses more natural and human-like over time. The company benefits from voice-controlled digital assistants developed by Siri, Alexa, Cortana or Google Assistant. These chatbots – programs capable of conducting conversations through text or audio – are given the ability to memorize customer preferences and product information. As explained to me by Konstantin Garbe, Cognigy’s Inside Sales Lead :
They’re channels – but we’re the brain behind it. Alexa or Siri have their own systems to tell the user for example what the weather’s going to be like. Artificial intelligence operates using systems called skills, which Cognigy provides to company chatbots. Cognigy works with companies to develop an information system that is hooked up to their corporate database. The customers talk to a chatbot which converts the message into text and sends it to the system developed by Cognigy, which then delves into the company’s database to answer it. That enables the chatbot to recognize customers, access product information and store the conversation for future interactions.
Voice will change how brands go to market and interact with consumers, but it will be a slow roll out. In fact, a report by “The Information” rocked a few boats when it revealed practically no one was buying via voice. But Alexa is conquering the world through the very popular Echo devices, and of course you need to be able to target your customers on these devices. What I liked about Cognigy was that it integrates seemlessly with Alexa, enabling you to define your intents and slots in Alexa while creating your conversation in Cognigy.
Granted, this is tricky stuff. Voice can help foster brand loyalty, but there are potential risks. At present, when customers type in a search term for a product such as a yoga mat, they get a list of brands and all those brands at least have a chance to appear on the first page. But with voice-activated assistants, it’s going to be different. As Scott Grayson of MediaVillage put it:
The aim must be to get customers to ask the question: “Google, show me Stranger Things on Netflix” or ‘”order me Adidas shoes on Zalando”. If the brand isn’t in the customer’s mind and explicitly mentioned in the search with intelligent systems it won’t even be searched by Alexa or Google Home.
I make the analogy of talking on an iPhone, not to it. Customers have to understand one thing: it’s the brand that talks to the user. In the end the assistant is just the channel. For more about the company click here.
NeXenio: collaboration world-wide, digitally
NeXenio is a German cloud computing company headquartered in Berlin and they focus on the future of the daily working-life … to work safely through distances.
We all know the drill. Collaboration across the world is difficult. On-site workshops are cost intensive and those analog whiteboards we all love have to be erased before other meetings. And information on whiteboards cannot be rearranged. Conference calls? How many of us have endured the inaudible call. And you get no history of the conference call.
What I learned from is they have developed “digital whiteboards”. And I know I am simplifying this but very quickly … and excuse my bullet-point approach … what you get is:
• Easy collaboration across thousands of kilometers in real time
• You are not “lost” in endless mail chains
• You can actively engage with customers or project partners
• You can write on digital whiteboards with “moving” sticky notes and you can cluster sticky notes (very cool)
• And you probably realize the obvious advantages: joint brainstorming, all interactions synchronized to all devices in real time, all whiteboards can be stored at any time, etc. etc.
What I really liked was the platform and integration: whiteboard client for desktop computer, SaaS (runs in every major browser), the use of mobile devices, mobile digital whiteboards.
And for me the real “biggies”: no need to create meeting minutes because everything is already stored, and no misunderstandings during calls.
For more about the company click here.
And there were things I did not have time for and only learned by reading my press briefings after the event. For instance:
– T-Systems is offering an independent marketplace for “Blockchain as a Service” for the first time in Europe. It presented its new product at Digital X. The new marketplace provides secure, compliant and rapidly deployable blockchain services. These include all necessary tools for development, testing and operation of blockchain networks.
– Bcon’s hands-free control for increased productivity – a game changer not only in gaming and assistive tech.
CONCLUDING POINTS
I shall conclude where I began: punctuated equilibrium. Because when science and technology meet social and economic systems, you tend to see something like punctuated equilibrium. Something that has been stable for a long period suddenly disrupts radically—and then finds a new stability. Digitization belongs with the discovery of fire, agriculture, gunpowder, the Gutenberg Press, the automobile, the internet, etc. Each of these innovations collided with stable society, and then a little hell broke loose.
And that change is leading to the extinction of many companies, and a mass speciation of new kinds of companies. The extinction refers to business firms that fail to digitize their operations. Successful digitization involves mastering four key technologies: flexible cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things.
Many companies have thought this through well and Deutsche Telekom is one of them. And they have shown the importance of cooperation in their success. Because they have broken the mold. Yes, they will continue to develop their own ideas, but they are incredibly open to outside innovations and an increasing emphasis on collaboration which, in the greater tech world, is simply not standard operating procedure. The objective is to offer a wider range of products and services together with partners.
I will continue this story next year as we roll out the full video interviews we did and you’ll see, in detail, how and why these “smart combinations” work so well.