#data visualization ~ utilization

From my inbox this AM: NYC’s Simon Data just raised $20MM on its differentiated CDP model of democratizing access to the data sets it harmonizes.

From the press release: Simon’s disruptive platform vision of blending the messaging and orchestration capabilities of a marketing cloud with the critical infrastructure offered by an enterprise-scale CDP quickly attracted major customers such as Airbnb, OpenTable, and Blue Apron.

Disparate siloed data sources have long hobbled legacy businesses in their path to incrementally monetizing trapped data.  Despite billions invested by customers in data solutions, those solutions haven’t gone far enough, and have left access and utilization of the data in the hands of too few. What Simon seems to offer is a hybrid customer data platform + marketing cloud that enables individuals across an organization’s marketing, support, and sales functions to orchestrate and execute high-impact conversations with consumers. 

Two primers in Agile Methodology from McKinsey and from Mother Nature via The New Yorker:

"A termite mound is not so much a building as a body, a self-regulating organic process that continuously reacts to its changing environment, building and unbuilding itself. 

Leading agile transformation: The new capabilities leaders need to build 21st-century organizations 

From McKinsey comes this detailed riff on leveraging the mindset of discovery and the power of design thinking to define and scale innovative partnerships and customer solutions: Empathize, Define (the problem), Ideate, Prototype, and Test .  This approach is not just a lens for the design community...it’s critical as well in sales, customer, and partner development work.

With its first $1B quarter, Etsy is succeeding at making creative entrepreneurship a path to economic security and personal empowerment. 

The world’s top economy: the US vs China in five charts

From the World Economic Forum comes this snapshot of the world’s two largest economies.  After 140 years of being the largest economy, China is now #1 in one key metric:  Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), a measure that adjusts countries’ GDPs for differences in prices.  Said differently: As a consumer, your money today buys more in China than it does for a similar consumer in the US. (More Big Mac’s for your Renmimbi). 

As CVS Goes Post-Digital, Walgreens Reverts to Pre-Digital

Good read from Bloomberg on the Walgreens-Amerisource deal: “Walgreens May Be Playing It Too Safe: While CVS aims to transform health care, its rival would double down on drugs.”

As Jim Nail at Forrester has also pointed out, Walgreens has limited upside as it bets future growth on squeezing their drug supply chain for more $$$.  

Much differently, the CVS investment in Aetna is about creating the future: gaining access to Aetna’s 22 million members in the fierce battle for U.S. consumer prescription dollars; expanding the definition of and accessibility to “healthcare”; and redefining the use of the CVS national footprint to reinforce its relevancy with consumers in their battle with Amazon and other competitors.

From the Aetna press release announcing the CVS acquisition:

This transaction fills an unmet need in the current health care system and presents a unique opportunity to redefine access to high-quality care in lower cost, local settings—whether in the community, at home, or through digital tools. 

CVS is investing to revitalize their 9700 stores: reinventing itself as a ‘beacon of healthy living’ to grow its foot traffic for its increasingly threatened Front of Store business.  

In ‘creating the future’, Aetna’s digitally forward culture, if well leveraged, can accelerate the pace of digital transformation post-merger for its new parent company.  

What Google Really Gets Out of Buying Nest for $3.2 Billion

Though Google says Nest will retain its own identity as a company, the partnership’s potential sets up some seriously great expectations of an entire world populated with Google-powered smart devices.

The Smart Home comes of age. Finally :-). 14 years ago a small team of us were recruited into Sunbeam to build a suite of Home Automation appliances that just about anybody could use: plug & play.  It was just a little too early.