Johannesburg, 27 Sep 2001
What happens when all the rules suddenly change in the business world? That`s when the "extreme future" begins, according to Dr James Canton, the digital entrepreneur and future guru. Canton is the keynote speaker at Executive Exchange, a two-day think-tank for SA`s top executives on 7 to 9 October.
Canton is the founder of the San Francisco-based Institute for Global Futures, a think tank that advises governments and corporations on the impact of advanced technologies. He will visit SA as part of a team of international speakers who will be presenting at Executive Exchange, taking place at Spier Estate in the Cape Winelands.
In his book, Technofutures, Canton talks about how every business is an e-business, whether they know it or not. He cites the central core of creating a sustainable, successful and profitable e-business as fast adoption of network-based computing at the enterprise level. His concept of radical innovation calls on all businesses to learn to think way outside the box.
Canton classifies companies into four categories: Traditionalists, Maintainers, Adapters and Innovators, each of which will fare differently in building the virtual enterprises of the 21st Century. According to Canton, the challenges ahead for business may result in death for some enterprises, and vast success for others.
Traditionalist organisations tend to harbour a staff culture that is slow to change, particularly in networking the enterprise. Traditionalists think that new technology may be a fad and not something that they want to invest in. Their motto is "if it ain`t broke don`t fix it".
Maintainers are organisations that tend to say "yes" when they mean "no". Their customers are screaming for interoperability and online applications and their suppliers are screaming for next-generation EDI and a network-based communication or a purchasing system, but yet they like to maintain the old way of doing things and are very slow to adapt. Their motto is "don`t make waves".
Adapters are organisations that they are willing to learn new things and transform the organisation to look more like a network. Their commitment is to networking the enterprise way outside the traditional box of connecting suppliers, customers and partners and trying to adapt best-of-breed examples from the marketplace - even from competitors - into a robust, interoperable, scaleable architecture. These are the companies that are going to survive the severe shakeout in most of the vertical markets. Canton surveyed 20 different vertical industries and found that one of the key ingredients to creating a 21st Century organisation is the commitment of the organisation and its leader to building a networkable enterprise for the 21st Century.
Innovators are organisations that have a culture of change with people who are really out in front, trying to lead change trying to implement innovative solutions well before the rest of the marketplace. These companies are identified as innovators by their customers.
Canton presents the following roadmap for companies wanting to build a successful virtual enterprise to survive in the 21st Century:
* Analyse and adopt best-of-breed examples of innovation outside of your industry because most people don`t look outside their own industry.
* Create a culture based on adapters and innovators and create a culture where experimentation, innovation and looking at new possibilities is rewarded.
* Do a very comprehensive customer analysis of what customers need to be happy, to be served in the future.
* Think way outside the box about this virtual network enterprise for the 21st Century. What ultimately would provide the most value to employees, partners, suppliers and customers? What would that network architecture look like? Then go out and create it.
* Identify where the system breakdowns are. Many managers in organisations as well as presidents and CEOs don`t hear about or are insulated from problems, criticisms or breakdowns, particularly between their suppliers and customers. Identify where the system breakdowns are and create new systems that will address these. Because often times the critical mass of customers will move from supplier to supplier without telling you exactly what the problems are because nobody asked them. It`s often the death knell for organisations.
* Ask yourself: Do we eliminate all of the closed-end systems? Many organisations have an old legacy system that doesn`t talk to a client/server that doesn`t talk to a desktop that doesn`t talk to an intranet. Open up doorways between systems so that there can be shared knowledge, shared value and shared service - both internally and externally.
* Lastly, identify what your real knowledge value is. This is a tremendous opportunity for organisations to rethink their organisation as a knowledge bank and rethink their jobs as knowledge engineers.
Ultimately, knowledge is what empowers people to be successful. Let`s analyse it, put it in data warehouses, provide data mining and distribute it above and beyond the enterprise to empower people to find what they want as customers and provide what people want as employees.
To hear more of Canton`s views on the future of e-business in a digital global economy and how leading-edge technologies will transform the global economy in the 21st Century, attend Executive Exchange. Other speakers include representatives of top performing international organisations such as Sun Microsystems, Cisco Systems and IBM; international and local analysts and economists; as well as leading advisors on the current challenges facing businesses in SA.
For more information on Executive Exchange, contact Clare Renney on (011) 266-1199 or visit http://www.execexchange.co.za/.
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