How a digital foundation is setting the edge for new market leaders

In establishing new models for value delivery, organizations need to curate and connect their ecosystems, and place them closer to their customers. This is different from the traditional approach in which needs are identified in a silo and ecosystems are subsequently engaged to explore possible solutions. Upfront use of ecosystems equips teams with differentiated perspectives and tools to help identify new experiences and the role technology can play in delivery. Ecosystem capabilities need to be engineered as consumable services that can be used to efficiently experiment together with customers to create new and engaging experiences.

In a recent project, a consumer product client team was tasked with rethinking a company’s product launches. The organization had established a set of consumable artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR) and consumer data services from various strategic ecosystems, as well as the company’s own platforms. The client team leveraged these services to rethink how an intelligent and flexible new product launch capability could work. A group of customers was brought together to help identify key thematic experiences. Using the ecosystems services, the solution team rapidly tested experiences around feature recommendation, training and service bundling leveraging the AI and AR services. In weeks, the process delivered a unique product launch process with experiences that were not envisioned before, better represented customer needs and ultimately differentiated the company.

Harnessing the power of ecosystems requires diverse and strategic selection of alternatives. Organizations have to be strategic in their ecosystem approach, selecting and connecting to clusters of ecosystems that are differentiated and offer a promise of innovation. Whether it is Microsoft, SAP or pockets of innovative and sustainable IO start-ups, organizations need to select the ecosystems most valuable to them based on the company’s innovation priorities and industry trends. Each company needs to identify their own set of ecosystems, however, there is a set of ecosystems focused on the foundational capabilities for containerization, orchestration and provisioning that organizations need to embrace.

The new approaches need to ignite a mindset focused on future capabilities and activate the team’s ingenuity to get there. The focus is in moving toward rethinking the business and the role technology plays instead of continuing to look for ways to digitize the existing business. As an example, a digital foundation team will approach the question of developing a new capability by asking themselves, what new experiences can be delivered if the new process is rebuilt from scratch and leverages AI?

The goal is to galvanize the organization to look at business needs in a different way and commit to drive a new approach to the solution. Example of approaches to drive exploration of new digital opportunities include:

• Future back: envisioning the future of the business or capability and identifying the critical path to get there
• Art of the possible: an unconstrained exploration of possibilities
• Experimentation: identify the new opportunities that an existing, incomplete solution can drive

Successfully driving the value in these approaches also requires solutioning teams that have both a strategic understanding of the business, as well as a focus on connectivity and pragmatism. These solution teams are the protagonists in the digital foundation — we call these the innovation operators.

Innovator operators understand market trends, business needs and technology opportunities. They are storytellers and anchor in their curiosity to explore opportunities. Innovator operators need to be self-realizing in keeping up with digital ecosystems and overall transformation techniques, but they cannot do it alone — the organization needs to provide a structure and resources to drive the full potential of this unique role.

The digital foundation needs to concentrate on value generation and thus requires new rules of the road. Key areas to address include:

• How to focus on the right priorities? Digital foundation teams need to be positioned as solutioning teams for business transformation. This is best accomplished by providing the digital foundation reporting lines to key business leaders — typically within the C-suite.
• What is the definition of success? Emphasize capability accomplishments, such as “better connected” and “time to value.” Equally important, ensure each build has aligned and healthy financial metrics.
• How to deliver the demand? Embrace delivery methods fit for purpose — product management, agile practices and continuous integration need to become the standard.

Finally, the digital foundation needs to be able to access funding efficiently. Streamlined funding models that combine experimentation seeding and scaling ROI need to be put in place.

Steps to consider include: Committing to a digital foundation approach for delivering a set number of critical products or processes. Set an ambitious goal: Complete the first release in weeks not months. Aim to not exceed 8 to 10 weeks.

• Identify the digital ecosystems that are relevant to drive the next level of value for these products or processes. No need to take a comprehensive approach, instead, focus on the digital ecosystems that are logical candidates for the intended improvement. Some basic ecosystems to consider are those addressing customer engagement, AI and mobile.
• Apply new ways of solutioning: assemble your team of innovation operators to identify the innovation opportunities. Leverage the ecosystems identified to ignite new thinking.
• Launch digital foundation build sprint and then pivot to product build sprints.

As you move up in solidifying your digital foundation, remain committed to a lean and efficient approach to solution delivery. This is a necessity to expand the portfolio of available technologies and effectively unlock their value. Discipline in table stakes practices, such as reusable architectures, technology rationalization and cost optimization is essential. The digital foundation needs to sustain its focus on streamlined and energetic delivery to remain a reliable engine of innovation for the organization. Position the digital foundation with leadership as a core capability of the organization and commit your team to delivering value in a new way. As your ecosystems and new ways of working deliver step change, your organization will be on a new path to realizing the opportunities of your evolving business environment.