Last week, I attended a very interesting meeting in San Francisco for a program we call CHILL – Cisco Hyper Innovation Living Labs. The session, facilitated by the Factory, an incubator backed by Skype co-founder Janus Friis, included key leaders from retail, consumer products, and finance industries.
Your first question might be, “What kind of a hype phrase is hyper innovation?”
It’s actually quite apropos given the pace of change in technology – for that matter in society – today. Prototype projects that used to take 18 to 24 months now must now be built and evaluated in days. And that is the point of CHILL.
CHILL brings together industry leaders to collaborate in innovation – to compress the cycle from months to days to hours. In this case, our customers engaged in rapid prototyping sessions designed to create new models for “frictionless retail.”
The results were truly amazing. In a 48 hour period, the group created solid prototypes that they forecast could deliver billions of dollars of economic value to retail. That’s delivering on the promise of the Internet of Everything.
I’m incredibly impressed by the results of this session. We plan on making CHILL part of selected Cisco IoE Innovation Centers around the world. Come see how you can use IoE technologies to enhance your business.
You said “We plan on making CHILL part of selected Cisco IoE Innovation Centers around the world.”
I was reviewing the list of current Innovation Centers and noticed that there isn’t one in the United States. Are there plans to open a new center somewhere in the U.S. during 2015?