In dedicating more of a focus to Avanceé, there’s been a good bit of resetting the plate which has happened across several familiar and unfamiliar spaces. In some conversations, there’s been less “here’s what Avanceé does” and more “how can Avanceé help you.” In some spaces there’s been a subtle shift from push to flow. And still in others there’s a conservative shift towards experiments driving tasks towards experiments building platforms. A good bit of conversations are refocused towards the startup and small business community, so it makes sense to detail this shift towards this theme also.

For startups, whether in tech or using tech, what’s the Avanceé story?

A theme consistent through a few talks and conversations with the FromAFuture crew points to a reshaping and focusing of what’s here and what’s to come with connected activities. For example, in one conversation, we have been talking about the usefulness of the iPad and the value of it being even larger. Our perspective is that it is not much of a value of the screen, but that the actual usable screen of life is much wider than any pane of glass can be. The iPad has been a transformative canvas in respect to it doing a lot of base things very well. So well as a consumption device that (louder) owners and some developers have simply stopped right there. For those who have dug in more (Muse, Procreate, Adobe Comp CC, etc.), they have rewarded iPad owners with a sense of intuitiveness bordering on a kind of “drug for curiosity.” This presents a novel opportunity — not only for the startup which develops iPadOS software/services — to reevaluate and create shapes of work following closer to the desired outcomes, than the hardened inputs.

For a few teams where there’s been a much longer engagement, the conversation is finally moving from “what are the features we don’t know” to “what are some shapes of work we had not explored?” This is an exciting, though slower moving shape of work. Still, this kind of “re-engineer the shape of work” follows along with what Avanceé forwards. One of those groups has such a locked-in view of their legacy software. They seem to want to see it do more, but the levels of work right above those who use these workflows hasn’t yet transformed. The workshops and conversations with this group is definitely challenging, but also most fulfilling when they “get it.” It isn’t digital transformation anymore, but now behavioral change driving their path forward. That’s exciting.

That’s a bit of what things have looked like lately in terms of helping some startups point towards a future. Where things go from there is still up for grabs. The holiday season isn’t where so many folks look forward but look backward. And that will happen a tick here also. Backwards is an excuse to accelerate forward focused on enabling and empowering who we can. Whether that’s with Spectacles or Vue or something to come, Avanceé tends to be well positioned for all those who care to understand and go.