Ask Matthew Candy, Vice-President and Global Leader for IBM iX, the company’s digital agency network, about the concept of design thinking and he lights up.

“Design is an integral part of any business strategy. It enables brands to survive, and is a means of facilitating continuous dialogue and building emotional connections in a complex world. It opens up infinite opportunities for businesses, since it enables transformation.

It is at the heart of what we think and do,” he says. Speaking to BusinessLine while on a recent trip to India, Candy points out that design has actually changed how businesses work, and is at the core of “the 107-year-old start-up” that is IBM.

The brand, “tech”

“Over the last five years, design is at the core of all transformation taking place in society,” he said. Especially in sports, where the fusion of design, strategy, technology and data is meshed to improve fan engagement, team performance, revenue growth, and even venue optimisation. Though sports sponsorships tend to be an excellent platform to get the brand all over a stadium and engage with something that consumers are truly passionate about, one of the best brands at using sports sponsorships is not a shoe brand or an automobile brand — it is a tech brand.

Though IBM has been working with Wimbledon for 29 years, developing its Slamtracker technology and incorporating the Hawk-Eye camera system to capture as much data and analysis as possible, this year was something else, insists Candy.

‘Business efficiency’

Speaking about IBM’s work at Wimbledon, where the tech major cemented digital as the gateway to the brand, Billy Seabrook, Partner, Global Chief Creative Officer, IBM iX, mentioned how Wimbledon and IBM put unique data insights and Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions to work, to change the way fans perceive and enjoy the game of tennis. “It is not just driving fan engagement, but a matter of business efficiency. Right from the comprehensive design, security for the matches, the IT infrastructure, and even the customer experience on mobile applications, the entire branding exercise was handled by AI and Watson, and powered by IBM, to drive scale and personalisation and consistency across the whole experience,” Seabrook told BusinessLine .

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