Steadfast Strategy to Succeed in this Era of Disruptive Technologies

It’s becoming increasingly difficult nowadays to remain Agile Enough to Keep Pace with the tech industry. The innovations have reached exponential scale; GenAI, Computer Vision, 5G, IoT, Blockchain, AR; the list keeps growing. Before one technology could even be fully understood, another one starts knocking on the door. Living with the sheer pressure to integrate such disruptive technologies in our existing ecosystem, before the competitor, is becoming the New Normal in the tech industry. You cannot afford to neglect the question as a leader when someone asks, “What is your GenAI strategy.” You can’t afford to give the half-baked answer as well. In times like these, when you are tasked with finding the secret order in all the chaos, it’s worth going back to the drawing board.

Living with the sheer pressure to integrate exponentially increasing list of disruptive technologies in our existing ecosystem, before the competitor, is becoming the New Normal in the tech industry.

What is strategy after all? Is it imperative to create a strategy for every buzzing technology in the market? Will you lose the race if you did not do what everybody else is doing? Let’s find out. To win over the competition is the essence of any strategy! It may be defined as a tool for leaders to increase the chances of success of their teams, especially when the resources are limited. It may be created to give a heightened sense of confidence to all the stakeholders. It may also be thought of as the ‘art of making the right choice’ amongst the various possible alternatives, where all the alternatives seem equally important and lucrative. How organizations decide ‘what’s right,’ in turn decides whether the choices made today gives them the ‘sustainable competitive advantage’ in long run or just anxiety! If you are looking to have a ‘GenAI’ strategy because everybody else is also looking for it, then it’s not going to help. If you are planning to adopt the ‘GenAI’ strategy used by those who are already winning, then you can’t become an industry leader. If you keep changing your strategy with every new disruptive technology that comes in the market, then you would be running out of gas soon. Its high time you took a break, and introspected!

Control the Urge to Rethink Strategy for every Tech Hype

Choose Long Term over Short Term

In the past few decades, somehow it has become a trend to revise the strategy every fiscal year, as and when organizations come up with the annual plan. The exponential growth of disruptive technologies is often quoted as the perfect pretext for such a hasty move. The result for many is the failure to complete the half-baked initiatives and goals and the need to revisit the strategy in the next fiscal year. Eventually it ends up becoming a vicious circle. I still believe in those MBA lessons that organizational strategy should have a five-to-ten-year horizon. The art of anticipation should be used diligently to avoid mid-way course correction. A sturdy strategy can instill more confidence in your organization, than the agility shown in altering it.

There is a need to bring a paradigm shift in the way in which strategies are created nowadays, “stop trying to ride on the wave of success of a disruptive technology.”

Look for Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Let’s revisit the famous book “The Art of War.” One of the key takeaways from the book is that a strategy should always be created by incorporating one’s own unique perspective. To be a leader, you need to differentiate your business strategy from others. If all the organizations started doing the same thing, it will only lead to mutually destructive competition. So, the moment one joins the race to create a GenAI strategy for their organization, because that is what the industry is doing, they lose it. To me it sounds more like ending up creating a survival strategy, instead of achieving the original objective of becoming an industry leader by adopting the niche technology. There is a need to bring a paradigm shift in the way in which strategies are created nowadays, “stop trying to ride on the wave of success of a disruptive technology.”

Avoid the Efficiency Trap

One of the key motivators of adoption of such disruptive technology has always been the desire for operational efficiency gain. If you did a survey on why organizations want to adopt ‘GenAI’, the answer on the top of the chart would be pointing to the firm belief that GenAI can generate cost efficiencies. Well, its certainly good to think of operational efficiencies, but the operational efficiencies alone would not suffice in long run. Operational efficiencies should neither be confused with business strategy, nor should it be the pivot around which business strategy is built. In today’s information era, any organization can achieve operational efficiencies in a short span of time and may even rise to the top. But the real challenge comes in sustaining that competitive advantage which it gained in the process. Long term success can only be achieved by creating strategies which are not easy to replicate, and that can’t be done using a short cut or by using a commercially available recipe.

Revisit the Strategy Communication Plan

One of the things which I learnt while in school was that the chances of winning a game of chess depends on how well one can predict the opponent’s move. Someone told me that a Grand Master can accurately predict at least ten moves of her/his opponent. Not sure if ten is the right number or not, but one thing which worked for me was not letting the opponent predict my moves. And that was one of my strategies, which I only used when the opponent was smarter than me. The ever-changing landscape of disruptive technologies also calls for a revision of communication plan for your business strategy, especially around sharing granular details. Non-disclosure of your organization’s strategy can raise question on transparency. But hyper marketing of your organizational strategy to establish yourself as a force to reckon with, especially for less explored technologies like ‘GenAI’, can backfire as well.

The need of the hour is to channelize your energy in preparing yourself to grab the right opportunity, instead of wasting it on trying to grab every opportunity that comes your way.

Remember, you can’t have it All!

Organizations should stay away from the desire of having it all. We have grown up learning “Grab the opportunity while you can.” But there was one more line appended to it which most of us seems to have forgotten over time, “As they don’t often come along!” At least in the context of disruptive technologies in the current era, I can confidently say that one will get enough opportunity to knock themselves out. The need of the hour is to channelize your energy in preparing yourself to grab the right opportunity, instead of wasting it on trying to grab every opportunity that comes your way. Create a strategy which empowers your organization to be smart in making the right choice, and effective in utilizing the full potential of the choices they make.

Create an Anticipatory Strategy to benefit from Market Volatility

As I highlighted before, the essence of any strategy is to win over the competition. So, the first thing to be sure about is “who are you competing with.” You were already competing with some, and now you may compete with few more. The technology is not biased, so it couldn’t have changed your competitive landscape. What changed then? Why do you need to revise or recreate your strategy? If you can prove that either an old or new competitor of yours will get competitive advantage from the buzzing technology, then its already too late for you. And if you are just guessing or afraid, then you are unnecessarily increasing competition. If you really thought through it, then you will realize that “you are your only competitor!” You need to create a strategy today, which will prepare you to reap benefits from the game changing innovations of tommorow.

Now that you know who you are competing with, the next thing to do is to invest in understanding the market. I know its easier said than done, but there are many organizations who saw something like GenAI coming four to five years back and are creating history in wall streets these days. The least you can do is accept the fact that GenAI is just a trailer. Prepare for the future, more so if you can’t predict it well. In times of uncertainty, nothing can help you better than having strong foundations. How prepared are you or your organization? You can’t win ‘Formula 1’ race just by investing in Ferrari, you need to invest in the driver and pit crew as well. How prepared are your employees to use GenAI? Do you have the right tools? How long will it take to get them production ready? Will GenAI still be buzzing by the time your organization is ready?” Aha!” Many of you would have heard the term ‘Agnostic,’ often used in context of product or vendor. Its about time you started talking about being ‘Technology Agnostic.’ Learn how to upskill yourself and your organization in a technology agnostic way. If you wonder what this is, then take clue from the famous quote these days after GenAI disrupted the tech industry, “English is the only programming language one needs to know.” Do not decode it as “we do not need to know programming;” the idea is to know how to write an efficient computer program, does not matter if you cannot write it in say C++ or Python.

There is no AI, if there is no Data. If you do not have a ‘Data Curation’ policy, that’s the next big thing you should invest in.

Most of us are familiar with the PPT framework. The art of balancing the People, Process, and Technology has brought in success for many organizations. It’s high time, we added ‘Data’ to this framework. Though some leaders would love to see this framework being revised to DPT, and some may argue that Process is just an overhead, I would say it’s too early for that. There is no AI, if there is no Data. If you do not have a ‘Data Curation’ policy, that’s the next big thing you should invest in. Many would argue that they have enough data, but its not just the volume which makes you a leader when it comes to AI. You need to start thinking about variety, velocity, and veracity of data as well. Better be proactive and start building your own vector database. Why leave a scope to later regret losing the opportunity of having the first mover advantage, for not having the data in machine readable format.

Now that you have taken care of your own house, its time to look outside. Look out for the right partnership for long term success. Customers are increasingly looking for outcome, they want to focus on their area of expertise instead of building the entire ‘ecosystem for success.’ As data become large and technologies become complex, no single organization can stay on top for long on their own. The success lies in timely partnership with selected vendors, who supplement your business. Identifying the right partner for your business and ensuring their commitment to your cause is also an art.

Bring in a culture of continuous improvement by doing a quarterly business review of your organization’s position on the maturity curve, using objective measures for the three key parameters highlighted above, ‘PPT Framework’, ‘Data’, and ‘Partnership.’ A real testament of your organization’s maturity would be the voices coming up from the bottom of your org pyramid. For example, the day the junior most employees of your organization started coming up with proactive initiatives showcasing how they have used automation to make their own life easy, you have achieved the objective.

A value based appraisal is required for qualifying a disruptive technology to be a part of your organizations ecosystem.

Once you are ready, the game begins. Keep looking out for the opportunity in the market, and the day a disruptive technology is launched step up the gas pedal. The first thing to do would be to see the alignment of the new technology with your organization’s vision. Only if the technology can help you in achieving the vision or in expediting the journey, you should consider it. Never try to force fit a disruptive technology just because its buzzing in the industry. The second thing to consider would be the risk assessment of the new technology. As we take baby steps in the era of unsupervised machine learning, its very important to do a 360-degree assessment of the risks associated with it. If it matches your risk appetite, go for it.

Before you decide to come up with the product or service, the last thing to do would be to evaluate the value generated by the disruptive technology. I suggest doing a proof of concept for better clarity, but it can be done otherwise as well. There are lot of ways in which you can derive value, but an objective measure would be more effective. At high level, if the technology is going to incrementally improve your revenue and/ or margin, or if it reduces your risks, or if it uplifts your market position, then only qualify it. Don’t get disheartened if this appraisal process did not succeed, the market will certainly give you another opportunity soon.

Summary

The explosion of disruptive technologies in recent times calls for a need to revisit our drawing boards. Organizations need to come up with a long-term anticipatory strategy to benefit from market volatility, instead of jumping on to the bandwagon of hyped-up technologies. While they rethink strategy, they need to avoid quick wins and look for achieving sustainable competitive advantage in long run. Winning over the competition is the essence of strategy. The journey to value generations starts with the lesson that, “you are your only competitor!”

Disclaimer: The views shared here are my personal opinion and not of my organization.