Summary
IDC forecasts that companies will spend $2.3 trillion a year on digital transformation efforts in the next four years. That money will pay for new technology investment, professional services firms, and the salaries of people like us. This massive industry is driving tremendous new value, but also creating inequality and downstream social effects that we can barely predict. What should researchers’ responsibilities be in this digital transformation economy? And are we fully living up to them? In this talk, Leah Buley will explore what the field of research looks like today and how our skills will need to evolve for tomorrow.
Key Insights
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Walt Disney’s rapid advances in animation over eight years demonstrate how fast craft can evolve under visionary leadership.
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Service design today is predominantly focused on digital experience design, with nearly 70% of firms engaged primarily in digital channels.
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Traditional physical and face-to-face service design is now practiced by a minority of service design firms.
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Leah experienced a personal 'crisis of digital' realizing most service design work is digital, challenging her earlier broader ambitions.
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A study of small business transaction networks unveiled a formerly hidden digital micro-economy in the medical marijuana industry.
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Digital transformation radically reshaped that marijuana network, spawning innovations from seed-to-sale systems to consumer AR experiences.
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Even the most mature companies rarely employ research methods capable of predicting broad downstream impacts of digital products.
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New research tools must be developed to make predictions and surface risks, borrowing techniques from diverse disciplines like journalism and epidemiology.
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The pandemic spotlighted digital’s positive, humanizing potential, enabling communication and real-time data insights critical for public health.
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The relentless urgency to digitize, dubbed the 'digital crisis complex,' risks frenetic, purposeless product development lacking holistic validation.
Notable Quotes
"You can see just in this small snapshot how much more magical the craft of animation became under Walt Disney’s watch."
"Have our research practices advanced as drastically as animation did under Disney? I’m not sure."
"Even what we think of as service design is highly trained and pointed right at digital now and into the future."
"If you only focus on the digital questions in front of you, it may impede your ability to understand how digital impacts real life."
"This little network was instructive because we can see in hindsight how digital transformation changed that industry and the world."
"We may need new methods that help us imagine and predict what’s likely to happen from our products in the future."
"I call it the digital crisis complex — an ethos where digital is seen as a crisis driving every organizational decision."
"Thank heavens for digital services in this crisis and the degree of digitalization that already exists in our world today."
"Our jobs in the future can’t be simply to ensure products function but to understand and predict their ripple effects on interconnected webs of people."
"I’m thankful for this strange digital world we live in and the people who show up every day to make products more humane and appropriate."
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