Over 25 years of crafting and applying digital products

I started tallying notable moments where I applied digital products to my work or the work of others. I went as far back as 1990 when I started using digital products to process the data of my experiments. I was a digital-head before that, though, buying my first computer in 1988 for the express purpose of doing animation and sound recordings.

But it was in 1994, during my fellowship, that I began to be the one selecting and applying digital products in innovative ways. For sure, not only did I always seem to try to think of digital products, but often my colleagues and I were on the leading edge of using such products.

Insight
Looking back, some of these accomplishments seem modest, considering what we can do today. But the digitization of enzyme studies, the blogging and use of social media, and the novel mobile apps we created were not as common as they are today.

Yet, being on the leading edge, ever thinking of digital products, and working in environments that were suspicious or antagonistic to digital products has taught me about overcoming organizational resistance, and the importance of customer engagement and design. And I bring all this experience to my clients today.

What’s your digital strategy?

Highlights of a digital life
1990 – Started applying digital products to research and analysis in an academic research laboratory.
1994 – Introduced computer modeling of enzyme kinetics and characterization to a molecular biology and genetics academic hospital research laboratory at Boston Children’s Hospital. Also digitized enzymatic assays to increase throughput and data quality.
1999-2001 – Helped a traditional telecoms equipment catalog publisher with innovations in digital content marketing.
2000 – Co-wrote a book on computer telephony strategy and products. Wrote a lot about nascent mobile internet strategy.
2003 – Drove the creation of a mobile digital music app product and business strategy and implementation at Nokia
2004-2007 – Drove internet and social media internet strategy as Nokia transformed into a digital internet company
2007 – Concepted, designed, and built a flagship consumer internet service for Nokia.
2008 – Built and led new content-driven global digital channel strategy for Nokia communications.
2009 – Introduced novel digital tools and strategy for social media and video marketing in customer engagement at Boston Children’s Hospital.
2011-2016 – Provided digital transformation and advanced analytics strategy to pharma and hospitals for IBM, and an IBM partner.
2017-2018 – Provided digital health, digital innovation, and digital transformation strategy for a large pharma; a global industrial supplier in aging in place; a large healthcare payer; an AI SaaS vendor; companies in fertility, nutrition, and consumer healthcare content; and a European accelerator and their life sciences startups.

updated 12jun18

Image by Dariusz Sankowski