The Win Imperative, 5 considerations by Adrian McDonald

Five considerations for any business looking to thrive in a winner-takes-all market. Disruptive competition in business has been a reality of the Internet age for some time now; and yet it is only comparatively recently that a nexus of technologies has come together to accelerate the rate at which new entrants can completely cut away the legs of a long-established market and storm to success with an alternative offering.

December 19, 2014

Five considerations for any business looking to thrive in a winner-takes-all market. Disruptive competition in business has been a reality of the Internet age for some time now; and yet it is only comparatively recently that a nexus of technologies has come together to accelerate the rate at which new entrants can completely cut away the legs of a long-established market and storm to success with an alternative offering.

The barriers both to entry and to innovation have been significantly reduced. The rise of smartphones and of mobile technology more generally; the advent of social media and cloud; and the potential for real-time analytics – all allow today’s businesses to spread their trade as virally as hilarious videos about cats.

The problem for most established businesses is that they simply lack the capability to shift tack as quickly as they need to – and much of this is the consequence of self-limitation. “They’re not a threat today, they might be in 18 months’ time, but by then…” There’s little that can help organisations trapped in this mind-set; perhaps this is why many large businesses have seen such a high throughput of CEOs in recent years, as boards punish the entrenched received ‘wisdoms’ that have allowed incumbents to fall to last place in their core markets. Indeed, the focus on the short-term quarterly results output that the Street rewards – instead of longer-term strategic planning – is an issue many businesses have run up against.
And even for those that are willing to make the change, the next stumbling block that is quickly encountered is the legacy of their technology. Trapped in an earlier generation of IT, enabling the modern customer experiences that will differentiate the business and help to establish (or maintain) a market lead can be technically challenging.

The irony is that the answers to these fundamental challenges are all already known – yet for various reasons they are not always within immediate reach. It is critical, however, that businesses act quickly to position themselves to move forward with the agility of the upstarts, for the latter are already poised to move further ahead: they can make the big decisions – now they simply need to decide what they want to do, and where they want to win.

The hard-and-fast reality for established businesses looking not just to survive but to thrive in this context is that change is no longer optional. You have to actively set out to win: if you don’t, you will naturally find yourself on course to fail. In this series, I will outline five change imperatives for enterprise IT that are necessary in order to allow those businesses with the right mind-set to stave-off disruptive competitors, and maintain or build a lead in their chosen markets. These are performance, agility, efficiency, trust and scale. As always, I welcome your thoughts.

More details about efficiency, agility, performance and trust the following days.

by Adrian McDonald, President EMEA at EMC

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