Tropical Gringo

Last Wednesday, a group of 16 people and myself had an excellent time during the Digital Innovation Workshop that I directed at Microsoft’s offices in Bogota, Colombia.  For me, the best part was the interaction between the participants as well as between them and myself. It was a truly rewarding experience as I’m sure the next workshops will be also.

Each day, I’m astonished by the continual disruption happening in industry after industry where new competitors pop up from unexpected places in the same way that a computer company (Apple) disrupted the music business and the way that DVD rental-by-mail company (Netflix) disrupted the cable business.  We looked at these and many more examples and discussed the implications for each particpants’ businesses.  Participants came from companies such as Colmedica, Banco de Bogota, Belcorp, Legis, Intergrupo, Federacion de Cafeteros and others.

Finally, we ran through three interactive and stimulating exercises so that everyone would leave the workshop with the necessary tools to start rethinking their own businesses and collaborating with colleagues on how to proactively anticipate innovations in their own industry and innovate with new business models. It was truly a great group of people and I thank them for the stimulating discussions and the energy and passion that they put into this unique learning experience.

Digital Innovation Workshop from Tropical Gringo on Vimeo.

A point I’ve been harping on within my consulting engagements and during my workshops is the fact that, in my opinion, a deep transformation is taking place before our eyes.  The last few years have witnessed the toppling industries that, as a child, I took for granted as powerful and enduring.  Last year, more than 200 US newspapers went bankrupt, the music industry distribution channel has been reshaped and a good number of banks failed and others would have failed were it not for government help.

Now, before going to bed, I read that a number of high powered players in tech and the VC industry have created a US $250M fund to invest in companies focused on the “social web.”  Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, one of the investors in the fund, states that “We think every industry is going to get fundamentally rethought and redesigned around people.”  Nothing like validation from the likes of Zuckerberg, Bezos and John Doerr for a guy in faraway Colombia.

Nevertheless, I actually think that the opportunities are even greater in emerging regions such as Latin America.  This is the reason that I’ve been giving workshops on what I call Digital Innovation in order to get people up to speed on the changes happening and to provide practice (through exercises) in the use of tools to reinvent their business models. If you’re in Colombia, register for the next workshop on December 15th.

Paipa is small, but beautiful city in Colombia, which is a nice place for companies to hold client events.  Intergrupo, one of the biggest technology firms in the country, invited me to their event here in Paipa to speak with some of their large customers about Digital Innovation.  I had the opportunity to speak to them about how I think one should think about the adoption of digital tools and about success stories of companies taking advantage of cloud computing, social media and other tools.  It was great to hear the audience’s comments and opinions.

Many in the audience mentioned many challenges here in Colombia (and Latin America) in order to adopt new digital tools in order to create new competitive advantages.  I saw much interest from all of the companies in investigating new ways to analyze, collaborate on and design new business models, the topic of my workshops.

My premise is that, first, a solid strategy needs to be in place for your company to develop or enhance its competitive position (differentiation).  This is by no means a trivial process (and it’s one that I’m passionate about). With this strategy mapped out, then, one can start selecting technology that will help you achieve your objectives.

This is the topic that I’ll be talking about during my speech on digital innovation during the B2B event that Legis is holding in a few weeks.  I hope to see some of you there!

On Thursday, I had the good fortune to sit down with a number of startups in a host of industries to analyze their successes up to that point and ascertain, along with five other judges, the viability of these businesses to scale. Each one of these businesses was innovative in its own right by any standards (e.g., global or otherwise).  Nevertheless, what really struck me was that the three business we chose in industries from fashion to education, digital innovation was an integral part of the company’s present and future strategy.

As I mentioned in a previous post about the workshops I am teaching on Digital Innovation, I believe that the time is ripe to evangelize business men and women from all industries on the possibilities for real differentiation through digital innovation.  The companies we analyzed on Thursday had done an amazing job of marketing, human capital management and bootstrapping, yet they saw even more opportunity ahead thanks to the strategies they were each developing for taking advantage of digital tools.

This was truly an excellent confirmation of my thinking up till this point.  I needed this “sanity check” because of my immersion in technology these past few years.  During my speeches I certainly exposed the opportunities that I felt were available for organizations willing to make use of these tools, but my experience on Thursday was the confirmation I needed.  Here we were hearing entrepreneurs who had come to that exact same conclusion all on their own.

During the next year, I will be executing many more digital innovation workshops and evangelizing these concepts even more.  Organizations that don’t take advantage of digital innovation will, more and more, find themselves at a clear disadvantage.