Brad Power - Don't Just Improve Work, Innovate Continuously

Don’t Just Improve Work, Innovate

Continuously

Brad Power

Co-Founder, MAXOS

Management Consultant in Process Innovation

Frequent Contributor to the Harvard Business Review

Partner, FCB Partners

Co-Founder, CXcelerator

Keynoter

Board Advisor

[email protected]

October 2016

1Copyright 2016 – Bradford L. Power

Tectonic Shifts

From To

Competitive

Megatrends

Hardware

Products

Transactions

Software

Services

Lifetime Customer

Value

Performance

Optimization

Operational

Excellence:

Consistency,

Reliability, Low Cost

Adaptability at Scale:

Continuous

Experimentation,

Personalization

Organization,

Architecture

Monolithic, Hierarchy,

Batch, Waterfall,

Intuition

Products, Matrixed

Services Teams,

Microservices, Data

Innovation,

Improvement

Projects, Manual

(People), Stage

Gates

Continuous A/B,

Automated Testing and

Integration (Machines)


Existential Threats: Software Startups and

“Apex Competitors”

• Continuously upgrade

products and services

• Hoard customer data

• Winner takes all

dynamics

• Scale effortlessly

• Never rest

• Vertically integrate for

adaptability

• Attract top talent


GE Example: From Industrial Leader to

Software Leader

• Jeff Immelt, “You go to

bed as an industrial

company, and … wake

up as a software

company.”

• “Predix” platform

• Software Center of

Excellence

• Outcomes-based

customer relationships

• +$1 billion revenueSource: https://hbr.org/2015/01/building-a-software-start-up-inside-ge


Introducing the Software Apex Competitors

• Dominant predators

sitting at the top of the

food chain

• Software examples:

Alphabet/Google,

Amazon, Facebook,

Microsoft

• Top in market cap


Software Apex Competitors Have Found a

Way to Achieve Adaptability at Scale

• Small semi-

independent

microservices teams,

matrixed to strong

product managers

• Automated testing and

integration, enabling

lots of small

experiments

• No: bimodal IT, Scrum

Masters, QA step, OpsSource: “The Best Digital Companies Are Set up to Never Stop Innovating”, Brad Power, Harvard Business Review, May 17, 2016


Organize by Products with Matrixed Small

Services Teams: Google Example

Key Characteristics

• Product managers have profit and loss responsibility

• Small teams (3-7) responsible for micro-services

• Product managers guide small teams, but teams can support multiple product managers

• Information systems guide teams and coordinate between teams


Opportunity: Big Companies Can Win with

Technology like the Apex Competitors

• Instead of incubating

startups at the edge,

build new products from

existing core

components, customer

and supplier

relationships, brand

• Expose new

capabilities to existing

customers


Problem: Big Organizations Traditionally

Minimize Risk (Not Maximize Adaptability)

• From an era when

failure was expensive

and deliberation a

virtue

• Data hoarded

• Decision-making by the

few

• Hierarchy

• Separation of powers

Slow and

Conservative by

Design


Legacy Systems and Practices Are Rigid

• Monolithic applications

slow and expensive to

change

• The innovator’s

dilemma: “Technology

debt”

• Fragmented data

• Rigid long-term

contracts with vendors

Source: Roger Camrass


How ambitious are you?

Levels of Ambition

1. Escape legacy

2. Become a modern

digital enterprise

3. Become an Apex

Competitor


Happy to Help You on Your Journey

• Does your organization

have aspirations of

becoming an Apex

Competitor?

• Contact:

[email protected]