\u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nConclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\n
Latest
Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\n
Latest
Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\n
Latest
Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\n
Latest
Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\n
Latest
Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\n
Latest
Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\n
Latest
Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\n
Latest
Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\n
Latest
Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\n
Latest
Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\n
Latest
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\n
Latest
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\n
Latest
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\n
Latest
Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\n
Latest
Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\n
Latest
Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\n
Latest
Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\n
Latest
Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\n
Latest
Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\n
Latest
Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\n
Latest
Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\n
Latest
Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
