BOSTON, MA /Marketwire/ -- Mobility has changed virtually every facet of business. So what's next? Mobiquity, a professional services firm, creating innovative mobile solutions and apps that drive business value, founded the Wireless Innovation Council (WIC) to identify these areas of innovation and benchmark how businesses should respond. Today, Mobiquity released WIC's first-year research findings that it recently communicated to members. WIC is comprised of strategic decision-makers across various industries and functions, including executives from Progressive Insurance, Marriott, Fidelity, UnitedHealth Group, Supervalu, Reed Elsevier, the U.S. Navy, L'Oreal, DuPont, Boston Scientific, CatamaranRx, Pitney Bowes, BAE, Weight Watchers, and NORC.
WIC identified three transformational wireless technologies and frameworks that will drive business innovation in the future. WIC members will use these frameworks in their own organizations, and continue to provide guidance on them moving forward.
Mobile Payment Ecosystems
The mobile payments (mPayments) market is growing but fragmented, and stakeholders find it increasingly difficult to make investment decisions. WIC conducted a planning exercise to provide a framework to validate and develop robust strategies that deliver value in all mobile payment scenarios.
Mobiquity President and Chief Strategy Officer Scott Snyder presented a detailed description of four potential future (three-five year outlook) scenarios of the mobile payments ecosystem. WIC members found each of the scenarios to be equally likely, meaning companies will need to maintain flexibility in their mPayment strategies to position for success.
Behavior Change Through Mobile
While many mobile apps successfully help consumers make healthy lifestyle changes, the methods they employ (e.g., gamification badges and notifications) largely fail to create long-lasting behavior changes. WIC concluded that a long-term commitment to behavior change requires a thorough understanding of a person's "journey"—past behavior, motivation and attitudinal patterns, and current lifestyle. By incorporating lessons from behavioral and cognitive sciences and behavioral economics into today's digital technology—specifically the smartphone—it is now possible to develop highly effective intervention programs to produce long-lasting behavior change.
Wireless Sensor Networks
WIC examined how the recent explosion of sensors in connected health and fitness devices could be leveraged in different industries. In collaboration with leaders of several industries, WIC developed a highly applicable framework for nontechnical companies to analyze the competitive value of connected solutions. The framework allows organizations to shape wireless concepts into complete, economically viable solutions.
"Whether it's scenario planning, presentations by national or international experts, practical case studies, or the informal sharing with WIC partners, this forum not only offers the opportunity to wrestle with the individual wireless issues that matter to us but also helps broaden and sharpen our vision of how wireless will transform the industry going forward," said Arielle Band, VP, Strategic Growth, Catamaran RX.
The WIC is made up of more than a dozen organizations from the public and private sectors, with Babson College's Center for Information Management Studies, serving as WIC's academic research partner. Mario Quijada, Principal at AV&Co., David Petersen, CEO of Sense Networks, Amos Adler, CEO of MemoText, and David Birch, a privacy and identity thought leader, were featured speakers at the most recent meeting in September.
"Mobile innovation has the potential to dramatically influence every aspect of the way we interact, behave, and transact," Snyder said. "The goal of WIC is to bring together many of the leading business and academic minds so that, together, we can explore new ways to harness the power and benefits of mobile technologies and shape new futures for society and business."
About Mobiquity
Mobiquity is a professional services firm working with the Global 2000 to create innovative mobile solutions and apps that drive business value. Clients benefit from the breadth and depth of the company's cross-disciplinary teams to unleash the power of mobile. Integrating strategy, user-experience design, and app development, Mobiquity delivers across the entire mobile ecosystem, driving business innovation and competitive advantage. Since its inception, Mobiquity's client roster has surged to more than 70 companies (the majority hailing from the Fortune 500), including CVS, Boston Scientific, Fidelity Investments, MetLife, the New York Post, Putnam Investments, and Weight Watchers International. Mobiquity was named by Network World as one of the hot technology startups to watch in 2012. SAP also selected Mobiquity as a partner to help customers develop and implement mobile strategies and applications that optimize investments in SAP enterprise solutions.