Published on the 18/05/2016 | Written by Beverley Head

Bombarded by new technologies ranging from blockchain to the internet of things, 3D printing, artificial intelligence and machine learning – enterprises are looking for guidance through the innovation maze…

According to Capgemini research almost three quarters are so bamboozled by what’s on offer that they wait as long as two years to react to market disruption.  The company wanted a way to allow them to “move more quickly with the fast spinning flywheel that is the startup community to drive value – not just experimentation for experimentation’s sake,” according to Ben Gilchriest the principal of digital innovation at Capgemini.

But sometimes there is a lot of experimentation anyway.

In the next couple of weeks Capgemini in association with Adobe will launch “the connected bag” in Australia. It’s an RFID-enabled system that allows in-store shoppers to drop items in a shopping bag and have the store collect and use that information either to expedite check out, or make on-the-spot offers to complement what a shopper has already selected.

It was developed in association with a couple of start ups called Iterate and Twyst, over a period of around a year, in response to a query from Capgemini clients about how it might be possible to create a physical world shopping experience as data-rich as the online shopping experience.

Didn’t know you needed such a thing? Well that’s part of the innovation maze. The problem is that even after the product was developed it has yet to sell.

Gilchriest, normally based in Los Angeles, is visiting Australia for the launch of the connected bag – and also to work with local companies on what amounts to a sort of innovation dating service. Capgemini maintains an innovation ecosystem of around 130,000 suppliers worldwide – many of them start ups.

Companies are invited to nominate their products or services to join the ecosystem, and if a client opportunity arises, Capgemini can hook them up with a potential customer anywhere in the world and provide the consulting and systems integration expertise to ensure a system can be deployed. It works a bit like Kaggle in that details of a business problem are posted and the 130,000 members of the community are invited to respond.

“Part of it is being a dating agency and some of it is about the commercial arrangements that we put in place,” said Gilchriest during an interview with iStart. Some of that involves on occasion acting as a confidentiality buffer so that the start up doesn’t know who the ultimate client might be

But is there a risk that like the “connected bag” this will prompt innovation for innovation’s sake, and send start ups down more than a few rabbit holes? Although the connected bag was developed after a client wondered if such a thing was possible, it hasn’t actually been sold or deployed as yet. Right now it’s the classic solution looking for a problem.

The challenge that Gilchriest says companies face is that they know they need to innovate, they understand that there is a tsunami of new technology coming out of established companies and start ups alike – but they don’t always recognise how that new technology could be deployed to deliver advantage.

He said that in one recent situation a company had come to Gilchriest with a problem of online order abandonment of what was a relatively costly product. Capgemini scoured the 130,000 companies in its innovation ecosystem, identified a handful of potentially interesting start ups and eventually picked two to develop a proof of concept that uses artificial intelligence to better engage the customer and see the sale through.

It took two months. But again the innovation is still at the proof of concept stage, it hasn’t yet been implemented.