Innovation and transformation are happening each day in countless ways. From social media and marketing to healthcare and citizen engagement with government, entrepreneurs, visionaries and established leaders are uncovering new ways to interact and improve processes in our daily personal and professional lives. While many of these advancements and changes have been an evolution over the recent years, we’re clearly witnessing an amazing set of catalysts that will prove to make a bigger impact than the commercialization of the Internet in the middle-to-late 1990s.

As data, the cloud and mobile become more prevalent in every scenario imaginable, we’ll become increasingly connected — presenting more opportunities and challenges. This will empower many, but organizations must learn to adopt new practices to spur internal innovation and interaction. There have been many insightful posts, articles, statistics, presentations and interviews relating to this area recently, so it made sense to connect the dots and highlight some of them.

Industry pundit Charlene Li (Altimeter Group) recently discussed “the social enterprise” during an interview with Salesforce.com (thanks for the heads-up via Twitter, John Taschek and Marc Benioff).

Charlene points out key points that may seem logical to some people, but the crucial one is about connecting to share things of substance. I agree and call this focus PEEC: Productive, Efficient and Effective Collaboration. Make no mistake, these trends will continue to grow dramatically from this point forward and become part of the fabric of organizations across the world in every sector.

One of the greatest examples of this assumption or prediction is the success of Apple over the recent years. While many players established the foundation for mobile adoption (including carriers and device/software makers — like Palm, Blackberry’s Research In Motion, Nokia and later Google with Android), Steve Jobs and Apple really took things to the next level by making the concept of computing a mobile phenomenon through apps. This is also a big reason that Twitter is being integrated into the upcoming iPhone and iOS5 update … enabling people to make tweeting as simple, rewarding and effective as calling, emailing or texting from your mobile applications.

A perfect storm developed between mobile, cloud computing, big data and social media that brought many of these platforms from concepts to mainstream opportunities utilized by both professionals and consumers alike. Today, the mobile user can choose between countless smartphones, tablets or notebooks … but the focus is being able to use them anywhere and to always remain connected. In a recent Forbes article by Brian Caulfield (“Apple: The Greatest Platform Adoption Story Ever Told,”) Sterne Agee’s Shaw Wu explained that Apple is riding three secular mega trends sweeping through the global economy:

• The Internet will go mobile.
• Computing will shift to Internet-connected servers, also known as ‘cloud services.’
• Technology will be ‘consumerized’ or remade to suit the tastes of consumers.

scenarioDNA’s Tim Stock posted an impressive presentation that provides additional validation and areas to focus on as we continue to move down this path: The New Era of Expressive Research.

Is mobile proliferation the enabler that will transform the global population and economy into the proverbial “connected world?” While there have been some hiccups along the way, mobile, social, cloud computing and data are certainly driving forces for creating new opportunities, empowering people to pursue their dreams and solving the global challenges that ail us. Cheers to more innovation! What do you think?