The key to progress is change

Change in human behavior - to be precise. Only when the next person is changing his/her behavior does innovation actually materialize.

This is probably too self evident. Also that change is both enabled and driven by exponentially more capable IT. We need something to change into. 

Simplified - experienced - roadmap:

1. Create service or tool that many need often and can be used with a wide variety of tools (avoid few-need-seldom, too toolspecific and walled gardens). Close to my heart are e-banking, e-invoicing, mobile financial services, search services, e-mail, text messaging, social media etc. 

2. Sign up "all" customers. This was simpler in the past, when banks' branch networks were extensive. Change resistance needed personal selling.

3. Get customers to start using the servicew they have signed up for. This demands clear benefits, transparent pricing of alternative service and even mandatoryship.. Again - easier in the past - when customers were not drowned in information and had more time for any-one-thing. 

4. Then offer layer-by-layer of additional services - building on the existing platforms and above all user habit and trust. Prime examples here are e-id and e-signing services, e-invoicing, e-accounting etc in the banking sector, text messaging, location services etc in the telecom sector. Habit and trust are huge levers..

Then you have used and delivered to your customers: Economy of Scale, Economy of Scope, Economy of Reuse, Economy of Repetition, Economy of Trust and critically important support to renewal other existing central infrastructures (like public sector services, accointing, financial reporting, big data etc).

Two change fronts:

1. Get "all" customers to change their behavior (in their own interest - and good for society at large).

2. Keep adding services

3. Create the new ecosystems and infrastructures needed in the networked economy.

The last one is a challenge - as markets are less and less able to deliver networking and standardization (quarterly capitalism destroys longer term value) and the public sector too often does nothing, delivers only strategy papers, isolates itself, acts in a high-handed manner, attempts at building solutions on its own (with disastrous effects mostly).

So - we need a new collaborative spirit - and also new desiveness in the public-private space - from both national governments and EU. Fast small steps - no need for massive projects and investments. Naturally building on technology neutrality, service provider neutrality and platform neutrality - with open interfaces.