It’s time to fundamentally rethink your business. If you’re in the auto industry, for instance, are you predominantly manufacturer, or are you really in the business of getting people from Point A to Point B—and if so, what are all the myriad ways you can accomplish that goal?
That’s the sort of question you start to ask yourself when you sit down with Marc Wilkinson, chief technologist at Hewlett Packard. In talking to Wilkinson, you can’t quite help but see yourself at the precipice between traditional business and a digital future that not everyone is prepared for. Here’s some of what we gleaned from our own chat with Wilkinson during Microsoft Envision 2016.
Emerging digital business models allow for many different solutions to traditional needs, even those that were once considered fantastical. If you don’t push yourself to reinvent, you might find your business disrupted in ways you never considered possible.
“We’ve got to sow the seeds. Science Fiction has been written for… decades, and has been sewing the seed [of digital transformation] in the minds of the younger generations that come up. But I think that organizations, particularly big ones, have to understand the multiple ways of engaging with people… you can’t just do one size fits all.” – Wilkinson
But not all risk comes from inaction. All too often Wilkinson has seen companies go a step too far, losing sight of their core principles as they navigate their way toward an uncertain future.
“Boiling the ocean is the first, you know, stab people go to, and usually the first failure.” – Wilkinson
Instead of boiling the ocean, Mark encourages us to distill it—to question every approach, finding those solutions that truly do the job best. You may often find that you’re already doing things right, but don’t be surprised when you find new options in arenas you thought you knew inside and out.
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