Technology Revolution: The Future of Now

You're a game-changer! You've created the new product or service of the millennium, but have no money to take it to market. Your best options: beg your FFF (family, friends, fools) circle, tap an angel for seed money, or convince a venture capitalist to invest millions. Our experts have a lot to say. Chris O'Connor / Taptera : "You've got to have a pretty face (user experience) to get attention; the old 'desktop' solution isn't very sexy with VCs." Sanjay Parthawarathy / Investor: "When the VC's ego is valued higher than the funding, it's better to look elsewhere." MR Rangaswami / Sand Hill Group: "In these frothy financial times, how many entrepreneurs want to use the strategy of a company that is 'Built to Last' versus 'Built to Flip'?" Gaurav Tewari / SAP Ventures: "Picking the right investor is one of the most crucial decisions for an entrepreneur. If you thought getting married is a commitment, try raising money." Join us for more on the Sweet and Sour of Investing – Part 2.

Digital marketing. Your increasingly digitally-smart customers expect more from your website than being able to buy something. They're demanding a relevant, personalized browsing experience with new product discovery, research, price comparisons and feedback exchange. But if your company is just going through the motions of ecommerce, you'll lose them fast. Our experts can help you get there. Glenn Conradt: "Companies need to start incorporating contextualized content into the e-commerce experience to leverage the Internet as a dynamic and profitable sales, marketing and service channel." Scott Liewehr: "Big data is the Lady Gaga of digital marketing – all hype, no substance." Jamie Anderson: "'eCommerce is DEAD! Long live distributed commerce.' I love this. I read it from a blog on eConsultancy...Engaging and selling to today's digitally savvy customer is a lot more challenging than merely having a website and being open for business." Join us for The Future of Digital Marketing: Now!

Sales transformation. A catch phrase "for virtually every C-level executive in the race to find answers to questions about sales and earnings growth, positioning and differentiation; even survival," says Bob Nicols, author of The Journey to Sale Transformation: Twenty-five Axioms for Becoming a Trusted Partner to your Customers. Bob and other experts have a lot to say about why and how your sales organization needs to change...now. Bob Nicols, AXIOM Sales Force Development: "Sales is the most broken of all business functions." Kimberly Senior, AT&T: "Transformation, like a leopard's spots changing, happens seldom and slowly. Transformation is a marathon, not a sprint. So, the key to success in driving any type of transformation is committed, focused, disciplined incremental improvement over time." Nicholas Kontopoulos, SAP: "Sales force automation is dead :)." Join us for their insights on Sales Transformation: From approved vendor to trusted advisor.

M2M. Rise of the machines. The promise of a world of connected devices, where machines of all types and sizes can autonomously communicate with each other. Don't believe it's a reality yet? Global M2M revenue is projected to soar from $121 million in 2010 to $948 billion by 2020, the year Ericsson predicts the number of connected devices will reach 50 billion. Our experts have a lot to say. Jason Sumner, EIU: "M2M is going to be big. We have heard this before but there are reasons to believe it's different this time." Joe Dignan, Ovum: "When is M2M not M2M? I would suggest a lot of the time. There are fully automated processes but a great many examples of what I am told is M2M needs a human 'guiding mind' somewhere in the interaction." Fergus O'Reilly, SAP: "Customers no longer buy products, they buy experiences. This is the real driver for the move to 'Everything-as-a-Service'." Join us for their insights on M2M Rise of the Machines: Coming to a smart city near you.

Utilities. How "smart" are they about the smart meter data they can now read and its value to the consumer? Our experts weigh in. Roque Marinho: "With the smart meter being part of operations...utilities have to cope with the fact that there is no turning back on the 'quantum leap' on the multitude of reads." Stuart Ravens: "Smartness begins and ends with analyzing the vast volumes of data created in a smart grid deployment." Christine Hertzog: "There's not much research about how much consumers really understand about who might touch their energy consumption data (nor what it's worth) when third parties are involved." James McClelland: "A whole new area of service will be created, providing energy efficiency to the consumer. How far inside of the meter do you want outside companies to have automatic access to adjust your energy consumption? Depending on the type of customer you are, I think the answer will be, 'It depends.'" Join us for Utilities: Shining the light on the smart grid.

Retailers: We know it's tougher than ever to turn customers into loyal evangelists for your brand. The experts say: Christine B. Whittemore: "The winners in retail today are retailers who understand that the customer calls the shots. Few retailers can compete strictly on price..." Brian Kilcourse: "Retailers have a big opportunity to re-define the in-store experience by making it a part of the world that today's consumers operate in." Lisa Joy Rosner: "Where business intelligence provides the rearview mirror to what has happened, social intelligence is what's happening right now. C2B (customer to business) is the new world order." Mark Johnson: "Why is it so hard to 'listen' to our customers, when we 'heard' what they said?" Jon Wurfl: "If word of mouth remains the most powerful marketing influence, do shoppers with large social networks, and maybe loudmouth friends, make better purchasing decisions?" Join us for more game-changing insights for you and your customers.

Open government. Transparency, participation, collaboration. Sounds good on paper, but is it a true game-changer yet? Our experts say: Dr. Natalie Helbig: "Opening government is a perfect storm, but we don't know whether it will just be a lot of data or a sustained and meaningful change in the way we govern and are governed. Russ LeFevre: Technologies exist to enable open government. This 'genie' is out of the bottle. What needs to change is policy, culture and the will of government leaders to champion and sustain change." Jeanne Holm: "With the international ontology for space, we are trying to create the framework by which we can share data about any mission, any project that the governments are interested in having us collaborate on....so the whole world is a global space community." David Nero: "The City of Boston has made significant investments during the past 5 years to uplift its technology and business solutions portfolio." Join us for Open Government: Game-changer yet?

Risk. A fact of business life today. What is your company doing about it? Hear what our experts say. Dr. Parveen Gupta: "Today, nothing is more fundamental to business and more vexing to a company's directors than effective risk governance...a failure in risk oversight could be interpreted by the regulators and the courts as a breach of fiduciary duty by the Board." Barry Murphy: "Good information governance allows companies to get value out of information while minimizing the costs associated with information events like litigation or regulatory requests. Fiona Williams: "Every organization will face uncertainty and risk - the effectiveness of how you deal with governance, risk and compliance (GRC) is what separates market leaders." Bruce McCuaig: Risk management practices are too often failing to meet the value test...Practitioners are looking for the wrong risks in all the wrong places." Join us for more insights – and solutions – on Risky Business: Time for Governance.

Have your employees demanded a BYOD (bring your own device) policy yet? If not, the writing is on the wall – or on the tablet. Any day now, they'll be bringing their iPhones and iPads to work. Is this trend a threat or an opportunity for you? Consultant Steven Romero sees the latter, advising companies to "leverage the consumerization of IT to advance enterprise mobility." Forrester's George Lawrie agrees. "74% of the information workers in our survey used two or more devices for work—and 52% used three or more...they'll be increasingly interested in work systems and personal cloud services that enable easy multi-device access." SAP's Oliver Bussmann warns BYOD laggards, "To be a business 'front runner', it's unacceptable to be a year or even six months behind consumer trends." His approach: "If you can't beat them, lead them." Join us for State of the Device: Consumerization of IT 2012. p.s. Thursdays 1 PM Pacific on The Business Channel, tune in for In the Cloud with Game-Changers.

Today's the day! You're hiring a well-vetted, steep-salary C-suite exec and you're staffing a business-critical new department. Surely your HR folks gave you rock-solid validation for these particular human capital investments. Well, did they? Bersin and Associates founder Josh Bersin doubts it. "One of the biggest opportunities for HR to drive value in the coming years is talent analytics, but HR teams are absolutely not ready. And the systems vendors aren't helping much either!" SuccessFactors' Peter Howes agrees. "Most HR practitioners have limited ability to interpret workforce analytics and reporting. Interpreting workforce analytics is not taught in university HR courses." Wharton Professor Peter Cappelli adds, Metrics are killing HR because all we've come up with are cost items, and we manage what we measure." Join us for more of their wisdom on HR Analytics: How's Your Human Capital Investment Paying Off?