Dan Miller
Lead Analyst and Founder
Opus Research
Dan Miller
What has been your business/work highlight of 2024 so far?
Who is your business hero and why?
Doc Searls. He’s not necessarily a businessperson but he defined the “Intention Economy” and is driving a movement toward Personal AI, a framing that will enable each of us to rely on an AI-infused personal agent to carry out conversational commerce on our behalf.
What’s the biggest business mistake you’ve made and what did you learn from it?
I coined the term “Recombinant Communications” in 2002-ish to describe how changes in business IT and communications infrastructure would resemble genetic patterns encapsulated by “survival of the fittest.” Businesses were never going to abandon solutions that work for them and they would define how the next generation of tech had to coexist and interact with existing solutions. Well, it didn’t catch on, primarily because it people’s immediate reaction was to picture a recumbent bicycle. Lesson learned: Pick a catchier phrase … like “composite technology”.
What’s the most inspirational book you’ve ever read and why?
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marques. We all need an escape, and it Magical Realism provides the right tone for understanding today’s challenges.
What’s the biggest challenge you face in your role in 2024?
Getting the world to understand what Generative AI is and why it is *not* some radical new thing that will revolutionise CX.
What technology will have the greatest impact on your business this year and why?
Conversational Intelligence … Meaning the data and metadata that informs all the language models that fuel improvements in self-service and employee productivity.
