A butterfly's wings: From chaos to opportunity - harnessing cross-category connections in the consumer technology landscape

This paper demonstrates how Microsoft transformed its research practices from product-centric, looking at consumer data for individual products, to consumer-centric, capturing data for the entire technology ecosystem, in order to deliver seamlessly integrated experiences across all devices and services.

A butterfly's wings: From chaos to opportunity - harnessing cross-category connections in the consumer technology landscape

Reed Cundiff, Kelsey Vaughn and Mike Egner

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Introduction: The transforming consumer landscape

"Our industry does not respect tradition – it only respects innovation." Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO

The consumer technology landscape has changed dramatically over the last five to seven years. It's hard to believe that widely used apps, services and devices like Instagram, WhatsApp, Minecraft and the iPad have all come on the scene since 2008. Since that time consumer "screen time" has...

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