All posts in Strategy

  • Talking About Digital Innovation in Paipa

    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.
    Mi 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!

    PaipaPaipa 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!

  • Digital Innovation in Every Industry

    Digital InnovationOn 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.