The potential for IT to play a central role in business innovation is so great that, over the years, it's been suggested that the title chief information officer might be changed to chief innovation officer. The fact that, by and large, that hasn't happened, says a lot about expectations for the CIO role and points to the reason why many companies can’t seem to leverage their IT strategies into new business methods and models.

I've previously blogged about how meta-products and services (and the meta-vendors who sell them) are encouraged by N=1 and R=G. What's the business climate for such products and services? How fast will they be adopted by, and start penetrating, the business community? What are the impediments, and how will they be overcome?

The most influential elements of the customer experience often occur at the non-touchpoints with your business. As a result, touchpoint mapping doesn't lead to anything more than incremental improvement that, for the customer, amounts to "better sameness."

The outsourcing deal that Hewlett-Packard just lost -- to take over IT operations for Deutsche Post -- warrants the diaper award (Huggies or Depends, you choose). Suffice to say, HP's entree into the Big Leagues of Outsourcing just ran down the proverbial side of its leg.

While I was thinking about how we at 24/7 Customer are helping our customers to serve their end consumers using the N=1, R=G model, I started looking at how we are using it for our own business. Being a global company gives us a lot of opportunity to leverage both those formulae internally, and there are several areas where they have been applied. A couple that stood out for me are in the areas of product innovation and process improvement.

Did you ever see the beginning of the movie GoodFellas? I can't relate here what went on (too graphic) but the point was -- PAY ME! So here comes Amazon Cotton Tail hopping down the commerce trail expecting somehow to deal itself into the online payments game. Unfortunately, that trail was blazed by PayPal a long time ago. PayPal is simply ingrained into consumers' hands -- and retailers' heads -- across the world. Not to say Amazon won't get -- and doesn't get -- its fair share, but among Google, Amazon, and PayPal there isn't much room at the trough because PayPal already has gobbled up the gravy.

I recently had lunch with a friend who said that the mantra of his company is to "build products that people lust for." While at first it sounds a bit corny, when you apply the ramification of that statement to your product analysis, design, and development process, it starts to make a lot of sense. Innovation is not only the invention and development of technology -- sometimes innovation is honing your current processes.

In previous blogs, I've discussed what a meta-product is and how it works well with the concept of N=1. Now I'd like to talk about the implications of selling a meta-product -- a product used to create other products. As a meta-vendor, you truly co-create products with your customers. So, how do you gauge the correct level of complexity of the user interface of such a product? And who determines that -- you, your customer, or both?