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This presents an interesting view on the impact of a customer-first approach to developing applications, and the level of success that can be achieved measurably in business growth. 

Whilst we’re not privy to detail of what was delivered, it demonstrates the customer activity improvements which will drive revenue. Although in this case the external customer was the recipient of design thinking, this approach can just as easily be applied to any internal users, who often deal with multiple apps - most of which were designed where ease of use was an afterthought. Worse, these apps were designed limited to a silo of activity, a number of which need to be manually orchestrated to enable a single business action, with the human being the workflow engine.

Where design thinking plays its role is to force us back to thinking of what the user is trying to achieve. This goal may be very different than simply bringing the workflow back inside the technology as quite often this workflow will have evolved from its manual days. Tied to an agile iterative process, design thinking, itself iteratively aligned, provides for a much more efficient interaction between user and the services provided by the technology. It also yields significant productivity improvements internally and client attraction externally. Either way, that's bottom line impact.

Underpinning this process, an open source toolkit combined with the right methodology can support the idea to implementation continuous delivery model. Ultimately, it’s all about matching the delivered efficiencies with those of the process that will get you there, efficiently.

Oh, yes - ping pong with the CEO will really change the culture!  Its not April 1st still is it? Typical "googlization" getting the wrong end of the stick.  Its really about inspiration, motivation, collaboration, flattening out the organization and hiring the right people, why mention college grads, on what basis do you think thats the right person? work circumstances, yes open areas, eye sight contact, lots of whiteboards help, but heavy corporate process will not work.  Didn't mention open, agile, flexible, collaborative - just xbox's and ping pong.  American corporate management at its best as usual (sadly)

Many have already bought iPads/iPhones and probably won't change horses easily - many companies dropped their resistance to iPhones and I know of others where they provide support to iPads, so the horse may have bolted, especially in senior management. As we are all aware financial firms are becoming engaged in a war around the mobile device, and the standard mantra is "develop for iOS first, then Android, then maybe...."

The big question is whether IT really has any control over the direction at all, the long rearguard action on Windows and Blackberries has not won them any more fans in a lot of firms - and they don't have that many to start with!

You seem to have control over your choices, as I do, but the vast majority don't, but quite honestly the array of tools out there make keeping synch across multiple platforms no really an issue, and with more of the available solutions becoming cloud enabled (certainly externally and private clouds are now growing) is the platform as important as it was?