Innovation ≠ Technology
Before starting Satya Rasa Consulting, I worked for many years in technology consultancies – we built websites, ecommerce platforms, apps, MarTech platforms, robots, software customizations, enterprise data warehouses, personalization algorithms, AI applications…the whole works. We delivered some extremely innovative technologies and applications to our clients, but not once in all those years did the technology come first. Sure, we had lots of clients who would come to us asking kind of blindly for a vaguely-defined new tech stack implementation, but we never proceeded with any sort of tech-forward solution without first asking, “What is the problem you are trying to solve?”
On the opposite end of the spectrum, I had a hospitality client years ago – a high-ranking executive who had started in the industry decades earlier as a bell boy and worked his way up through the ranks – who had to be dragged kicking and screaming into an innovation project because he had gone through so many unhelpful or downright disastrous technology implementations in the past. His feeling – rightly so, based on his experience – was that technology just got in the way of the human connection that was ideally at the heart of any hotel-guest interaction.
Let me be clear: I am not anti-technology. In fact, I love almost anything to do with technology and/or data science. However, there are three things I truly abhor (and I think that these are the things that made my hospitality client’s eyes roll back in his head whenever people started talking technology or innovation):
The use of data or technology in the absence of empathy, connection and understanding – What is the problem you are trying to solve? Do you truly understand the people you are trying to serve (consumers, customers, colleagues, business partners, investors)? What sorts of experiences are you hoping to create, both practically and emotionally? Do those experiences fit with your company’s brand personality? Using data or technology in the absence of real understanding – “just because you can,” in other words, is pointless, expensive and can even be detrimental to brands and businesses.
Mistaking technology for innovation – There are many types of innovation – new product or service launches, new process implementations, rebranding, redefining and restructuring roles, etc. – that are not tech-forward, and sometimes they have nothing at all to do with technology. Technology and data are extremely useful tools, but they should not account for your entire innovation toolbox.
Bolt-ons and technology with no raison d’être – I can’t tell you how many companies I’ve encountered over the years who collect all kinds of data about their customers and store it in expensive enterprise data warehouses…but have no idea why they collect all of this information or how to use it to any good effect (case in point: every hospitality company in the world “knows” which of their hotels a given guest has stayed in, and yet every single time we check in at one of those hotels, the front desk staff click away at their computers or tablets and then ask, maddeningly, “Is this your first time staying with us?”). Another common example of tech with no raison d’être is that random piece of outdated software or hardware that was implemented 25 years ago by someone who continues to justify their continued employment solely by devoting themselves to maintaining this random piece of hardware or software…and no one else in the company can explain or justify its existence. You know what I’m talking about, people! Technology should serve us, not the other way around.
The antidote to all of these pitfalls is, quite simply, connection. Connect with the problems you are trying to solve before you start throwing all kinds of silver-bullet-sounding technologies at them. Connect with the people who will be implementing or experiencing any sort of innovation (tech-forward or otherwise), so that you can create meaningful, valuable transformation instead of random, alienating curve-balls. Connect with the truth, and everything will flow.