In February 2013 I had the pleasure of speaking at a Stryve Executive Forum about a few of the key considerations businesses should be thinking about with all of the rapid changes occurring in Information Technology.
The presentation was a little challenging for me since I originally planned for conducting an hour and a half workshop – but the timeframe was changed to only forty five minutes due to some last minute schedule reshuffling. Those kinds of changes teach you as a speaker to quickly think on your feet – but I still felt a little rushed and I think I might have missed a couple key points – but overall I still felt good about the material.
My theme was really about looking back some of the technology predictions from seventy years ago – and how many had come true – and how many of the associated business models are still thriving. Surprisingly some still are going strong.
I also looked at what I call “horizontal” thinking – examining the business building blocks which currently exist – and finding those which could become new services. The continued globalization of the world economy is creating business challenges like never before – and many “horizontal” business services are being outsourced – some to operations on the other side of the planet. These rapid changes are further compounded by disruptive service offerings which undercut the status quo operations – putting even more pressure to stay focused of the external environment in order to stay competitive.
In order to keep up with these rapid changes modern forms of business process reengineering, innovation frameworks, and agile development processes are all potentially needed to keep up with this moving and interconnected business landscape.
I took a look at several different examples of businesses which are currently bringing disruptive changes to the market in industries like healthcare, insurance, retailing, and finance. These disruptive models are fresh and new – and they are good examples of creating “horizontal” offerings which can replace existing enterprise “horizontal” services – a plug-in for the business which both reduces costs and flexibly enhances the operation.
IT executives are going to have to stay on their toes from now on – many of the opportunities and threats solidly revolve around technology – and the IT leadership has to be on the forefront of recognizing the situations and keeping the business on top of the possibilities for innovation.
Business in the year 2020 will be dramatically different – and the executives who can harness both disruptive and horizontal thinking are the ones who will insure that their businesses survive and prosper.
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Research | Advisory | Speaking
