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To survive and thrive, Enterprise must access innovation - and that means getting comfortable with safe data collaboration.
Synopsis: Creative disruption is Jurassic Park for enterprise. The accelerating pace of creative disruption has reached a fevered pace in which S&P 500 companies are turning over at >10% a year and can expect to be extinct within 10 years if they cannot innovate. True innovation in big companies is nearly impossible. Luckily innovation can be purchased with current cash flow and multiply future cash flows. But only to the extent that companies can source and onboard innovation. Innovate faster with new methods for safe data collaboration, rapid prototyping and live deployment.
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One of the hardest things for companies is to stay relevant in a changing world. Even in the pre-internet world, the average company, the average company in the S&P 500 only lasted 20-30 years. Now, that is only 10 years on average with 10% of S&P 500 turning over every single year. The speed of creative destruction continues to accelerate, driven by increasingly advanced technologies. To stay ahead is to stay alive. That means tapping a broad innovation ecosystem.
At the same time, fast innovation in advanced analytics, machine learning, AI and data visualization have transformed business. Innovation amplifying forces of cloud infrastructure, DevOps automation and the burgeoning API economy driven by nimble tech upstarts have dramatically accelerated the pace of creative destruction. These forces provide both new opportunities and dramatically increase the hazard for companies that move too slowly to embrace their innovation ecosystem.
“If you defer investing your time and energy until you see that you need to, chances are it will already be too late.” - Clayton Christensen
Each company can identify their ecosystem - the innovators who represent opportunities. You innovation ecosystem companies are not threats in their own right, rather it is in ignoring the opportunities they represent that danger lies. Enterprise decline occurs when innovation uptake occurs too slowly to remain a leader. As Clayton Christensen noted, “If you defer investing your time and energy until you see that you need to, chances are it will already be too late.”
Yet to take advantage of innovation means allowing use of your sensitive data. And the more valuable data is, the harder it is to collaborate and innovate with that data. This presents a challenge that slows incumbent companies down, handing challengers the advantage. The typical stodgy big company CTO, CIO or CSO often sees data sharing as a risk to be blocked as much as possible. There was genuine truth to the notion that protecting data meant avoiding collaboration lest data be copied, or worse yet stolen in a data breach that might cost millions (or hundreds millions) of dollars. But that was in the era in which collaborating with data meant handing over copies. Recent innovations, such as portable compute, enabled by advanced cloud devops, have flipped this calculus around to favor innovative CTOs who can align with their CEOs to leverage the full potential of their data to test drive and go live with innovative solutions.
In starting Sympatic, my North Star was to allow parties to engage in collaboration without ever losing control of sensitive customer or business process data. To get the best of innovation while protecting their intellectual property. Safe data collaboration is key to staying ahead, or leaping past the competition because it let’s companies leverage best-in-class tech ahead of the market. Move fast, adapt and evolve. Your future cash flows will thank you.
