There has been a significant uptick of interest by organizations to benefit from design thinking and using agile to expedite more frequent improvements over time. However, most organizations are not prepared for the ramifications of using either and run into cultural and skill problems that retard any real progress. We have experience in aligning people, skills and practices and grow comfort and competency over time.

Digital technologies are becoming increasingly pervasive through IoT, analytics and cognitive to a point where they actually may be redefining what it is to be ‘human.’ Computers have helped people think and work faster for some type of performance improvement. However, the way the brain processes stimuli and the role of augmented reality as a form of intelligence amplification will have profound impact on the way organizations interact and serve their markets.

Building on the Design Methods movement in the 1960’s as a reaction to post-war reductivism, design thinking links logic and intuition into a co-intelligence linking trans-disciplinary collaborations through diverging and converging for more enlightened solutions through the art of the possible.

Digitally enabled devices connected through the cloud access a wide variety of public and private services. More and more of our everyday products have microchips and users will want access to their data through any device. Data now has temporal meaning to a user depending on task and location to support a situation.

We are living in a world where digital systems can visualize data in ways that were not possible using traditional tabular equivalents. Finding visual patterns through descriptive, predictive, proscriptive data allows for insights relationships and more informed decisions.

Associated with Bruce and Stephaine Tharp, their premise is that products are a manifestation of intellectual endeavor and transmitters of values, ideas as well as utility. While associated with product design, any man made artifact or process developed by a designer with a sociocultural intent is discursive.

Many companies realize that the division between products and services are converging. As products become commoditized, service becomes the differentiator. Integrating on site, mobile, social, analytics and cognitive interactions linked together to create vibrant service experiences.

Leveraging active communities that create user-generated content and influence community member values, behavior and decisions is an evolving area. While privacy issues are of concern, community members value the suggestions that systems and communities create; many through mash-ups or hybrid digital systems integrating as many individual and group interactions.

Problems are too large for one discipline to solve, yet experts that are thrown together have little incentive to radically collaborate. How can large teams with different skills and languages work effectively together? Facilitation skills are critical to develop both cultural and skill alignment for effective collaboration.