Speed and a Doctrine for the Future

Throughout my career in the high tech industry I have often heard the business maxim, “First, develop a business strategy and then find the technology to support it.” My experience over the years, however, has led me to believe this maxim is misguided. Let me explain by asking several questions. What came first digital commerce or the Internet? Mobile payments or wireless networks? Commercial airline travel or the airplane, knights in shiny armour being used as shock troops, or stirrups? Trivia answer: Stirrups! Technology has a long history of appearing first, and then strategies are formed later. What we are learning is if our outdated business strategies are dictating the speed of our technology adoptions, then we are in big trouble! The world is moving much too fast and we must align the tempo of our business strategy evolution with the pace of technology innovations and our customer adoptions of those technologies. We need to invest in future oriented thinking and the explo