We have been traveling a lot lately. Why? Here at Regalix, we help large global companies with their customer success and sales enablement initiatives, which include things like digital marketing, knowledge management, customer experiences, sales operations, customer service and support, rewards and loyalty programs, etc., all of which are critical to the business and are today being digitally transformed. While helping businesses transform themselves in these areas we have seen and learned a great deal. Let me share some of the lessons we have learned.
Kevin Benedict is a TCS futurist and lecturer focused on the signals and foresight that emerge as society, geopolitics, economies, science, technology, environment, and philosophy converge.
Is Silicon Valley Worth It?
Have you ever wondered why technology start-ups aggregate in Silicon Valley like moths to a flame?
Office space is expensive. Hiring
employees in the valley is costly. Competition
for talent is fierce. Buying a home is
cost prohibitive and traffic is horrible.
Yet start-ups continue to locate here.
What are the attractants? Let's consider the following:
Traditional consulting practices promote the fact they
have decades worth of accumulated business processes, system designs, economic models,
methodologies and experiences from years of providing IT and business strategy consulting
to large multinational companies. The problem is the large legacy S&P 500 companies are not the models for agility and digital acumen today - think about the trouble GE is in. Today the average number of years a company can stay in the S&P 500 is predicted to be only 14 years. Today, agile Silicon Valley companies are the ones commanding the most attention.
Having Silicon Valley DNA today is more important than archives full of historic processes and decades of experience deploying legacy systems. Silicon Valley is the very epicenter of digital transformation and the companies here think and act differently. Silicon Valley DNA is a digital mindset, a paradigm, a culture, a perspective and an operational
strategy. It assumes there are
competitive advantages to be found in change and innovation - just waiting to be exploited. It
aggressively pursues new business models and innovations based on the belief
there is value in learning, whether the experiment is a success or a
failure. It seeks examples of successful
proof of concepts across all industries, and then seeks ways to apply those
findings to other business problems and situations.
Consulting companies with Silicon Valley DNA are not
attracted to projects involving the implementation or deployment of legacy
technologies and business models. They
may do them, but only as a means to an end, which is to
get more challenging and transformative projects and business. They seek opportunities
to help companies advance, in leaps and bounds, rather than in small risk-free
iterations.
Businesses with real Silicon Valley DNA are located in the
Silicon Valley. It means they are
surrounded by innovative people both inside and outside the company that are
working with and learning about emerging technologies and business and economic
models every day. It means they are
collecting and working with new ideas every day - assembling and reassembling
them to form new products, services and businesses. It means they have unleashed their employees’
creativity to integrate and test unique combinations of technologies in search
of additional value.
Being located in the Silicon Valley and having Silicon
Valley relationships also benefits new start-ups seeking to fund interesting
ideas and new ventures. In addition, start-up
teams benefit from being in close proximity to experienced technology leaders,
investors and advisors.
Consulting companies with Silicon Valley DNA, are made up
with people that think differently. They
thrive in an environment and culture that attracts ambitious, competitive and
driven innovators and entrepreneurs.
They are not seeking status quo, but rather they are trying to make a
positive impact through change.
Where many traditional businesses struggle with change and
experience a deep-set institutional and leadership resistance to it, businesses with Silicon Valley DNA recognize change as an opportunity to capture additional
competitive advantages and deliver more value.
Silicon Valley consulting companies often have an abundance
of knowledge and experience on how to take an idea from a concept to a new
business ventures. Often within
leadership teams they have the accumulated experience of having worked in
dozens of different start-ups. This
experience has shaped them into entrepreneurs.
Their natural approach to any project is from a business start-up perspective. This mindset is missing from many consulting
companies that focus primarily on staffing and long-term ERP implementations
and deployments.
Another Silicon Valley DNA character trait is a healthy
disrespect for how things have been done in the past. Traditional market rules and behaviors,
business model norms, institutional and industry practices are often not
respected. In fact, they are often
viewed as mere artificial limitations created by incumbents for the purpose of
protecting their own status quo and limiting customer choices and options. In the Silicon Valley rewards are given most
often to those that think out-of-the-box, not to those trying to fit in it.
Silicon Valley consulting companies and entrepreneurs often believe in fuzzy
math. They believe that 2 + 2 does equal
5. They have witnessed firsthand
entrepreneurs networking independent car drivers together with ubiquitous
wireless broadband, maps, mobile apps, mobile payments and a demand for
transportation into – Uber! They have
experienced the value of collecting concepts, ideas, technologies and best
practices from many different industries and combining them into new business
models that thrives and add exponential business value!
We have of course generalized in this article. Not every business with Silicon Valley DNA is geographically located in Silicon Valley, but having this DNA is a huge advantage.
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Kevin Benedict
Senior Vice President, Solutions Strategy, Regalix Inc.
Website Regalix Inc.
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
IT Leaders Series: Nigel Willson, Microsoft's Global Strategist
In this episode of the IT Leader Series, Microsoft's digital expert and guru Nigel Willson and I discuss IT trends, business strategies, emerging technologies and the future. I learned a great deal and hope you will to.
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Kevin Benedict
Senior Vice President Solutions Strategy, Regalix Inc.
Website Regalix Inc.
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
Digital Expert Interviews: Oracle's Chatbot, AI and Mobility Expert Suhas Uliyar
I am excited to share an interview I recorded with Oracle’s digital, AI, chatbot and mobility expert Suhas Uliyar. In this interview we discuss the meaning of ambient human interfaces, the technology stack that enables chatbots, the power of interfaces that you don’t have to learn, and we learn that algorithms haven’t change that much in 25 years. I learned a lot and hope you will to! Enjoy!
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Kevin Benedict
Senior Vice President Solutions Strategy, Regalix Inc.
Website Regalix Inc.
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
Leadership: The Plan for Winning in Digital Transformation
Last year the World Economic Forum labeled 2017 as the beginning of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. What value do we gain from defining industrial revolutions? I believe it is to define new sets of rules for winning in business. Let’s review the three previous industrial revolutions.
- Industrial Revolution #1. We move from reliance on animals, human muscles and biomass to the use of fossil fuels and mechanical power. A caveman/businessman wishing for a competitive advantage might be the first to use mechanical power fueled by fossil fuels to build cave-condos faster and cheaper than other Neanderthals.
- Industrial Revolution #2. Electricity is harnessed and distributed, both wireless and wired communication is developed, the synthesis of ammonia provides new fertilizers and harvests increase, and new forms of power generation are developed. A farmer wishing for competitive advantages could adopt mobile phones to communicate wirelessly with their workers, use lights around the farm to extend hours of operation, fertilizers could increase their production.
- Industrial Revolution #3. Digital systems are developed, communication and rapid advances in computing power achieved, which enable new ways of generating, processing and sharing information. A businessman operating a disco and seeking competitive advantages installs a digital cash register for more accurate cash management, buys an Apple Computer with the VisiCalc spreadsheet to better manage the business, and installs a heavy printer to print disco-oriented newsletters and other business documents from the office.
- Industrial Revolution #4. Billions of humans are connected by mobile devices and networks, surrounded by sensors, wearing wearables, supported by unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, and access to knowledge, which serves as the springboard for developments in artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and quantum computing. A business woman seeking a competitive advantage decides to develop and rent out genetically-altered and custom-designed farm animals with embedded GPS sensors to urban dwellers by developing a mobile app connected to the internet where chatbots take your reservation and deliver the beasts in autonomous self-driving trucks pulling cattle trailers.
An Executive's 2018 Checklist for Digital Transformation
“The size of competitors and the longevity of their brands, are less predictive of future success than the importance they give to data, the quality and speed of their information logistics systems, and the operational tempo of their business.” ~Kevin BenedictMore data is being generated today than ever before, and in 2018 leaders should be laser focused on investing in and implementing the following digital systems/solutions:
- Data collection
- Big data analytics
- AI/Machine learning
- Automation (RPA)
- Security
- Real-time contextually relevant personalized experiences
Mobile Expert Interview Series: Jonathan Kaplan, CTO and Co-Founder of PowWow Mobile
In this in-depth interview, I get the chance to ask PowWow Mobile’s CTO Jonathan Kaplan why 2012 was a good year to start an enterprise mobility focused platform company, and what problems they recognized still needed resolved in the market. We also dig deep into how AI and IoT fit in with enterprise mobility. Enjoy!
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Kevin Benedict
Senior Vice President Solutions Strategy, Regalix Inc.
Website Regalix Inc.
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
How Robots are Invading Commerce and Sales Enablement Processes
Robots Invade Sales Enablement in 2018 |
Video Interview: Kevin Benedict on Digital Transformation
I had the honor of recently being interviewed by two hip, nordic, brilliant and blond millennials from Finland - Kati Lehmuskoski and Timo Savolainen. In addition to making me feel old and frumpy, we covered digital transformation from many different angles, and explored its impact on competition, leadership and the future.
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Kevin Benedict
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
CIO Interview Series: Jim Dubois, Former Microsoft CIO
I had the privilege of interviewing Jim Dubois, former CIO of Microsoft last week! In this interview we discuss Microsoft's digital transformation over the past few years, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, IoT, analytics, change management, automation and the future.
Read more on artificial intelligence from the Center for Digital Intelligence here.
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Read more on artificial intelligence from the Center for Digital Intelligence here.
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Kevin Benedict
Principal Analyst | Consultant | Digital Technologies and Strategies - Center for Digital Intelligence™
Website C4DIGI.com
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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