WTF?: What's the Future of Business?: Changing the Way Businesses Create Experiences - Hardcover

Solis, Brian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 111845653X ISBN 13: 9781118456538

Publisher: Wiley, 2013

Synopsis

"In today’s rapidly changing digital environment, Darwinism is alive and well. What’s the Future of Business doesn't just explore trends and theories; it introduces a dynamic, actionable path to transformation."
—Evan Greene, CMO, The Recording Academy, Producers of the GRAMMY Awards

Rethink your business model to incorporate the power of "user" experiences  

What’s the Future of Business? will galvanize a new movement that aligns the tenets of user experience with the vision of innovative leadership to improve business performance, engagement, and relationships for a new generation of consumerism. It provides an overview of real-world experiences versus "user" experiences in relation to products, services, mobile, social media, and commerce, among others. This book explains why experience is everything and how the future of business will come down to shared experiences. 

• Aligns the tenets of user experience with the concepts of innovative leadership to improve business performance and engagement and to motivate readers to rethink business models and customer and employee relationships
• Motivates readers to rethink business models, products and services, marketing, and customer and employee relationships with desired experiences in mind
• Brian Solis is globally recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders and published authors in new media, and is the author of Engage! and The End of Business as Usual! 

Discover how user experience design affects your business, and how you can harness its power for meaningful revenue growth

About this title

Review

Featured Review by Peter Gruber, author of Tell to Win

Peter Gruber

While everyone's talking about social media, professional motivation, or the need for change in business, people who are actually looking for answers to bring about change are left to draw upon the classic treatises of Peter Drucker, Dale Carnegie, Geoffrey Moore, Tom Peters, et al. Yet, what those pundits don't provide is the "how to" shape your role and opportunity in this evolving landscape of consumerism. There's an old saw, "technology changes, people don't." The tsunami of social, mobile, real-time, technology is disrupting everything; this means that for success one must make the change of how one influences. What changes is how people influence, are influenced, along with how, when and where they make decisions.

There is a plethora of material on the "new" tools and there is no need for another book that talks about the same businesses that are using new technology to pursue relevance. Nor do we need another book for dummies or wannabes. What is required are answers and experience paired with the concrete data that arms us with the confidence to make decisions with intelligence and strength in a time when many surrender to gut-based decisions or general assumptions.

This is where Solis's content is king: he's a digital analyst studying technology and its impact on business. This is abundantly clear in the book, as he continually uses real world analytics to make his case that there's a new generation of connected consumers (Generation C as he calls it) on the opportunity horizon that are behaving differently, yet the existing touch points (those typically aligned with the traditional funnel) are missing or underestimating them.

What is to appreciate here is Solis's application of digital anthropology into a dialogue that's often rooted only in technology and trends. What's the Future (of Business), his "WTF", will shape this discussion and its impact, adroitly breaking down consumer decision making to four moments of truth. He shows that these moments, whether b2b, b2c, or any industry where people rely on any aspect of the Internet to get information, create a new epicenter of influence. This "influence loop", the moniker he gives it, claims to affect every moment of truth, rich with the shared experiences that populate Youtube, blogs, review sites, communities, and apps.

His point is crystal clear. What will happen in a world where a Google search is not the first step in discovery? What will be the reaction when a web site isn't the result people desire? What will happen when people place greater trust on informed or experienced peers first? There is clearly a different kind of connection, and breathing real, shared experiences are everywhere. Truth is, they can be readily and easily discoverable. And, to SEO your way alone to be relevant will turn into SOS. That is the point.

The core value in Solis's book is its coaching on how to create and invest in meaningful and sharable experiences, and this is the future of business that Brian preaches by making the book an experience in and of itself.

I get this; he created a coffee table book for business by studying UX to better learn how today's consumer reads, shares, and why. His congruence of feet, tongue, heart, and wallet all going in the same direction is proof of his authenticity, and promise of his premise. He fashioned with the team at Mekanism to create what he named an "analog app." It's textural, emotional, and colorful, even the paper is thick and unique to flip through. He made a physical book matter again even in a digital era. He professes that you can do this, and by following his code and credo, imagine what you can do...

From the Back Cover

Praise for What's the Future of Business?

"Solis explores the incredible transformation happening in business today, driven by new social and mobile technologies. In the future, successful businesses will be 'Customer Companies'—companies that connect with their customers, partners, employees, and products in entirely new ways."
—Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO, salesforce.com

"If anyone understands the multi-screen world we're becoming, it's Brian Solis. Your customers and employees expect rich engagement on multiple screens, through dedicated experiences for each, with one integrated brand voice. Read this book."
—Jesse Redniss,Senior Vice President, Digital, USA Network/NBCUniversal

"Businesses are falling into a mode of management which cultivates silos and is causing them to lose market momentum. Businesses must always compete for the future, and this book shows what to do to stay ahead of your markets and avoid being disrupted by technology to the point that you go out of business."
—Georges-Edouard Dias, Chief Digital Officer, L'Oreal

"Customers are adopting new technology and new 'screens' at an increasingly rapid pace. The challenge for businesses is to create delightful and highly engaging experiences that take maximum advantage of those technologies and devices as they are introduced."
—Julie Bornstein, Senior Vice President, Sephora Digital

"Developing a social strategy based on trends might be fashionable, but it's not sustainable. The consumer demands more. Brian shows you how to innovate or die. Pretty easy choice, no?"
—Aliza Licht, Senior Vice President, Global Communications, Donna Karan International

"The music business has been impacted more than any other media industry in the last decade, and we're still in the midst of our transformation. You have to recognize that change is constant, and an ongoing evolution is the only option. This book encapsulates it perfectly: people are looking for meaningful experiences, and you can only create them by innovating, experimenting, and defying expectations."
—Paul Sinclair, Senior Vice President, Digital Media, Atlantic Records

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 111845653X
• ISBN 13: 9781118456538
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224