Recently, Nimbus Ninety held an interactive future reimagined session, where our community of C-level business and technology leaders were asked to conceptualise what they thought the future would look like.

Data. That’s what an astounding number of our members at our recent IGNITE summit took the most value from. Facts, figures, statistics; quantifiable answers to help them solve problems or drive innovation. Here at Nimbus Ninety, we consider it vital to listen to our members and provide useful and insightful collateral that’s on-trend and shareable with peers.

Tasked with building the agenda for the next IGNITE Summit on digital ecosystems, the sensible starting point was to figure out what on earth an ecosystem was.

"We’ve long believed that over time companies tend to get comfortable doing the same thing, just making incremental changes. But in the technology industry, where revolutionary ideas drive the next big growth areas, you need to be a bit uncomfortable to stay relevant." -Larry Page, CEO/Co-Founder of Alphabet Inc

It’s no secret that the “Internet of Things” (IoT) is the favoured subject of discussion for the digital world at the moment – even the mainstream has jumped on the bandwagon, with talk of the “smart” digital revolution bringing us the home, car, and city of the future to the imminent present.

On Tuesday 7th July, many of our community members from Financial Services organisations came together for the inaugural Industry-Sector Think Tank. Four round tables of C-level executives from the UK’s leading FTSE and SME companies discussed the challenges and the solutions of where digital sits in their given sector.

"Financial Services operators must harness a range of digital technologies now or risk losing their customers to a new wave of competitors." -Caroline Boyd, Director of Strategy and Research for Nimbus Ninety The impact of digital on the Financial Services sector has been severe. Whilst consumer behaviours and expectations have evolved rapidly, the sector has had difficulties to adapt due to key challenges, including:

Unpredictability and volatility have traditionally come in cycles, and have been associated with fear, risk and financial losses. Business ecosystems were designed and constructed to control and regulate this uncertainty.

The days when a business was considered leading-edge for having a digital strategy encompassing mobile, e-commerce and social media feel long gone. In fact some would argue that, in the ‘digital age’ we now live, a business could hardly survive without these customary ‘bolt-on’ digital tools. This, of course, is debatable but one thing is for sure, the true ‘digital leaders’ have a lot more to their digital strategies than only these digital offerings.

Throughout 2014 a well worked internal innovation strategy has been an extremely important area that we have seen companies looking to master. There is a clear understanding that in order to deliver business growth you must have the steps in place to allow your employees spend time on innovation. Customers drive growth, customers demand innovation.