Touch Points by Steve Finikiotis

I think what sets our company apart is our obsessive inquiry into what works today and what will work tomorrow.  Asking what’s next inspires more creative thinking, while broadening the conversation.  This dialectic prompts even more questions: How can companies across industries and continents succeed in an ever-flattening world where competitors are hungrier and customers more demanding?

How does a telecom firm in Ontario inspire new ways to extract value for companies in Doha and Johannesburg? How does an airline in Singapore show a high-speed rail company in France how to deliver a more seamless customer experience?  How does a leading British hotel chain show a new comer in Dubai how to anticipate customer needs?

More broadly, how can what works in one market be transferred to another?  What works in mature markets and in emerging ones, and in all markets?  What works today, and how can it be adapted in tomorrow’s market?

What has worked and probably what will work ahead? It’s not more bells and whistles or silver bullets, but a clear, customer-driven focus—new, creative ways of mobilizing talent and allocating resources to fulfill the brand promise consistently, reliably and efficiently.

About the ’creative’ part.  It’s essential, but so elusive.  Our experience shows that the most creative leaders “see” — patterns and trends — that others don’t. Innovative leaders design their service models to take advantage of them . By recognizing drivers that others don’t, true innovators overcome constraints that their rivals consider to be immutable.

However, leaders typically struggle to explain how they did it, and they often attribute it to good fortune. We’re convinced that game-changing results can be generated repeatedly.  But doing so requires challenging the tendency for habitual thinking.

So, what also sets us apart, I think, is our incessant curiosity. We’re looking for ways to foster collaborative intelligence and build communities of knowledge and practice.

We’re always on the hunt for novel tools and practices that can create substantial value. And we experiement, harnessing the best, most practical ones.  We do all of this, of course, while obsessively probing the ultimate questions: What’s next, and who will figure it out?