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David Sable: “The Pandemic Has Not Killed Your Office…It Was on Life Support Long Before.”

As originally published by David Sable on Linkedin. Subscribe to the newsletter!

The notion of going “Back to Work” is a tone-deaf headline akin to “The New Normal.” Both and neither are accurate indicators of the State of Working or the Workplace, and failure is sure to follow those who think that either concept is true or a path to follow.

Going “Back to Work” is meaningless. Tragically, many people are out of work. Some remain furloughed as their companies try desperately to stay afloat another week, another month. Others, laid off, are in desperate search of work to do.

And, while many of us were safely socially distancing in our homes during lock down, frontline workers, not just the doctors and nurses who kept us alive, but all of those folks in the gig economy, working on a paltry hourly salary, kept things going for all of us. Where would we be if not for our doormen, the workers who made sure our packages were delivered, our food was produced, our toilet paper manufactured, our buses and trains operated and moving?

And finally, in the face of the notion of getting “Back to Work,” I imagine everyone who has WFH this past year, myself included, would say, “WTF what do you think we have been doing all these months?” Some of us have been juggling family and work time in very close proximity, others battling loneliness, all of us available for the Zoom, Team, Meets and whatever other means of communications the gods of collaboration have deemed important…a story for another time.

As for “The New Normal”? Nothing more than a sad, wishful look backwards. We are actually living in the dynamic, ever-changing world we have spent years stressing and babbling on about, only this time it’s life and death. There is no “New Normal”—it’s dangerous to look for one and fatal to plan for it.

Bottom line? There is no going back. There can only be going forward. But in the context of “Work,” my topic today, what does that mean?

  • For office space
  • For in-person collaboration
  • For efficiency and cost

In summary, what does returning to work and the workplace mean beyond the rhetoric?

To learn as much as I could about the topic and its many intricacies, I went to the best graduate school I know. I called my friend Guy Vardi, Chief Innovation Officer of Silverstein Properties, partner and founder of DoJo, an AI based behavioral science platform that analyzes and designs efficient workplaces that make people more effective, and all around tech guru and creative thinker.

Among his many duties as Chief Innovation Officer is “change management.” And, clearly, in the world of “No New Normal,” and in an industry that builds, sells/leases and manages huge expanses of space, change is daunting and not obvious or embraced by all—unless Guy is in charge.

Therefore, and not surprisingly, Guy’s opening remarks to me were:

“Commercial landlords are no longer in the business of leasing office space. They are now in the business of work.”

Guy continued, “In the ‘Good Old Days,’ [the “Old Normal” for those of you who are nostalgic], commercial leasing operated on a simple equation: the total size/square footage of the space divided by the number of people, equaled efficiency.” Easy to measure in dollar returns and not complicated by any other factors.

In the dynamic environment we live in, though, the metrics are equally dynamic:

  • Resilience – of a workforce that turns over quicker than any other workforce in history…that burns out quicker…that loses interest quicker
  • Performance – what is the relationship between efficiency and productivity and between that and marketable output?
  • Financial – in a world where quarterly earnings still rule, what does it all cost and what is the impact to shareholders?

DoJo breaks out the new metrics and their inter-relationships as follows:

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  • Collaboration and Individual Productivity
  • Minimizing Change of Seating and Maximizing Health Safety
  • Hours of Commute and Hours of Screaming Kids or Lonely Silence

All of which has taken on new and urgent meaning, as “Forward to Work” now means WFH at least one day per week:

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Yet, when it comes to our relationships with office space and work environments, Guy cautions not to get caught in the COVID trap of blaming reluctance to return on the pandemic alone. Frankly, many of your employees have figured out how to safely socialize, eat at restaurants, shop and travel during this time period. No doubt, with the proper safety protocol, offices should be able to do the same.

The real issue began long before the pandemic and cuts much deeper. It is a nexus of cost cutting, poor planning, lack of research and inattention to culture.

In research published in the book, Peopleware, the top quartile of performers had an average of 78 sq. ft. per person vs 46 sq. ft. for the 4th quartile. Privacy, quiet and less interruption were the primary drivers of that phenomenon.

The Allen Curve measures the frequency of communications between people as the distance between them increases.

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When people who work together and need to collaborate don’t sit next to each other, and instead have to sit in new space every day, they won’t bother to find or talk to the person who really should be sitting near them. And, as we saw from the chart above, that small impersonal space, swapped around every day, doesn’t help.

A number of years ago, a large tech company conducted an experiment where they temporarily removed the central coffee machine, water cooler, etc. Their finding? People stopped meeting serendipitously, and cross pollination of ideas and groups was seriously affected.

A similar study showed an increase in employees’ personal productivity, in this case, lines of code written, but a decrease in the number of actual new products coming to market, as again, the critical and creative serendipity factor had been eliminated.

Both studies highlight the tension between the value to a company and its employees, of the true balance that needs to be weighed between WFH and WIO (Work in Office) as can be seen in the chart below:

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There are benefits to both. I might feel more creative and innovative at home, but without the collaboration and mentoring, will I be able to apply my creativity as powerfully as I’d like?

Success in the future will depend upon acknowledging that we need to fix the workplace, beyond making it COVID/pandemic safe, and that we shouldn’t fall for the belief that WFH will be all there is.

Perhaps most surprising in all of this data, is looking at who feels most productive at home:

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Amazingly, it’s not Gen Z. There’s lots more to unpack there, but it seems safe to say that they need and crave the onboarding and mentoring of face-to-face work environment and the experience of serendipitous meeting and creating.

Perhaps there is a greater urgency to fix your work culture than you may even have yet realized.

Guy’s final share with me says it all…Listen:

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Wouldn’t it be ironic if the next “Disruption” came from a bunch of folks in a garage somewhere? Blast from the past…

What do you think?

Better Predictions, Better Results: UCH Early Predictor of HCAHPS

Improving patient experience can be a challenge given the number of doctors, nurses, and support staff any given patient interacts with. Furthermore, the long lag time, low response rates and lack of specificity in HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) surveys presents an even greater challenge to assessing and improving patient experience. Healthcare organizations need faster real-time, individualized data to improve patient and staff experience and lead to higher HCAHPS scores. The case study below shows how University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health (UCH) utilized Wambi to improve employee engagement and patient experience, and found that the Wambi platform is an early predictor of the HCAHPS.

Go here to download the case study from Wambi

The Importance of Investing in Data and Analytics Pipelines

As originally published by our partners at Qlik

New IDC study reveals the importance of optimizing data-to-insights pipelines in order to improve business decision making and outcomes.

In a recent IDC survey, 87% of CXOs said that becoming a more intelligent enterprise is their priority for the next five years.* In today’s economic environment, organizations are starting to think of data as the “new water” – not just a valuable asset but an essential ingredient for survival.

To measure the correlation between data use and business success, IDC conducted a global survey of 1200 organizations. The findings quantify the connection between better data use and higher business value. In the Infobrief, Data as the New Water: The Importance of Investing in Data and Analytics Pipelines, you can read the highlights, including:

  • The top three metrics tied to the success of investments in data management and analytics
  • The importance of establishing a data-to-insights pipeline where every component is connected
  • The top five recommendations IDC has for optimizing data pipelines

Go here for more information

Mill-All Team Spotlight: Tami Corsi’s Yale Certification

Education, Transformation & Leadership are the three pillars of The Millennium Alliance, and we’re so honored to have a team of staff that take this with them in their day-to-day lives. Tami Corsi, our Senior Healthcare Alliance Executive, has been an innovator and leader with us for over 3 years. Always on the quest to sharpen her skills, Corsi completed an executive education healthcare management course with the Yale School of Management, and received her certification with a 94% average. We asked her a few questions about the experience, her takeaways, and advice on pursuing executive education while balancing a busy life.

Q: You recently completed a course with Yale’s School of Management for Healthcare. What inspired you to pursue this course, particularly with regards to healthcare?

TC: It probably makes sense to start at the beginning! When I started at The Millennium Alliance, healthcare was nowhere on the radar as far as interests – to the point where I wasn’t even sure what health insurance I was under. Millennium presented the opportunity to branch out into an industry with unlimited growth and potential and that is something I am so incredibly grateful for. The first event I attended was the Digital Healthcare Transformation Assembly at The Four Seasons Hotel Denver, CO. My job was to sit in the workshop room and take notes and pick out quotes from each session to post on social media. I learned more in two days from the executives discussing the future of healthcare and that pinpointed moment is where I realized there was a spark and a passion for the industry. Moving forward, reading articles and talking to delegates wasn’t enough to satisfy my curiosity. I started researching going back to school and one of the delegates I worked with, Chaka Jordan, suggested looking into certificate programs to test the waters. The Yale SOM online certificate program was a perfect fit given the time commitment, cost, and benefits. I would highly recommend the courses to anyone interested.  

Q: Can you share with us a bit about the course, and what you learned? Did you gain insights on what might be next in digital health? 

TC: The course was 8 weeks of content, 9 including online orientation. Each module was released on Wednesday morning and each student had the entire week to complete a series of videos, exercises, discussion boards, and finally a section test. The time commitment varied depending on the background of each student. For me, it took a little longer because all of the material was brand new, plus I’ve never worked inside a hospital before. Most students were participating in the course to further professional development so the content was more straightforward. One of the things I enjoyed about it was there were students from all over the world participating. I learned how other countries hospital systems work, health insurance is structured, and what they think of the current system in the United States. The biggest takeaway was that there is no one right answer. We are on the cusp of a technology boom in healthcare – with many solutions stemming from the pandemic – and as the famous saying goes, “Never let a good crisis go to waste” – Winston Churchill. 

Q: What value did you gain from this experience that you can bring to The Millennium Alliance?

TC: Taking a course like the Yale SOM Healthcare Management program really helped with communicating with attendees on their level. It was rewarding to post in a discussion group of C-Level executives and have even one person validate with a ‘good point’. The content was also well aligned with the majority of our healthcare event agendas. It’s always a pleasure working with the product and marketing teams on agenda and content creation that is industry specific.  

Q: After completing the course at the top of your “virtual class”, do you foresee continued education playing a large role in your career moving forward? 

TC: Absolutely. It would be silly to work for a company who’s whole model is around executive education and not continue my own! I’ve considered going back to school for another bachelors but that’s a huge step so in the meantime, the short certificate courses are a fantastic option. There are a couple more courses coming up in 2021 specifically around digital healthcare innovation and artificial intelligence applications in healthcare that are on my radar. Working with such accomplished executives who focus on strategy and growth has also been a massive influence on my career trajectory. I’m blessed to have the opportunity and support of coworkers and leadership who have the same drive to always improve and educate.  

Q: What advice would you give to someone that may be interested in pursuing ongoing education? All tips, tricks, and advice on time management are welcome!

TC: Do your research! Not every program will be the right fit for everyone and there are so many options out there. It’s 100% ok to consider a number of programs and weigh out the pros and cons specific to your situation. Some programs are crazy expensive, some allocate credits while others don’t, some are an entire semester and require a huge time commitment while others are a couple weeks. Ask as many questions as you need to and work with the programs counselors before signing up to gauge your interest. Once you have locked down a program, make sure to set aside time where you can focus 100% on your course. It’s very easy to put off doing the reading or discussion board till the end of the week and procrastinate. However, tackling the longest or most difficult portions first will make the content much more enjoyable when you can sit back and enjoy the discussion and not have to scramble at the last minute. My last piece of advice would be to network within the course group. The other students are most likely there for the same reason and networking can open up channels for the rest of your career. Lastly, have fun with it! 

#MillenniumLive with Suzette Kent, Former CIO of the US Government

We have a very special #MillenniumLive episode for this week. Our Co-Founder, Alex Sobol, had the opportunity to interview our upcoming Digital Enterprise CIO & Data Keynote Speaker, Suzette Kent, on becoming the US Government’s first female CIO. Kent shares her wisdom on a number of topics, such as building the US technical workforce, digital transformation in both the public and private sector, and some of the challenges CIOs are facing today.

About Suzette Kent

Suzette Kent is a global business transformation executive and, most recently, served as the Federal Chief Information Officer for the United States. Appointed by President Donald Trump in January 2018, Kent served until July of 2020.   Kent’s career has included leadership roles ranging from partner at Accenture and EY, to the president of consulting at a Carreker Corporation (FiServ), to managing director at JP Morgan. She has worked with clients around the world, across industries and in the public and private sectors.  Throughout her career, her focus has always centered on technology modernization, cybersecurity, digital enablement, and ways that technology can be leveraged to solve business challenges.   Suzette is on the board of Directors of Hancock Whitney Bank,  a National Board member of the LSU Foundation, and works with many entities as an advisor on business transformation initiatives.  She is a frequent public speaker at Industry Forums, publisher of thought leadership, and holds patents in banking processes.

Join the Digital Enterprise & Data Assembly

Interested in listening to Suzette Kent’s keynote address on February 10th? Go here to RSVP! Digital Transformation involves ongoing exploration by today’s leaders, and our best advice is to not trek the journey alone. Our Digital Enterprise CIO Transformation Virtual Assembly on February 10-11 is set to be a groundbreaking opportunity for leaders to virtually connect on the current trends & challenges the industry is facing amid COVID-19.

#MillenniumLive Talks Technology Trends with Healthgrades

#MillenniumLive is joined by Chris Catallo, Chief Business Development Officer at Healthgrades for a discussion on data and technology trends within healthcare. He explains how Healthgrades takes a platform approach for better connectivity between consumers and provider. He also touches on the utilization of predictive models to better engage consumers, as well as other ways technology is driving change within the industry.

Listen to the podcast episode on Spotify or Apple, or watch the full video below.

About Healthgrades

At Healthgrades, we take the guesswork out of finding the right doctors, hospitals, and care for you and your family. By making healthcare easier and more transparent, Healthgrades empowers you to make decisions based on information, not just instinct. You can rest easy knowing you and your family are receiving proven, high-quality care that’s right for you.

Go here for more information

David Sable Asks, “Are We Prepared to Protect Ourselves Against the Next Great Hack?”

As originally published by David Sable on Linkedin. Subscribe to the newsletter!

2017 was an epic year for cybersecurity disaster. It also marked a turning point in hacking. No longer were the targets individual corporations that fell victim to relentless attacks that ultimately breached even the most up-to-date security walls, or the sneak intrusions via holes in company software systems. Ransomware was small potatoes now. Sure, there were individual hackers and attackers more than happy to cause chaos for a big payday, but by 2017, the game had changed—as had the targets.

Damage, great damage, was the goal. Not just chaos but destruction. Mayhem. The individual hackers we have gotten to know and love via movies and TV were now whole countries bent on sowing discord, fear and paranoia in other governments. Still movie-like but more “evil empire” vs “kid on a skateboard with a hoody and PC in tow.”

The “elegance” of the 2017 big hack, as one cybersecurity expert (himself, a reformed hacker) explained to me, was that it wasn’t a frontal assault. No one could have seen it coming or detected it, as it was embedded in the software and services that were routinely shared, server to server, across the world by a financial service provider. An outsourced resource. Initially, companies spun in circles for days thinking it was ransomware, but soon, its evil intent became clear, as fried servers and laptops were junked across the globe and as Ukraine, the clear target, ground to a halt.

Fast forward to today.

SolarWinds, a dominant provider of IT infrastructure technology, whose products monitor and manage network, system, desktop, application, storage and database and website infrastructures, told analysts in October, “There [is] not a database or an IT deployment model out there to whom [we don’t] provide some level of monitoring or management.” On December 19th, SolarWinds reported that it had been hacked. The company has yet to ascertain the true damage done to its clients (many of whom are U.S. government agencies) and their client’s clients in chain after chain of potential breach.

In all fairness to SolarWinds, they are far from the only firm to be left completely vulnerable by difficult-to-detect hacks. FireEye, one of the leading global cybersecurity solution firms, is looking for a solution to the hack it sustained earlier this year, almost certainly by Russia, and is advocating for a strong U.S. government response to such attacks…I imagine because they are no longer as confident as they once were about providing ironclad security.

What really sets me off about the revelation of these hack attacks, is the feigned surprise of the companies, of the media, of our government, as if they have never before seen a supply chain hack or entertained the idea that an evil empire might target our corporate and government infrastructure.

This has happened before and it will happen again.

As that reformed hacker taught me in 2017, there is nothing that is hack proof. Nothing at all. Yes, we need to protect ourselves the best we can, but we must also understand that anything can be hacked. His view? Recovery is the critical issue. What is our corporate/governmental plan to get back on track? To have your systems up and running? To limit the damage?

And yet, as I read about the responses to our latest data disasters, I am concerned that we are not focused in the right areas.

No doubt, some of you are asking why I’m writing about data breaches. I’m a marketing person, not a techie…so here goes: my view is that we are not asking the right questions, nor are we focused on serious game-changing moves that could mitigate the next breach, which will come. We are asking the wrong questions and have yet to adopt the “we will get hacked” ethos. As a result, we are unprepared for large scale responses to data hacks when they come.

But now, let me go into full marketing mode and suggest a radical agenda that won’t prevent hacks but that will make their aftermath less severe.

From our marketing perch, we need to completely rethink the use of data in our industry and, most importantly, the types of data we keep and collect, especially as we know that even randomized data can be un-spun and made specific.

Do we really need your passport to provide a better check-in experience? Must I keep your credit card to eliminate friction? And how about your e-mail, land address and phone number?

Why do we let Facebook, Google and others vacuum hose our usage data and then sell it like it’s their own? Why do we give access to our systems and devices for more data sucking, which in return, we supposedly get better targeted advertising? Is that a legitimate value exchange, when they make billions and we get ads?

As marketers, our job is to help our clients, use insightful user data to create, develop, refine and distribute the kind of products and services that make a difference, an impact on their clients/users/costumers/consumers lives. It’s not to fund giant media machines that grind us all to bits and bytes and then wring their hands when our identities are stolen, or our accounts viciously hacked.

I’m guessing that corporate boards, governments and others involved in the chain of serious governance will keep their eye on the big picture.

But, my readers, it is up to us to change the game where we can. To be bold. To be creative. To innovate not in how to get more data out of all, but how to do more with less. Make the stored data less valuable/ less important and the impact of hacking will be greatly minimized.

One final thought. Brittany Kaiser was the former biz dev head of Cambridge Analytica. You can read all about her and take, like I do, her protestations with a grain of too little, too late salt. But given her pedigree, and what she has seen and done, her insight is invaluable and critical to study.

She said:

“If we want protection, we need to start thinking of our data as our property, because if no one has noticed, property is held up and protected legally.”

And that’s it. It’s your data, no one else’s. If you want my data, there is a price. Let’s start to demand accountability and legal protection.

What do you think?

Say Goodbye to Third Party Cookies: Digital Marketing in 2021

The time is finally here: 2021 is the year that Google Chrome’s ban on third-party cookies will begin to take effect. The popular search engine announced in early 2020 that it would slowly phase out the feature, disappearing completely by 2022. Google is the latest browser to make this change, following in the footsteps of Safari and Firefox. And while Google is not the first browser to eliminate third-parties, it is the largest (by a lot), so the impact will be much more significant this time around. Advertisers have had plenty of time to plan for the new, cookieless landscape, but we have yet to see how much it will truly impact business. 

To fully assess the situation, we must first understand how first and third party cookies work. First-party cookies allow a website you visit to collect and store information about you such as shopping cart items, passwords, and language preferences. These cookies are often considered “good” because they lead to a more user friendly experience, and user data is only stored within the domain that was visited by the user. Third-party cookies differ in that they can be set by a domain outside of the one visited by the user. These cookies are generally used to collect data, such as shopping cart items, contact information, and other browsing activity, across various websites in order to accurately target ads to a customer base. So why is there so much objection to third-party cookies when they are in fact very similar to first-party cookies? Well, users can choose to enable first-party cookies knowing exactly where information will be stored, whereas third-party cookies offer little to no transparency on where information is sent. This has raised privacy concerns in recent years, leading to the ban. What users don’t understand, however, is how much advertisers rely on these cookies for the targeted ads that create the personalized internet experience we all know. So where will they go from here?

If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that marketers don’t give up easily. Google’s block on third-party cookies certainly presents a challenge to digital marketers, but it doesn’t mean the end of targeted advertising. Ad executives are turning their attention to first-party cookies and looking to fortify their first-party strategy. The New York Times is leading by example, prioritizing first-party data in its new ad platform. With advertisers scrambling to adapt to the post-cookie world, publishers have the power to leverage first-party cookies for a targeted, user-friendly experience. If marketers continue to opt for these ad services, it could also threaten the already fragile ad tech space by cutting out the “middleman” and normalizing more direct relationships between advertisers and publishers. So is this the end of digital marketing as we know it? Not quite.

While a first-party cookie model is compliant with new policies and provides a highly targeted ad experience, properly leveraging this first-party data is an expensive undertaking, one that smaller publishers may not have the resources for. However, just as with any new regulation, there is always a workaround. Ad tech companies can still track user browsing data, even without cookies. “Fingerprinting” allows these companies to collect user data and store it on their own servers rather than in a user’s browser. This not only allows the user data to be collected, but it also prevents the user from accessing, controlling, or deleting the information. However, this data does not include any PII, or “personally identifiable information like name, email address, or phone number”. In other words, users will still see targeted ads, whether from ad tech companies’ new methods of data collection and storage or through publishers’ own first-party data. 

Meeting personalization demands while maintaining data privacy and transparency has always been a balancing act. Because of this, Google has committed to a slow and smooth transition aimed at reducing the impact of this change on the fragile ecosystem. And of course, as history has shown us, with every new roadblock, innovation only accelerates. So what does 2021 have in store?

#MillenniumLive Now Available on Spotify

It’s a new year, so we’ve decided to bring #MillenniumLive to Spotify. That’s right, you can now access your go-to resource for digital transformation on the popular podcast platform you love. This year, #MillenniumLive will continue to provide thought leadership and industry insights from top academics and Fortune 500 Executives, now on three unique platforms. To celebrate, we’re binge listening to all 94 episodes!

Go here to listen to #MillenniumLive on Spotify 

Go here for more details

Denise Lee Yohn on Brands To Watch In 2021

As originally published by Denise Lee Yohn on Forbes.com. 

2020 certainly wasn’t the year we expected — and 2021 will surely include even more surprises. But certain companies, products, people, and business topics will likely vie for attention this coming year. So this Brand To Watch In 2021 list provides an alphabet-correlated compilation of brands to keep an eye on.

A – Amazon. Not surprisingly Amazon kicks off the list of Brands To Watch In 2021. After a banner year of 37% revenue growth, net income/profit up 200% year-over-year in the third quarter, and shares up 74% this year (despite costs of over $12 billion tied to Covid-19), the sky appears to be the limit for Amazon’s performance. Even Walmart+, the membership program Walmart launched to challenge Amazon Prime, doesn’t seem to be slowing Amazon subscriptions which were up 33% in Q3. 2021 won’t be all good news for Amazon, though. Heightened scrutiny from the public and lawmakers, which arose following protests over warehouse worker safety, is likely to continue; warehouse shutdowns and logistics challenges may recur if the pandemic continues to surge; and investigations and accusations of unfair business practices and antitrust breaches by the U.S. and EU governments seem to be only getting started. Plus Amazon Web Services (AWS), which has been the company’s cash cow in recent years, posted slightly slower growth and faces growing competition (see E for the biggest challenge to AWS.)

B – Black Lives Matter. Lately there have been fewer, smaller public protests against systemic racism than those that broke out last June following several high profile police killings of Black people.  But the BLM movement and the push for greater diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) will remain a hot business topic in 2021. The Business Roundtable, an association of 200+ CEOs from many of America’s largest companies, is pushing for reforms such as increased funding for community lenders and Black- and Latino-owned small businesses and producing and preserving 200,000 affordable housing units. Fortune will be doing its part to keep the issue front and center with plans for its 2021 Fortune 500 list to include self-reported diversity and inclusion data. And certain companies will take meaningful action, including Starbucks which plans to increase diversity within its workforce by tying executive pay to inclusion initiatives.

C – Cannabis. While Covid-19 and the coronavirus might have been an obvious choice for the C slot in this list of Brands To Watch In 2021, cannabis is represented here. (See V for the vaccine, which will be the biggest pandemic news next year.) And even though cannabis is not a brand per se, it serves as an umbrella term for all of the companies, products, and brands in the cannabis/cannabidiol (CBD) market which is expected to top $65 billion by 2027 in the U.S. (from $6 million last year.) The growth is in part due to its legalization in five more states during the 2020 election. Keep watch on specific brands such as Green Thumb (50 locations nationwide) and Canadian company Canopy (set to launch Martha Stewart CBD Wellness Gummies for the holidays).

D – Disney. Disney will continue to experience trials and transformation in 2021. Trials will be in park and resorts, since Disneyland and many of its related properties are not expected to open until after Q1 of 2021. (A side headline to watch is how Disney battles with California state officials over the park closure.  CEO Bob Chapek has been one of the few major corporation executives to publicly blast the government over pandemic restrictions since Elon Musk threatened to move Tesla to another state amid a fight over a factory shutdown last spring.) Transformation at Disney will continue, as the company focuses more on Disney+ and its direct-to-consumer business. One casualty may be ESPN, which undergone layoffs and cost-cutting in the wake of the pandemic’s disruption to sports and sports media consumption (see M for more on sports in 2021.)

E — Edge computing. Edge computing — not a brand, but influential enough for Forrester to call it the new black (Forrester actually said it was the “new cloud”) — deserves its entry here. Edge computing, as in “edge” of the network (which locates computation and data storage closer to where it is needed), delivers greater speed and lower cost ideal for applications such as autonomous vehicles and streaming services. It differs from cloud computing (the C brand in the Brands To Watch In 2020 list last year) which involves collecting, processing, and storing data in a centralized, remote location. Providing scalability and data analytics power, cloud players such as Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud have dominated the field. But artificial intelligence (AI), internet-connected devices (IoT), and 5G are facilitating the expansion of edge use cases (see F for a take on 5G). So large computing vendors such as Dell, HPE, IBM, and Intel are doubling down on edge; AWS and Microsoft are adding edge offerings; and newer players such as Mutable and Mobiledge are rising.

F — 5G. 2021 is the year 5G (yes, another topic-as-brand) goes mainstream.  Most Americans will have access to 5G connectivity some time in 2021, given the race between T-Mobile (Sprint), Verizon, and AT&T to fill out their 5G networks the fastest. And 60% of all phones sold in western Europe and North America in 2021 are expected to support 5G (growing to 85% in 2024. As seen in the early reception of the Apple iPhone 12, 5G actually could reinvigorate the phone market which has seen slowing demand and production and distribution delays. Time will tell if the trend buoys Samsung which struggled with its Galaxy S20 launch earlier this year and has moved up the S21 to debut in January.

G – Google. How will Google fare in the lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice and 11 states, which alleges that it engages in anti-competitive practices and creates a monopoly through exclusive business agreements that lock out rivals? (The fight, the largest antitrust case against a tech company in more than 20 years, is only one of many pressures against Big Tech — see Q for others). Will Google continue to be challenged by employee activism, as employees continue to raise concerns about the company’s dealings with U.S. Customs and Border Protection? Will the rebrand of Google’s G Suite software (Gmail, Chat, and Docs) into Google Workspace be effective at creating an integrated experience that better competes with Microsoft Office/Outlook email? These are just a few questions about Google; 2021 will bring answers.

H – Hilton. Given the current state of travel, Hilton, along with the other top-three franchise hoteliers Marriott and IHG, may seem to headed toward a bleak year. But during the latest quarter, Hilton opened 133 new hotels, Marriott returned to profitability, and IHG reported gains in group business such as entertainment and sports. And Airbnb just filed for an IPO at a valuation near $30 billion. So lodging brands may be OK in 2021, but the outlook for airlines remains dismal given all the travel restrictions.  Southwest CEO Gary Kelly is planning pay cuts through 2021 and Delta CEO Ed Bastian predicts it will be two to three years before the industry recovers.

I – Impossible Foods. The global meat substitute market size is expected to reach $8.1 billion by 2026. Although that’s a fraction of the global beef market (estimated at $395 billion by then), meat alternatives are gaining in popularity. Case in point: Beyond Meat’s annual sales increased by nearly 10 times between 2017-2019 and is now in 26,000 retail outlets nationwide. Impossible, whose growth has also been skyrocketing, is the pick for the brand to watch, though, because it recently announced it is developing dairy-free milk and plant-based fish and steak products. Bigger brands to watch in the meatless market include McDonald’s, which has a plant-based burger, McPlant, in development and plans to test it in some global markets in 2021; Tyson Foods, which is currently testing an “unchicken sandwich” at some Jack In the Box restaurants; and Kellogg’s MorningStar Farms, which recently rolled out “Incogmeato,” its first offering specifically designed to mimic meat.

J – Joe, as in Joe Biden.  Don’t worry – this Brands To Watch In 2021 list isn’t getting political. It’s simply stating that the U.S. president-elect will have an outsized influence on business next year as he takes office. Business news will likely center on the economic recovery, one of four priorities Biden has named for the start of his administration. Attention to his other business-related priorities such as tax reform, healthcare, and infrastructure depend on which party controls the Senate after the January 5th runoff for Georgia’s two Senate seats. But Biden’s personal brand – with its sharp contrasts to Donald Trump’s personal brand — will surely also be in the spotlight.

Speaking of Trump, the Trump brand clearly won’t be fading from business headlines anytime soon. Look for Trump to re-engage in the Trump Organization as it does licensing and new property deals to raise money for the travel and leisure industry businesses which were badly affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Or look for Trump to launch his own Trump-branded media network, as he seems poised to do. Or look for the groundwork for a presidential run for himself or one of his children in 2024. Or all of the above – and/or something entirely different. Also this Brands To Watch list would not be complete without including mention of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and the news she will generate — not only as the first female, first Black, and first Asian American Vice President; but also one who is seen by some as a friend of tech and by others as a foe of big banks.

K – Kroger. Grocery stores including Kroger will likely remain the bellwether of the retail industry, as the shopping behaviors customers adopted during the pandemic persist.  The share of retail business from e-commerce (approximately 16%) will continue to grow; as will retailers’ revenue from selling digital ads, selling customer and sales data, and running third-party marketplaces.  Kroger is now the 10th biggest retailer by ecommerce sales at $11.3 billion, according to eMarketer; and Albertsons revenue from digital initiatives grew 243% this year.  Sustained or even increased demand in curbside pickup and delivery will drive continued success for distribution services such as Instacart, whose order volumes surged 500% this year and are fueling a pending IPO at around $30 billion valuation (see R for more IPO news). And new channels such as social commerce (Facebook Shops and Instagram Checkout) and shoppable video (YouTube Looks) will continue to rise. All this means a very different brick-and-mortar landscape next year. Coresight predicts as many as 25,000 store closures this year and retail real estate is being repurposed (e.g., mall operator Simon Property Group is reportedly in talks with Amazon to convert department stores into e-commerce fulfillment centers.)

L — Lyft. With delivery projected to grow to 23% of share of restaurant sales by 2025 (from pre-Covid-19 forecasts of 15%), it’s no wonder that Lyft is working on a new service to take a slice of the market. The company is taking a B2B logistics approach in working with retailers and restaurateurs and undercutting prices charged to businesses by other services such as GrubHub. 2021 will also bring other restaurant developments, given the pending Door Dash IPO (valued at $16 billion in last private valuation), new digital- or pick-up-only stores from brands including Chipotle and Starbucks, and innovations like the virtual-only concepts such as Tyga Bites. Lyft will also stay in the headlines as it, along with Uber, DoorDash, and other gig economy employers, continues fighting the battle against classifying workers as employees (despite having collectively spent over $200 million to win approval of a ballot measure that exempts them from AB5, California’s gig-work law.) And Lyft has the challenge of reversing the drop in ridership and revenue amidst the lingering pandemic.

M – Major League Baseball. MLB is one of several national sports organizations that need to keep their players safe, get fans back into their venues, and play regular bubble-free, on-schedule seasons in 2021. But the MLB seems the most at risk, with teams having suffered a combined $3 billion in operating losses this year and the league and owners unlikely to easily resolve disputes with the players union over money and new game rules. The NFL faces multiple challenges for Super Bowl LV: a potential postponement if positive Covid-19 cases among players causes more game reshuffling; advertisers hesitant to cough up $5.5 million for a 30-second spot in a recession; a half-time performance by the not-yet-mainstream artist The Weekend; and attendance at the event capped at 20%. College, high school, and even little league sports are also in flux. But there are some bright spots. Right now it’s full steam ahead for the Olympics in Tokyo this summer (including spectators) and the Daytona 500 in February (perhaps without them).

N – Netflix. Will Netflix remain the most popular streaming service?  It certainly has stiff competition.  According to Kantar’s Entertainment On-Demand panel, Amazon enjoyed the highest Q2 growth in new subscriptions of all streaming video on demand (SVOD) platforms. Although Disney+ share fell significantly after a period of rapid expansion, the company’s creative talent and corporate heft (covered in D above) will keep the pressure on. Apple TV+ will continue its free-trial with hardware offer and HBO Max will leverage its robust content catalog. (In a related development, the restructuring around HBO Max at AT&T’s WarnerMedia puts the fate of CNN in question. Some believe it may be headed for a spinoff.) The streaming wars are also implicated in the future of movie theatres and movie studios, which is, at best, uncertain, given the lackluster results of the theatre debut of Tenet and the unreported results of the combined premium video on demand (PVOD)/Disney+ release of Mulan. Wonder Woman to the rescue?

O – Online. The Brands To Watch In 2021 list cheats again with another non-brand entry, but it seems appropriate given that it seems everything is online now.  E-commerce was already covered in K, so here the focus is on online education, including distance learning and EdTech.  Online learning is here to stay.  Many schools’ and universities’ plans to return to online-only courses next spring after opening this fall will further strain the financial health and technology capabilities of educational institutions, as well as the parents and teachers struggling to maintain the quality of student learning and quality of life.  Watch for more solutions like communications platform Campuswire and corporate training providers including Udacity.

The move to online healthcare — including telemedicine, connected health/care, and technology-enabled care (TEC) — comes with similar opportunities and challenges. Frost & Sullivan predicts seven-fold growth by 2025 in demand for telehealth in the U.S., over the 64.3% increase already seen this past year.  Brands — such as Amazon Pharmacy (offering delivery prescriptions directly to customers), tech-driven insurance company Oscar Health (heading toward an IPO), and virtual doctors’ visit platform Amwell (developing a partnership with Google Cloud) – will provide new options for customers. But concerns over equitable access, social determinants, and worker safety will continue to rise in education and health.  And the move to more outpatient/home care and the rise of health retailers will also affect healthcare businesses in 2021.

P – Privacy. Privacy is the yang to online’s yin – they are two forces that seem to oppose but actually can and should complement each other. Privacy isn’t a brand but it will have a big impact on them next year. Privacy concerns and regulatory and legal activity will increase since the newly created California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) expands further the state’s landmark consumer privacy law, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and is likely to be widely observed across the U.S. What’s more, Apple now requires all third-party developers to detail their app’s privacy information — and will deprecate from its devices the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) early next year, which means advertisers will no longer be able to identify, tailor messaging, and measure user-level behavior within iOS apps.  As a result, brands will rely less on third-party and passively-collected customer data and pursue more “zero-party data,” which customers intentionally and proactively share with them. If done well, brands can use this trend to build trust and greater connection with customers – but that’s a big if.

Q – QAnon. Whether or not you believe in QAnon, it will impact business in 2021. The theory, which primarily clams that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles are plotting against Donald Trump while operating a global child sex-trafficking ring, is no longer a fringe political movement. Some popular QAnon Facebook groups have hundreds of thousands of members and QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene won a congressional seat in Georgia. That QAnon has been able to establish itself involves the broader issue of content moderation and disinformation on social media.  2021 is likely to bring news for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and others amidst debates over Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act which protects social media companies from liability for content posted by their users and allows them discretion in moderating offensive posts. Big Tech will also be challenged by the push for antitrust regulation (as previously noted about Google in G), the potential reinstatement of Obama-era net neutrality rules, and calls for company breakups.

R – Robinhood. Robinhood, the commission-free investing and trading app that attracted a flood of new retail investors during the coronavirus outbreak and is expected to go public in 2021, represents one of several threats to banks and other financial institutions. For one, younger investors are being drawn away from traditional retail investing brands like Charles Schwab and E*TRADE by fun mobile phone apps including Robinhood. Also more tech companies are developing embedded finance, incorporating financial services into their offerings (e.g., Uber embeds payments into its app). Add to that the rise of companies bypassing the costly, potentially time-consuming, and challenging IPO process and taking alternate routes to going public (e.g., Palantir went with a direct listing and Unity chose a variation on the Dutch auction process.) SPACS, special purpose acquisition companies formed for the express purpose of acquiring other companies (aka “blank-check listings”), are another option growing in popularity. All this means the finance world will look very different next year.

S – Supreme Court of the United States. The new conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett may make 2021 a newsy year for the federal judiciary. In addition to hearing cases on controversial social issues including abortion rights and policies at the U.S.-Mexico border, the justices will hear business cases related to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), labor rights, limits on unauthorized employee access to work computers, and more. Also, the “brand” of the Supreme Court itself may make the headlines, given recent discussions about expanding the number of justices and exploring term limits for them.

T – TikTok. The U.S. almost lost one of the most influential social media platforms this year after President Trump threatened to shut down TikTok over perceptions that it posed a national security risk because it is owned by ByteDance, a $100+ billion Chinese corporation. Already one of the most popular apps in the world (with almost two billion downloads worldwide and more than 100 million U.S. users), TikTok will likely grow further in 2021 with backing from Oracle and Walmart and the increasing sophistication of influencer marketing.

While the broader anti-China narrative that has characterized the Trump administration might become less edgy after Biden takes office, efforts to temper China’s continued push to become a technological superpower will remain. That probably won’t slow down Chinese e-commerce giants Alibaba and JD.com, which together racked up around $115 billion U.S. in sales during the 2020 Singles Day shopping event (dwarfing the $10.4 billion estimated to have been generated by Amazon Prime Day and surpassing the total of all online sales in the U.S. last year on Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday.) Tencent, another Chinese conglomerate to keep an eye on, is also growing, enjoying increases in usage and paid subscriptions. The biggest threat to these Chinese companies will be the Chinese government, which flexed its muscles by pulling the plug on the Ant Group’s IPO after its co-founder Jack Ma criticized the country’s financial watchdogs and banks, and continues to pursue regulations designed to root out monopolistic practices in the internet industry.

U – United States Postal Service (USPS). Delayed ballots during the recent election are only the latest challenge the USPS has to contend with. The sharp increase in delayed mail that resulted from operational changes instituted earlier this year by the new postmaster general Louis DeJoy, the strain of increased package volume during the pandemic, and the agency’s poor financials (operating at an annual loss since 2007) suggest that the USPS is headed toward privatization. Advocates say that makes sense in light of competition, particularly from Amazon which now ships 67% of its own packages directly to customers (up from 50% last year) and is rapidly expanding its distribution capabilities (K above includes mention of this).

V – Vaccine. The last non-brand entry in this list of Brands To Watch In 2021 belongs to a topic that will no doubt have tremendous impact on everything including business – the coronavirus vaccine. At the time of this writing, the vaccines from Pfizer and its partner BioNTech, Moderna in partnership with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and perhaps AstraZeneca and Oxford University look to be the most promising now, but a host of other companies have ones in development as well. The timing of the delivery and rollout of the vaccine remain unknowns. Known is that distribution challenges (given the shipping and storage requirements of the vaccines), ethical questions (about which countries, states, populations, etc. should get it first), and public ambivalence toward vaccine acceptance threaten the prospect that the Covid-19 pandemic will end as quickly as is needed to stem the economic decline.

W – Watch, as in Apple Watch. The Apple Watch seems to be Apple’s most potent driver for 2021, given iPhone growth has been slowing, no major changes seem to be planned for iPhones next year, and the boom in iPad and Mac sales that corresponded with the increase in work- and learn-from-home will moderate. Apple Watch is part of Apple Fitness+ which is becoming a powerful, sophisticated health and fitness platform that incorporates metrics (e.g., the new Blood Oxygen Saturation app complication) that users can visualize on Apple devices. More wellness and mental health applications are sure to come now that the FDA has cleared of an app that helps people suffering from nightmares or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) get a better night’s sleep. Perhaps the only other aspect of Apple that should be closely watched is Apple One, which bundles a bunch of Apple services into a single subscription, a la Amazon Prime.  Apple Music has been a huge success, but News+ seems to be struggling and sustained demand for TV+ remains uncertain.

X – XRB. XRB (recently rebranded as Nano) and Rainbow XRB (a crypto wallet service) may be lesser known cryptocurrency/blockchain entities, but they signify how the space is burgeoning.  In fact, J.P. Morgan has touted Bitcoin’s emergence as an alternative to gold for young people and suggested that the price of the cryptocurrency could double or triple if current trends continue. And they certainly look to be: PayPal has begun offering cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum and Bitcoin to customers; Square added $50 million worth of Bitcoin to its balance sheet as a long-term investment; and investor software platform MicroStrategy made a $250 million Bitcoin purchase in August and is looking to buy more. Cryptocurrency may be the hottest sector of fintech but it’s not the only one that will continue to grow in 2021. Peer-to-peer (P2P) payment and financial services from Venmo to Lending Club are on the rise, as is embedded finance (as discussed in R above) and banking-as-a-service developments such as Green Dot.

Y – Yandex. You might not yet have heard of Yandex, the Russian multinational corporation known primarily for search, but you will thanks to the self-driving car it is testing in Ann Arbor, Michigan – or perhaps because of MLU BV, its JV with Uber that is being spun off – or maybe due to its deal with Hyundai to develop software and hardware for autonomous car systems. It deserves attention as do many other more well-known autonomous vehicle companies including Waymo, Uber, and Tesla – and other newer developments — such as Walmart which has launched a pilot in Scottsdale, Arizona, with self-driving car company Cruise to operate an entire fleet of all-electric delivery vehicles; Honda which has announced it is on pace to be the first to mass produce sensor-packed level three autonomous cars; and tech developers such as LiDAR maker Sense Photonics and AI players Plus.ai and Helm.ai — that are accelerating the timeline for broader adoption of autonomous vehicles.

Z – Zoom. Of course, Zoom had to be on this Brands To Watch In 2021 list, given its astounding rise this past year. Will Zoom sustain its triple-digit revenue gains (355% in Q2), soaring stock (up 500%+ in 2020) and latest valuation ($107 billion)? Not if Microsoft has its way. Microsoft Teams has enjoyed its own growth spurt (115+ million daily active users today vs. less than 20 million a year ago) and is building lots of cool features such as Together Mode in addition to integrating with Microsoft’s 365 apps. Of course, Zoom is fighting back with updates including Zapps (a suite of apps integrated into Zoom) and end-to-end encryption (E2EE). (Related news is the potential Salesforce acquisition of Slack, which would increase Slack’s scale and Salesforce’s strength vs. Microsoft.)  The future of Zoom is more than a tech platform question, though. It’s about the future of work and the impacts of increased remote work on data security and technology, organizational culture and employee engagement, and hiring and workforce development — as well as far-reaching developments in transportation, the environment, and the future of cities themselves.

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This list is intended to provide an extended perspective on the business landscape in 2021, but it certainly doesn’t include every brand, company, person, or business topic worth looking out for next year. Please share the other brands you’ll be watching on Twitter, LinkedIn, or http://deniseleeyohn.com. And revisit brands from past years.