On April 19, the ETB Trendig Summit will be taking place, event that seeks to promote digital transformation. Among the invited panelists stands out the expert Paola Aldaz, who has a professional career around innovation and technology issues.
In dialogue with Portfolio, Aldaz spoke about the points that surround these fields and that companies today must Leverage to generate better experiences.
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How has the concept of innovation changed?
It is clear that this concept has many definitions, but for me innovation is centered on a linked vision in which it has to affect people’s behavior patterns, it must improve the quality of life of citizens. In other words, innovation occurs when some initiative, be it a product, a service or an experience, modifies the pattern of behavior or behavior of users for the better. At the end of the day, to innovate what is needed is to understand people’s behavior patterns and how products, services and experiences play an important role in improving the quality of life.
What benefits does innovation bring in the day-to-day of companies?
This innovation within companies has to do with using technological platforms that allow automating processes and simplifying the usability of a product or service, and that, without a doubt, brings more productivity within organizations. In this sense, companies no longer need talent for them to perform repetitive tasks, but collaborators who can focus on developing cognitive tasks and creative tasks. This shows that technology.
There are several points around innovation. The first is that innovation is not an area within a company, it is thinking differently about the problems of a business and that of a brand. So, since it is not an area and is critical thinking, the organization, with its different actors, must build a path. This is how I believe that innovation is thought of holistically, from different areas. Now, more or less in the 80s it was thought that innovation could be developed in an articulated way in niches, so I would develop something and go to a niche of people who shared certain common variables and nothing more. Today it is thought that innovation has to be scalable. And scalable means it has to be exponential and reach many people.
(See: BuroDap won a Meta award for a sustainable project).
How should companies invest in that innovative thinking?
I have an opinion on the subject and it is that before, large companies allocated a percentage (between 10% and 12%) of their total income to invest in innovation. However, as everything has evolved, and after there was a contraction in investments due to the pandemic, today investments have to be put to the test, in what in innovation is called ‘Beta’ or ‘ Pilots’, and that is part of the methodology. This is how one develops a product, presents a prototype, tests its behavior in the market, shapes itself and progresses. Today innovation is tested by running.
Investments in innovation on which front are they concentrating?
Most companies are devoting a lot of innovation to improve experiences, in order to make life easier for people so they can adopt new technologies. It seems to me that this will be key in the coming years. In addition, to this we must add the issues of sustainability.
How do consumers see these types of pilots?
There is another very important issue and that is that they are more flexible to forgive if a product is not fully finished, something that was not the case before, because if before, for example, a brand launched a yogurt and it did not work, it had to be withdrawn from the market. Also, technology allows us to make mistakes and forgives us those mistakes.
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What are those technologies that must accompany innovative thinking?
In the first place I would mention artificial intelligence (AI), since it is a technology that is permeating all industries. The second technology that is correlated has to do with machine learning, which is the ability of machines to learn, not only to have data, but also to learn behaviors and to have traceability of those behaviors. Lastly, I highlight AI tools, such as ChatGPT, which go beyond data and are focused on being an interpretive technology that helps produce things.
How do you see the inclusion of technology by brands?
In Colombia there is a lot of love for local brands, consumers have a lot of respect for them. And I think they’re all very aware that they have to embed technology into their product, service, and experience models. However, the challenge that we see is that the adoption by the final consumer is still very traditional and in that sense, these adoptions need to be accelerated much more.
What topics will you address at the ETB Trendig Summit?
One of the topics that I will be dealing with in my conference is how we go from being users to being citizens. And all focused on strategies that work better in experiences, in addition to everything related to user experience in order to make life easier and the adoption of new products and services.
(See: ‘The use of AI will hyper-accelerate,’ IBM predicts.)
JOHANA LORDUY
Journalist Portfolio
