More than 160 Australian executives attended ThoughtWorks Live 2014 in Sydney and Melbourne on the theme ‘Customer engagement’. Speakers from leading organisations, including Woolworths, Vodafone and realestate.com.au, shared insights into how they build customer-centric organisations using smart analytics, wearable technology, in-store innovation labs, lean enterprise techniques, and more.
Author and ThoughtWorker Barry O’Reilly, for example, shared how our world and future business opportunities are continuously emerging through advances in design and technology, and wider social and economic change.
He says, “Organisations must continually revisit the question, ‘Which business are we in, and where should we be?’"
Hind Hobeika, CEO, Instabeat, an award-winning startup that developed a heads-up display for swimmers to monitor their workouts, gave the closing Keynote. She talked about how start-ups have fewer barriers to entry and can develop faster than ever before.
The Lean startup methodology, for example, has made it possible for software products to launch with an alpha version, while crowdfunding has allowed hardware startups to validate their concept before going to manufacturing. Wearable tech products, like Instabeat, are at the intersection of hardware and software, and the definition of a lean process applies on all fronts, providing users with a great design, reliable product, and most importantly, a meaningful user experience.
Therefore, customer engagement becomes part of the product architecture itself, and actually begins at product purchase, continuing well after. See a full recap of the event here.