Report: The Culture of Innovation: What Makes San Francisco Bay Area Companies Different?

Authors: Matthew Le Merle, Sean Randolph and Barry Juruzelski on behalf of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute

"Breakthrough Report Examines the “Secret Sauce” that Makes the Bay Area a Global Innovation Leader"

When it comes to innovation, the San Francisco Bay Area has unique assets that enable it to excel in the world economy. According to a new report released today by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute and Booz & Company, one of those assets is a distinct culture of innovation that can be found in many Bay Area companies.

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Report: The Digital Future of Creative Europe

Authors:  Matthew Le Merle, Thomas Künstner, Hannes Gmelin, and Christian Dietsche

Among the sectors most profoundly affected by digitization is the creative sector, which, by the definition of this study, encompasses the industries of book publishing, print publishing, film and television, music, and gaming. The objective of this report is to provide a comprehensive view of the impact digitization has had on the creative sector as a whole, with analyses of its effect on consumers, creators, distributors, and publishers

Both the Pan European report and the country specific reports were financed by Google Inc.

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Report: Building an External Innovation Capability

Authors: Matthew Le Merle and Jamie Campbell

In the past few years, an increasing number of the largest companies in the world have established a new C-level role—the chief innovation officer—responsible for leading innovation activities throughout the enterprise. As these executives get to work, they quickly find that the pace of innovation has accelerated and that their companies cannot hope to create and develop every possible source of innovation advantage exclusively in-house.

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Report: The Next Wave of Digitization - Setting Your Direction, Building Your Capabilities

Authors: Matthew Le Merle, Roman Friedrich, Michael Peterson, Alex Koster

For more than a decade, powerful new digital approaches to business, and life in general, have come on the scene, yet we are now entering an even more rapid and dramatic period of change. The phenomenon of digitization is reaching an inflection point. Three powerful forces are driving the shift: consumer demand, the push for new technologies, and the prospect of even greater economic benefits.

Every company in every industry will be dramatically affected, and it will be the responsibility of CEOs to lead the charge by building the right capabilities for their companies to remain relevant in the digitized environment, achieve growth, and fend off competitive threats. New technology deployments and related investments will add up to more than even the largest and most resource-endowed enterprises can afford. Trade-offs will be required, and the risks of making the wrong choices will be high. Unlike the technology revolutions of the 1990s and 2000s, this time around the basis of competition will be set by the companies that embrace and deploy digitization in the right places at the right time.

This Perspective provides guidance to CEOs and their management teams about the relevance of digitization in their respective industries, and the factors most likely to accelerate or decelerate the digitization phenomenon. The judgments that companies make now will largely determine their relative competitive position for the foreseeable future.

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Report: Standing Up a Cloud-Enabled Marketing Capability

Authors: Matthew Le Merle and Phil Minasian

Marketing’s challenge has always been to develop customer insights, targeted value propositions, and powerful communications in an iterative cycle. The Internet has given marketers a glimpse of how each element of that cycle can be dramatically transformed by new technologies that allow direct customer interactions, the ability to test and modify value propositions on the fly, and the opportunity to present the communication that best fits the customer at any point in the process—while constantly iterating the process as the marketing cycle collapses toward real time.

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Report: The Rise of Generation C - Implications for the World of 2020

Authors: Matthew Le Merle, Roman Friedrich, Michael Peterson and Alex Koster

In the course of the next 10 years, a new generation—Generation C—will emerge. Born after 1990, these “digital natives,” just now beginning to attend university and enter the workforce, will transform the world as we know it. Their interests will help drive massive change in how people around the world socialize, work, and live their passions—and in the information and communication technologies they use to do so.

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Report: Outsourcing in Life Sciences: A Survey of BayBio Members

Authors: Matthew Le Merle, Gail Maderis, Tara Churik, and Charlie Beever on behalf of BayBio

Emerging life science companies and large pharmaceutical firms have much to gain from outsourcing clinical development programs. The industry is increasingly turning to outside clinical research organizations (CROs) to provide specific capabilities and added capacity when needed. Clinical development outsourcing is likely to continue to grow and spread to different parts of the globe as drugmakers seek long-term strategic partnerships with outsourcers, including IT providers.

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