My motivation for attending the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) for the first time last week was to uncover disruptive innovations that promised to shake up enterprise digital efforts. I spent two days walking much of the 22,000,000 square feet of exhibit space, disappointed with the remarkable dearth of innovation on display.
Repetition was the watchword of this show. How many iPhone cases do we really need? Or electronic cigarettes? Or drones or VR goggles or Segway knockoffs? Or even home automation solutions, each one virtually identical to the one before?
And then there were the denizens of Chinese manufacturers, earnestly hoping for customers to stop by and figure out what makes them different from the dozens of other Chinese manufacturers with nearly identical booths, sporting identical samples and identical photos of pristine factories populated with uniformly dressed and immaculately coifed workers, only too happy to assemble your doohickey for pennies an hour.
Even the shameware was out in force. That’s my name for the fitness wearables market – doodads that go on your wrist, or your head, or on virtually any other body part, with the sole intent of shaming you into keeping up that fitness regimen so integral to your New Year’s resolutions. Yet none of the hopeful vendors in this increasingly crowded space had any idea how to keep its hapless customers from eventually relegating its device to a drawer, never to be used again.
Have no fear, dear reader. Your intrepid Forbes contributor remained undaunted, expending shoe leather to bring you a few shining examples of disruptive innovation. Here, then, are my picks of CES.
Intellyx advises companies on their digital transformation initiatives and helps vendors communicate their agility stories. As of the time of writing, none of the organizations mentioned in this article are Intellyx customers. Image credit: Jason Bloomberg.
Read the entire article at http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2015/01/12/hot-or-not-disruptive-innovations-at-ces/.
