What Every Industry Can Learn From Those Transforming Fastest

Retailers are learning from transport. Banks are learning from fitness apps. Cross-sector innovation is becoming a competitive advantage because the hardest problems in one industry have sometimes been solved in another.

Drawing on our recent work and behavioural insights, here are five lessons every organisation should borrow from a different industry in 2026.

1. What Retail can teach Public Transport about real-time personalisation

Transport networks are complex, unpredictable and full of variables. Retail, however, has spent the last decade perfecting real-time personalisation at scale.

Research from McKinsey shows that companies that excel at personalisation generate 40 percent more revenue from those activities than average peers, and typical programmes deliver 10 to 15 percent revenue lift.

BCG's 2024 Personalisation in Action report goes even further, suggesting that retailers who mature their first party data capabilities can unlock incremental growth.

Consumers also now expect this level of anticipatory service and expect brands to understand their needs.

Transport operators can borrow these principles to transform their passenger experience. Rather than generic service alerts, real-time personalisation means telling a commuter what is happening on their exact route, what their best alternative is, and what impact it has on their journey time. Retail has taught us that personalisation only works when it is specific, timely and context aware.

The same applies to transport. The more personal and anticipatory the information, the more trust the operator earns and the calmer passengers feel during disruption. For operators running complex networks, this is the difference between service noise and service clarity.

2. What Fitness can teach Banks about habit-forming UX

Banks want customers to engage with their services regularly, yet most financial apps struggle to create repeat behaviour. Fitness apps, however, have spent the last decade mastering the psychology of habits.

Behavioural research on fitness app engagement shows that early adoption is high, but long-term retention depends on a mix of nudges, clear progress loops and personalised triggers.

A study found that while activity tracking apps can attract millions of users, only around 20 percent maintain engagement beyond 17 weeks, and sustained use is directly tied to the design of habit loops and motivational cues.

Banks can learn from the structure of fitness journeys. Instead of surfacing every feature at once, fitness apps guide the user through progressive stages: onboarding, early wins, streaks, and deeper personalisation. Banks can adopt similar layered experiences that help users build routines around budgeting, saving, or investment tasks.

Push notifications can shift from transactional alerts to meaningful behavioural nudges. Dashboards can shift from static lists to progress indicators. The more a finance product feels like a journey, rather than a utility, the more likely customers are to return.

Fitness apps prove that habits are not formed by features. They are formed by emotion, momentum and a sense of progress. Banks that embrace this mindset will be the ones customers keep coming back to.

3. What Public Transport can teach Retail about workforce support

Retailers often focus on customer experience but overlook the employee experience that enables it. Transport, however, has been forced to solve workforce coordination at extraordinary scale.

Operators running large fleets need real-time dashboards, route planning, live incident communication and precise handovers. These tools are the backbone of reliability. Public transport has long operated with the understanding that a great customer experience cannot exist without a great employee experience.

Retail could benefit from the same mindset. Many retailers still expect store teams to operate with fragmented systems: separate tills, separate stock management, separate rostering, separate communication. This creates friction, manual work and delays in decision making.

Borrowing from transport, retailers could adopt unified workforce tools with instant communication, shared visibility and task automation. By giving staff the same real-time intelligence that transport networks use, retailers can improve service consistency, reduce operational errors, and give employees more control in high-pressure moments.

Transport teaches a simple truth: empowered staff create empowered customers. Investing in the employee experience is not internal optimisation. It is customer experience infrastructure.

4. What Automotive can teach Wellness about long-term user relationships

Wellness brands often excel at short-term engagement but struggle to build loyalty. Automotive, however, has mastered the long-term customer relationship model. Car brands invest heavily in lifecycle touchpoints, from servicing reminders to companion apps that support the vehicle long after the sale.

This thinking translates quickly to wellness. Many wellness platforms still rely on bursts of motivation or seasonal patterns. Automotive brands show the power of building a relationship that evolves over years, rather than weeks.

Regular digital check-ins, personalised recommendations and ongoing maintenance moments help keep customers connected. Automotive also prioritises transparency and data clarity, especially as vehicles become more software driven. Wellness platforms can adopt the same model of clear, contextual communication around progress, behaviour trends and personalised plans.

The automotive lesson is simple: people stay loyal when they feel supported across the journey, not just at the start of it.

5. What Banks can teach Public Transport about reassurance

Public transport is often seen as a functional service, yet travel is an emotional experience.

Just like money, mobility comes with uncertainty, pressure and moments of vulnerability that shape how people feel about the service.

Banks have learned that emotion is not a soft layer on top of a product. It is the foundation of trust. By designing for reassurance, empathy, clarity and belonging, digital banking apps have transformed what used to be a cold, transactional journey into one that feels supportive and human. Public transport can benefit enormously from the same mindset.

Banks excel at reducing anxiety in high stress moments. Monzo’s caller verification, instant card freezing and protective payment checks reassure customers when they feel out of control.

Transport has a parallel opportunity. Delays are inevitable, but uncertainty is optional. Telling a passenger exactly what is happening on their route, showing the best alternative and being transparent about arrival times turns a stressful moment into a manageable one. Emotional reassurance builds calm, even when operations cannot be perfect.

Clarity and belonging complete the picture. Banks like Wise have shown that when you strip away ambiguity, trust increases. Transport can adopt this by removing vague alerts, providing accurate real time information and reducing the cognitive load of navigating a journey.

Brands have sharpened specific aspects of how they operate to remain competitive within their industry; as customers become accustomed to a specific dimension of better service in one sector, their expectations rise for others. Harnessing patterns honed in other sectors is therefore essential to ensure that your full customer experience is one that delights. If you are exploring how to bring these principles into your own digital products, we can help. Future Platforms partners with organisations across sectors including mobility, wellness, retail, and finance to design systems that build trust, reduce friction and create long-term customer loyalty. To discuss your next project, get in touch.