In 2024, global businesses are all facing massive headwinds.

From the rise of inflation and “reshoring” creating big challenges for business economics, to the rise of increasingly digital consumers that are more demanding than ever, businesses are increasingly under pressure to innovate, survive, and thrive.

Innovation, however, takes time. It also takes constant experimentation. Thankfully, over the past several years as emerging technologies like AI, blockchain, and virtual worlds have continued to mature, we’ve already seen many fascinating and insightful experiments and we already have much to learn from them.

Perhaps more importantly, we at Myosin.xyz strongly believe that in 2024, we are now seeing many of these technologies mature enough that for the right brands, there is a clear incentive to start integrating these new technologies in a thoughtful way to meaningfully innovate and unlock new revenue opportunities.

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Market Adoption & the "First" Mentality

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Being Early Isn’t Always Best

We love to talk about innovators and first mover advantages, but sometimes being first isn’t always best.

Nike, always on the leading edge of innovation, was early in experimenting with blockchain tech with their 2021 acquisition of RTFKT, aimed to redefine digital ownership and fan engagement.

Despite the excitement, these initiatives faced real-world challenges as Nike chose to enter and navigate a brand new and nascent market that was and is still rapidly evolving,

While Nike had some early successes, driving $11M in NFT sales, and an exciting launch of their .SWOOSH program that had massive engagement, ultimately there remain massive questions of the ROI for Nike as they continue experimenting in the space.

Additionally, the broader industry witnessed similar trials. NBA Top Shot, a once-prominent player in the digital collectible space run by Dapper Labs, saw a significant downturn as the hype around NFTs cooled off.

Starbucks Odyssey also aimed to blend loyalty with digital collectibles, but was discontinued as the company reassessed its strategy — perhaps indicating a misalignment with long-term business goals or market readiness.

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The Reality of Market Adoption

The journey through emerging technologies has been a mix of fleeting successes and educational failures. And the reality remains that market adoption often lags initial excitement, primarily due to the technologies' nascent nature and the public's fluctuating interest.

For instance, while Nike's early blockchain projects generated considerable attention from blockchain and crypto enthusiasts, we also saw a glaring issue: how to maintain long-term engagement without clear utility or value provided to mainstream audiences.

Blockchain and NFTs, while they have the possibility to revolutionize business models, have struggled so far to find a place in everyday use cases outside of niche applications.

This insight is critical for businesses to understand the importance of aligning new technologies with actual user needs and market readiness. Additionally, timing plays a crucial role: entering the market either too early or too late can mean the difference between relevance and obsolescence.

Markets are slow to adopt new technologies, and while experimentation is important to learn, creating meaningful long term ROI requires thinking very carefully about use cases for companies mainstream audiences.

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Engagement Beyond Early Adopters

The first wave of emerging tech use cases tended to focus on tech-savvy individuals and early adopters, for good reason. However, for these technologies to scale effectively, they must begin appealing to and engaging mainstream consumers.

Nike's approach, through its virtual world NikeLand on Roblox, for example, represents a successful shift towards more inclusive and engaging digital experiences.

With Roblox already being one of the most successful video games, aka a real metaverse, users were able to engage in sports-themed mini-games, blending the digital and physical aspects of the brand, which attracted millions of visitors worldwide.

We’ve seen some incredible brand activations with Roblox and now Fortnite, but these are also singular channels in a much bigger digital universe.

For brands to continue engaging with their communities in new and interesting ways, we also require the tools that enable seamless integrations, which we are now starting to see come to fruition.

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Simplifying Complexity is Key

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Simplifying Wallets & Payments

Emerging technologies such as self-custodial wallets are transforming how businesses onboard users, creating a seamless connection between traditional financial systems and the dynamic world of digital finance.

Privy, for example, drastically simplifies the onboarding process by giving developers greater control over user experience, allowing companies to allow new users to create accounts with easy to understand credentials like phone numbers, Google, Facebook, and Apple SSO, but also setting up a crypto wallet on the backend.

This reduction in friction is essential for businesses aiming to boost conversion rates during user onboarding. Check out Lisa Cuesta's insightful article for more details.

Crossmint has also been recognized for its innovative approach by integrating fiat-to-crypto solutions. In addition to having their own white-label wallet solution, Crossmint stands out from the rest through their fiat and crypto onramp and offramp solutions, allowing people who know nothing about crypto to buy digital assets with credit cards and more traditional payment methods.

This blend of traditional and digital finance not only broadens crypto accessibility but also ensures that businesses can attract a wider customer base by simplifying complex processes.

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Innovations in Tokenization

Another key area of innovation where blockchain can make a big differences is through loyalty platforms. Today, the majority of brand loyalty programs are uninspired, and highly transactional experiences, with siloed data and low intercompatibility between brands:

Recent innovations with tokenized loyalty programs and blockchains however, are massively reshaping how companies engage and retain customers.

Uptop, for example, has utilized blockchain technology to elevate loyalty systems in sectors like hospitality, sports, e-commerce, and more.

The Empire State Building recently launched a tokenized loyalty program to promote repeat engagement and referrals for the 4M+ users who visit every year, to great success. And airlines such as Etihad and Lufthansa are also integrating tokenized loyalty programs as well.

For each of these companies, tokenized loyalty is allowing users to become true stakeholders, unlocking more personalized and engaging customer experiences, and nurturing long-term customer relationships.

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Looking Ahead: The Time is Now

There is no question that we are entering a world where people are spending more time than ever in digital worlds, and that Gen Z is more comfortable with digital assets, AI, and emerging tech than ever.

And as emerging tech evolves and matures, companies that want to stay relevant need to keep innovating to continue growing. So how does an innovation leader get started, and how does this all fit together?

While there is no silver bullet, one-size-fits all solution, and while innovation can look entirely different based on what industry one works in, below is a simple framework starting with first principles:

1. Understanding your business: What are your actual business objectives? Are you trying to grow revenues by expanding to new geographies, demographics, etc.? Are you trying to grow our existing customer base’s average Lifetime Value? Are you trying to reshape brand perceptions?

2. Understanding your audience: How is your existing and desired user base already interacting with your brand today? What kind of tech are they already using and what are they comfortable with?

3. Building personalized experiences: How can you leverage emerging technologies to enhance and elevate existing experiences and provide real value? What new experiences were not previously possible, and how can you most seamlessly onboard new and existing users?

4. Co-building with communities: As you roll out these new experiments, how can you involve and rapidly iterate with your most die-hard supporters and fans? How can you best co-build with your community, and turn them into engaged contributors, rather than just fans?

To this end, Myosin also recently published two industry-specific research reports on the opportunities for brands, for those that want to dive a bit deeper:

Hospitality Report: https://docsend.com/view/w6en53hnaarrtiim

Sports Report: https://docsend.com/v/9dm2p/futureofsports

In 2024, we are standing at the precipice of a new era for how brands will interact with their customers and users, and so it's always worth considering: How can your business utilize emerging technology to forge an innovative, sustainable, and fast growing future?

If you ever need help, give us a shout!