Technology and Innovation
Over the weekend, my smartphone didn’t feel like charging any more. It was also heating up. Luckily, the phone was still under warranty and the replacement – an exact duplicate of what I had before – arrived within 24 hours. As I was setting the phone up, I realized that although all the data transferred rapidly over to the new phone by downloading it from the cloud, I personally would have to look up passwords for each app on the phone. Some even had dual authenticators that would need to be addressed using the smartphone for authentication. Why, with all the advances in technology, were we being held back by the increasing need for unique passwords?
In thinking about smartphones, I realized that the first smartphone – the Simon Personal Communicator – was probably considered revolutionary at the time. It was innovative. It combined the functions of a cell phone with a PDA (personal digital assistant). It was a handheld device that could be used for emails, to send faxes, and even receive pages. It cost $899 in 1992 (around $1,435 in today’s money). The battery lasted approximately one hour. Around 50,000 Simons were sold in the early 90s, which may not seem like a lot today, but it was the first ever smartphone.
Today, smartphones are ubiquitous. The smartphone is nearly 30 years old. Everyone has one. The challenge with these smartphones is how to protect yourself from hackers. Maybe it’s time to disrupt the phone business again? Adding in 5G doesn’t sound innovative to me. Just faster. There was speculation that the iPhone 13 would feature low earth orbit (LEO) satellite communication connectivity to allow users to make calls and send messages in areas without 4G or 5G coverage. Innovation or a technological solution to uneven coverage? We will still need those pesky passwords and a password manager. Although, Microsoft recently announced that it will get rid of passwords on its Office 365 platform. Is that revolutionary/innovative? Maybe. Maybe not. Or is that technology at work?
Peter Drucker supposedly said that ‘corporations must innovate or die’. I work in an industry – re/insurance – where failure to innovate has potential consequences about sustainability and resiliency. Yet I wonder, is it innovation if re/insurers ‘get products to market faster’, speed up the ‘quote to bind process’, enable customers to submit claims online? Further, how do you detect a failure to innovate? I just read an extremely useful and prescient article (written in 2020 no less) from The Institutes®, that basically says that the “failure to innovate in re/insurance can be harder to detect and easier to conceal.”
What would it mean for re/insurers to become innovative – again? When I think about innovation, I think that maybe it’s time for re/insurers to do what they’ve done over the past 500 years. Innovate. Maybe it’s time to get back to basics – to create products and services that meet consumer needs. Now isn’t that innovative?!