Strategy before innovation and technology: Building the renewable enterprise intelligently

Isaac Asimov was right when he said “I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.” In this age of fast-moving technological innovations and with artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly becoming a reality, I see organizations struggling to keep up. Becoming an intelligent enterprise is difficult when you don’t know how to deal with the fast pace of change in technology. In this blog post, I share my thoughts on why strategy is the first step you must undertake before you build new innovations or shortlist your technology bets.

So how should you develop your strategy where innovations and technologies drive your business? I won’t give a typical high-end consulting answer, but drive you to an execution-based path instead. It’s not only about great analysis, research, showing the big picture, or opening your organization to new ideas because in reality, consultants don’t run your business (even if some consultancies think that they do). So, execution comes down to the organization.

At Capgemini, we don’t give advice on something we haven’t lived. Our Renewable Enterprise program, which seeks to bring more innovation and technologies to the core of your business and facilitate sustainable growth, is based on our extensive field experience across different industries, technologies, research, and collaboration with our partner networks. To draw a simple analogy, you can relate our Renewable Enterprise concept to Jim Collins’ book (and its sequels/prequels); “In Good To Great” in which he introduced the concept of the flywheel to explain how good companies become great companies, and what great companies need to do in order to stay great. This is illustrated by the intersection of three circles; where can we be the best in the world, what we are passionate about, and what drives our economy and resource engine.

Understanding the flywheel in your organization helps to understand the driving forces of your organization and with that, you can build the strategy needed to sustain and reinvent your core business using the new technologies and innovation that are driving the digital revolution. It will also help structure initiatives you have on your digital agenda to help drive the flywheel momentum. My strategy revolves around identifying this flywheel momentum and start experimenting/exploring how to make your core business better and stronger with new technologies.

Our concept of the renewable enterprise aims to help organizations identify and strengthen flywheel momentum by building the flexibility to incorporate new technologies (machine learning, the blockchain, AI, IoT) into your core business. The renewable enterprise drives the momentum of your strategic initiatives to grow your business sustainably. With this new concept, we don’t deliver a PowerPoint-induced of how it should look like. Instead, with our global innovation teams, our centers of excellence, and the Applied Innovation Exchange we build, test, and co-innovate new business models enabled by new technologies and innovations with our customers.

In my opinion, if innovation or technology is not applied in the real world it’s just another great idea. I’m a technology enthusiast who truly believes that we can make the world better by applying technologies with a purpose. This is a philosophy we also incorporate within our teams and consequently have built over 20 different solutions solving real business problems with an impact to society apart and we will continue developing new agile sustainable solutions to real business and social problems.

Challenge us to show you how an innovative approach and the right technology can solve your business problems, and transform your business intelligently? I will attend SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG  from May 7-9 in Orlando and would love to start the conversation on your journey to the Renewable Enterprise. Please contact me

Alex Bulat

Expert in S/4HANA / IoT / Platforms & Innovation

Alex as European SAP Service line Head S/4HANA / IoT / Platforms & Innovation is leading teams in different European countries to help our customers transform and adopt to the new digital age, and to integrate new and disruptive innovations into their business. Alex is focusing on driving the expansion and delivery of digital transformation and helping companies to get a grasp on future technologies like IoT, AI, Big data and Blockchain. Alex also focus on how new Innovations, disruptive technologies and new platforms like Uber impact the current businesses.
Alex is specialized in delivering Business Application that will change the business of customers and help them move towards the future. By combining his business and technological skills with his pragmatic and solution orientated way of thinking, Alex is flawlessly able to translate the clients requirements into a fitting solution. Alex is a change driver, and therefore lives and breaths innovation.