Multiple times a year, CapTech hosts an internal Innovation Challenge related to emerging technologies. Why do our people love this challenge? CapTechers have the opportunity to form cross-functional teams and collaborate with people across the organization with whom they otherwise may not have the opportunity to collaborate with. CapTechers also enjoy the support from leadership to have fun, learn, and show off their expertise with the latest technologies that are transforming the world.
Sports Innovation Challenge
Our last challenge was Innovation in Sports, which required teams to develop innovative solutions for the Sports industry, yet another facet of everyday life that has been severely affected by COVID-19 but also benefits greatly from technology advancement. The winning team developed a mobile companion app for sports that helps fans grow their knowledge and increase their engagement in real-time while watching a game, match, tournament, etc.
The team’s research indicated that football was the most popular sport to watch online or broadcast TV— and a Facebook study showing 94% of participants kept a smartphone on hand while watching TV, making it a de facto remote control. They hatched their plan. With the lack of a strong broadcast-mobile crossover application, they could take advantage of an unrealized opportunity to increase sports engagement through a mobile app of their own design.
Companies often neglect to consider how technology can improve the lives of those with disabilities. In this challenge we invited CapTech consultants to find ways to improve the lives of users regardless of their abilities.
Notable Solutions:
Reduce the daily burden of caring for aging-in-place seniors
Making visual graphs audible to those with visual impairment
Augmented Reality
AR provides a unique way to preview tangible products digitally and to view intangible products for the first time. We challenged our consultants to re-imagine the user journey using augmented reality as a key feature of those journeys.
Notable Solutions:
AR by design in a CMS
Taking the fear out of hospitals with AR
Internet of Things
The proliferation of hardware and software tools to prototype IoT solutions is opening IoT to companies with no prior device experience. We asked our consultants to build examples of how IoT can help their clients.
Notable Solutions:
On lot service alerts for automotive retailers
Letting mass transit passengers control their ride
Machine Learning
With the proliferation of data comes the ability to build predictions. We posed the problem to our consultants to find data and possible predictions for innovative use cases at our clients.
Notable Solutions
Identifying local traveler mood using sentiment analysis
Understanding customer feedback across product reviews
Wearable Technology
Wearables, and more specifically awarables, can sense and respond to the environment around the wearer. We challenged our teams to envision ways that sensing surroundings can benefit users and enterprises alike.
Notable Solutions:
Saving lives and reducing environmental impact with a wearable
Machine learning improves bicyclist safety
Natural Language Processing
As a totally new user interface, NLP challenges companies to exploit their ubiquity for customer engagement. We challenged our consultants to find ways to exploit this interface for our clients business problems.
Notable Solutions:
Giving guests a voice in their hotel room
Voice-enabled data insights
Sports Industry
Teams were challenged to use technology to re-engage sports fans in a socially distanced world for the benefit of the fans, community, and teams.
Notable Solutions
Mobile makes virtual group athletic outings possible
Securing and simplifying the betting experience using blockchain
