The Connected Company

Foreword

Long gone are the days of a predictable world in which you could take your time to make decisions, manage an organization from the top, or get away with mediocre products and services.

Pointing to today’s mind-boggling speed of commerce, exploding computing power, ever-sinking communication costs, and fierce global competition is stating the obvious. We all know that the competitive environment has changed forever.

Yet, surprisingly, while surpassing themselves at innovating with products and services, most companies are terribly slow at reinventing their management style, organizational structure, or institutional culture. They remain inapt to a fast-paced and connected world in which customers instantaneously and globally voice their dissatisfaction over anything less than outstanding products and services. These expired ways of organizing often result in unhappy clients, demotivated employees, and missed opportunities for new value creation.

In my work on business model innovation with large, global companies, I am constantly confronted with this. In the face of a changing competitive environment, companies are forced to take action. Smart and energetic executives generate amazingly innovative business models that have the potential to produce future growth, but then the organization is incapable of making things happen. More senior or more established executives get the company to fall back on their historic business model and old ways of working, which made them successful ...