We regularly hear stories from clients and partners relating to disruption.
One of the phrases I often hear is:
We are being disrupted by other companies that are finding and using emerging technology in a faster, more efficient and effective way than us
We all know the history of past giants that are no longer with us, e.g. Blockbuster, Kodak, etc. People tell me that 'they did not see the disruption coming'. Having worked in a few strategic roles for large corporates I can say without much worry of being wrong, that they of course saw this coming! The problem was that they could not, or would not, embrace change fast enough.
Most of us are familiar with the 'S-Curve' shift when one company is eagerly working to incrementally improve on the old technology with margin gains, whilst a new company comes along 'shifts' the entire market into working with a new technology.
Easier said than done, but to do this is to have the ability to do four things very well:
1. Be aware of when technology trends are actually coming to fruition, (i.e. high speed streaming for Netflix)
2. Scan the new technologies quickly from a very large pool of emerging technology
3. Be able to evaluate which are the best Innovators and engage with them as early as possible
4. Build an ecosystem within the organisation which allows the tech to survive and go live
This is no simple task for large established players. Companies have tried everything from incubators, accelerators, spin-outs, outsourcing to Newcos. Each have their advantages but I believe that organisations need to treat the entire exercise as an innovation project, following the Lean Start-up, http://theleanstartup.com rules. Try a little of everything and see what works for your organisation.
At Inogesis, we build and manage an outsourced platform called the Virtual Technology Cluster (VTC) to allow companies find, evaluate and choose the best Innovators to meet their challenges. We then create a bespoke ecosystem of scale-up partners to ensure the best chance to get these new technologies live and into customer’s hands.
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