David Rowan, founding Editor-in-Chief of WIRED magazine’s UK edition, published author and innovation expert explains how emerging technologies will impact your business and what you need to do to prepare now.
In his book “No Bull**** Innovation” he defines corporate innovation as “fresh approaches that deliver new value to an organisation and its customers”.
Adam Spencer: What do you mean by “innovation theatre”?
"A lot of organisations have people with titles like Chief Disruptive Officer and Digital Sherpa. I realised it was just box-ticking,” says David. “They were not really trying to change because revenue was coming in from old quarters. But we all know that changes.”
He says the pandemic has changed the game. “Every institution, from your doctor to your dentist, has had to develop a digital strategy. All this tech has allowed us to have a video consultation with our doctor, to see how our kids are going in the classroom. Your church can livestream services... It reaches more people. The crisis forces us to think about things that were already there but we had been neglecting them.”
“One of the things I noticed early in the pandemic …innovation became decentralised. The crowd came together to solve problems. People were sharing their designs and iterating. We’re never going back to an era of centralised innovation. We are now in a networked world where the best ideas are going to come from the edge. From people with different types of skills working together."
“Health care and climate tech are two areas we are just at the beginning of transforming how we are doing things. Psychedelics are now becoming mainstream ways to treat mental health, anxiety and companies are going to market in a regulated way. Climate is the biggest problem we’ve had to deal with for some time. There will be trillion dollar businesses formed in the next few years to work out how we take carbon out of the air. I think we’re going to get fantastically excited about things that solve a problem we need to solve.”
Now for the wrap, with our host Adam Spencer and Telstra Purple’s Chris Smith recapping the most valuable insights and information from Realise Cloud.
Chris’s personal highlights include the technology enabled performance CloudSong at the opening of the day.
Plus, how to present the innovation aspect to your board - from Anna Leibel (The Secure Board) “Unless innovation is part of your company strategy it doesn’t come across as tangible and it sounds optional.“ The focus of a CIO needs to be to present what the board will understand.
“Executives believe we’ve got so much to do they feel like innovation is optional - I position it around flexibilty/scalability/performance. Then show them what we’ve done - the unexpected consequences.”
Readiness for the cloud - from Adam Etherington (Omdia), only 34% of organisations are ready to move to the cloud. What’s holding them back? Compliance, outage concerns and the network not being ready.
The opportunities are massive and businesses can work with Telstra Purple to realise them, says Chris Smith. “We have to come together to find solutions …That’s what Telstra and Telstra Purple wants to help unlock - to help our partners and customers move forward.”
That’s a wrap. We hope you’ve enjoyed the Realise Cloud event.
You can now watch Realise Cloud on-demand here.