According to James Norwood, digital transformation is now mainstream for organizations of all sizes as they work to become digital businesses. However, the drivers for such reinvention may vary from delivering seamless customer experiences to introducing new business models or disrupting existing models. "That's at the macro level, but digital transformation is also fueling investments in technology to elevate the customer experience to attract, retain and engage customers, partners and employees, as enterprises are turning to rich and omnichannel digital experiences," he said. Norwood is currently executive vice president of strategy and CMO at digital experience vendor Episerver. He joined Episerver at the start of 2015 after a career spent selling and marketing ERP at Epicor and later customer service software at KANA.

Could smartphones and other screens be decreasing the human attention span? Author Adam Alter thinks so. "Ten years ago, before the iPad and iPhone were mainstream, the average person had an attention span of about 12 seconds," Alter tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies. Now, he says, "research suggests that there's been a drop from 12 to eight seconds ... shorter than the attention of the average goldfish, which is nine seconds." Alter links our diminished attention spans to the "mainstream adoption of screens."