Prologue
Information technology has largely been available to businesses for the past five or six decades. Many businesses in the West and around the world have been leveraging IT to be competitive and achieve scales of business economies across various layers of their organizations — operations, offerings, supply chain, business partnerships, workforce productivity, sales, etc.
However, leveraging IT cost-effectively and seamlessly in an integrated way catering to 360 degrees of constituents an organization remains an unsolved jigsaw puzzle for most of the organizations in emerging economies (e.g. BRIC[1] Nations) and sizable companies in developed nations in today’s globalized economy.
The following chart is a representation of where various industries stand in adapting and leveraging IT for achieving scales of economy, efficiency, winning, retaining their customers and staying as leaders in their respective businesses for longer periods. As you can see, very few organization are above the lower threshold of adaption and leveraging IT — which is a minimal point of true technology RoIs[2].
IT leverage drivers
Some of the key factors that influence espousing and leveraging IT by the organizations across industries are:
- Type of business (new age or traditional)
- Average education level of the organizations
- Minimal IT usage skill level of the organization
- Complexity of IT solutions
- Cohesiveness of multiple IT subsystems
- Multitude of IT vendors
- IT investment (upfront and operating)
- Operational efficiency goals
- Global business opportunities and competition
- Seamless and sufficient data connectivity (wired, wireless, urban, remote, etc.)
- State promotion and subsidies on IT usage
The Big Enterprise IT puzzle
When we look deep into the challenges faced by the businesses in the bottom of the graph above, we can deduce that these challenges are nothing but various manifestations of the key factors addressed in IT Leverage Drivers above which looks like a big jigsaw puzzle — the Big Enterprise IT Jigsaw.
These jigsaw puzzle pieces are applicable across the industries, verticals and business sizes. These pieces are more visible and tangible especially in SMEs[1], traditionally conservative sectors such as health care, construction, manufacturing etc.
With the proliferation and innovations in technologies like — virtualization, cloud computing, 3G data, wireless broadband, Web 2.0, power-in-the-palm (smartphones), convergence of Web, PSTN[2] and PLMN[3], throwaway bandwidth charges — companies across all cross-sections have better and opportune environment now in adapting and leveraging IT than in ever.
Just imagine the power and reach a small business in the nook and corner of a country can get with the potent combination of wireless broadband (4G[4]) and an integrated business IT applications offered in the cloud and accessed through simply a browser!
Disruptive Value Innovation
Like other innovations that changed the world — electricity, automobile, telephone, computer, Internet etc., emerging innovations – cloud computing, power-in-the-palm (smartphone and tablet) combination stand on a firm and potent ground that will change the landscape of leveraging IT enabling organizations in rapidly and instantaneously responding to dynamically changing markets and customers in this globalized competitive world — forever.
Although we have been witnessing SaaS, PaaS and IaaS for some time now, the critically missing things are:
- The true integration of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS flexibly catering to 360 degrees of IT needs of the organizations of different sizes — especially those at the bottom left quadrant of the graph.
- Lack or absence of associated innovative business models in offering cost-effective, truly integrated, holistic, platform-centric, core business-focused, services-driven, turnkey IT offerings for the organizations, especially those at the bottom of the graph, ushering in true returns of IT.
To create a conceptual model that addresses the above lacunae, let us examine two powerful contemporary conceptual frameworks that are well respected and accepted globally.
- Disruptive Innovation: helps create a new market and value network and eventually goes on to disrupt an existing market and value network; principally driven by technological innovations
- Value Innovation: the simultaneous pursuit of differentiation and low cost that creates new demand in an uncontested market space or a Blue Ocean amongst Red Oceans — principally driven by innovations in business models that create value to the consumers
- Integrated Platform-centric Approach: It is also important to understand the evolutionary approaches that some IT industry leaders like Raman Roy are envisioning in emerging economies for the next leapfrog.
Now imagine an innovative value-driven integrated technology platform-centric model combining a disruptive integrated services-based business model. It is not a “silver bullet” framework nor a magical new notion, but an evolutionary fusion approach of contemporary notions emphasizing the integrated technology platform, turnkey integrated services and flexible framework, the combination of which will create value innovatively ushering in true returns on technology investments for the businesses of all sizes and across the industries: Disruptive Value Innovation.
Some of the expected outcomes of Disruptive Value Innovation framework are outlined below.
I plan to detail and unravel how Disruptive Value Innovation framework can solve the Big Enterprise IT Jigsaw and benefit in several dimensions across cross-section of businesses and industries with case studies — especially for those business where the technology adaption and leveraging IT is beneath the threshold and the technology RoIs are not clear and real — in the coming weeks through this guest column series, Disruptive Value Innovation.