Tien Tzuo who is an MBA from Stanford, has written about the transition to the subscription model of business in his book Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model will be your Company’s Future- and What to do about It. After a decade working for Salesforce, in 2008 Tzuo founder a software company called Zuora, to help companies make the transition to this subscription model. According to him, it was Adobe that provided the initial blueprint for this model. Subscription based businesses seek to swallow the previously supreme fish model. The subscription model is throwing up huge quantities of data warehousing as all this is then processed to deduce valuable business insights. This is allowing for direct customer relationships, and a more personalized touch. Uber, Netflix, Surf Air, Caterpillar and Blue Apron are prominent examples of such businesses. The role of business schools is also diminishing in this current environment.

Source:https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/why-every-business-will-soon-be-subscription-business

Uploaded Date:08 November 2018

People are often uncomfortable to change, but when they do hit off, the results are multi-fold. Successful business disruption is the ultimate goal for innovators and entrepreneurs. The likes of Netflix, Uber, Tesla and Airbnb have managed to do something to this tune. Kodak went the other way, from market leader to bankruptcy. In order to cause such large-scale disruption, the first rule is to offer something radically new as Amazon has been doing. Creativity and business innovation must always be prioritized above merely “best practices”. The technology available and the gargantuan data warehousing capabilities now at hand, must be used to gauging valuable business insights. These insights so fetched must be made to work by empowering decision-making.

Source:https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertglazer/2018/10/31/3-ways-to-disrupt-business-as-usual-in-your-industry/#2f7ac08b4657

Uploaded Date:06 November 2018

A study was conducted by a marketing professor from INSEAD to understand the impact of Research and Development (R&D) initiatives across industries. For the study, only large companies with a turnover in excel of a billion dollars were chose. Instead of healthcare or high-tech industries that have the largest R&D budgets, the study sought to analyze for the CPG companies with more modest budgets. These firms’ budgets are more concentrated towards marketing. The results of the business research showed that companies with a smaller R&D budget had a higher impact on sales than those with the largest ones including P&G which has overall the largest. The former group includes the likes of Henkel, Reckitt Benckiser, L’Oreal and Beiersdorf. The giants such as P&G fared worse off because their entire focus was on disruptive, large-scale business innovations. This took much longer a timeline to fruition and the results were often patchy. The smaller ones did not have the budget to explore the big changes, but instead worked on incremental innovations. The biggest of the firms often have their origins in chemical or pharmaceutical industries, thus placing the research team on a pedestal, which the latter had no compunction to.

Source:https://hbr.org/2018/09/reevaluating-incremental-innovation

Uploaded Date:27 September 2018

It is often considered that firms that do not accept the overriding technology of the day in the particular industry are set to fail. However, this is not true given the history with so many industries such as automobiles in the past and solar energy today. Automobiles chose the petrol-driven engine after much deliberation. Similarly, in solar-driven renewable energy, initially everyone went for csi (crystalline silicon) as their preferred mode of technology. Companies that did not opt for this technology were considered the losers, whereas in truth many survived by improvising. An example of this is First Solar that repositioned itself on a different part of the ecosystem. Chinese firms consciously took up design choices which negated the use of any specific technology. A lot of firms have gone for the integrated systems with hybrid technology. Adaptation is another form of business innovation as proven by companies using thin film CIGS technology. The over abundance of solar panels led to a glut in the market, so some delivered services which would bundle components.

Source:https://knowledge.insead.edu/strategy/what-happens-to-firms-that-dont-adopt-dominant-technologies-9971

Uploaded Date:13 September 2018

Marc Andreessen is one of the top venture capitalists, having especially invested in a lot of tech startups. Contrary to the usual narrative of technology eliminating human jobs, he says they will merely augment them. He says that one way to become a top thinker or debater is to mentally spar with some such top names in the world of business such as Larry Page, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. He states a stat to make his point on jobs changing and not getting lost. The cites that each year about 21 million jobs are lost in the US but 3 million more are created. So, assuming self-driving cars put out a maximum of 5 million people out of work, finding new work is not impossible for those displaced considering that those many are any way generated per quarter. In order to embrace business innovations, one needs to be ruthlessly open-minded. A lot of futuristic products he believes do not succeed straight way, but need the right ecosystem to thrive. Apple’s Newton for example wasn’t an outright success until the development of the iPad.

Source:https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/marc-andreessen-take-ego-out-ideas?utm_source=TWITTER&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Insights&Date=20180903&linkId=56374280

Uploaded Date:11 September 2018

While it is true that an increased pool of diverse personnel is good for any company’s ability to generate business innovations, this diversity must also include different dimensions. The best-known form of diversity is in demographics with personnel from different gender, age groups and ethnic or cultural backgrounds. There must be scope for both pragmatists and visionaries. The teams developed must be cross-functional and multi-disciplinary as that is good for talent management. Not only must there be people with different areas of education, but also knowledge levels. The experience timeline must be vast. There must be both the generalists as well as specialists. Some must possess a passion for extra-curricular interests. There needs to be scope for the risk takers as well. The cognitive preferences too must vary. One area where there should be less diversity though is the trust factor as that cannot be compromised.

Source:http://innovationexcellence.com/blog/2018/08/28/9-diversity-dimensions-that-increase-innovation-and-one-reason-they-may-not/

Uploaded Date:11 September 2018

The platform-based business has for a while now been hailed as the ultimate symbol of disruption caused during the ongoing digital age. The likes of Uber and Airbnb in particular symbolize this. Several books have also been written on their far-reaching impacts, with most notable of them being The Network Imperative, Matchmakers and The Platform Revolution. However, this business model is not a sure shot formula to business success, with several flaws embedded in it. The first such barrier that all entrepreneurs need to beware of is that there are very few barriers to entry. Another is that over a period of time, the intense competition prevalent in such fields leads to an escalation of costs. Business innovations work only when there is adequate scale. This leads to the third major flaw that is that the few who do succeed in the platform business end up taking disproportionate amounts of the benefits, leaving most to rot.

Source:http://innovationexcellence.com/blog/2018/08/27/3-reasons-why-you-shouldnt-bet-your-business-on-a-platform/

Uploaded Date:11 September 2018