At last year’s Open-Xchange Summit in Berlin we were privileged enough to enjoy an inspiring keynote from TEDx speaker Jonathan MacDonald. During his talk, entitled “Disrupting the Value-chain: Innovation at Scale and Technology-led Bravery”, he explained how businesses are constantly under attack from new challengers, disruptors and threats.
He demonstrated how the rate of wider market change is often faster than the pace in which businesses are innovating. All organisations have a poison: they think they know it all, are rich enough, fast enough, innovative enough, have tried it and failed or they believe it’s a threat that simply isn’t relevant.
But in an ever-changing technology landscape these mentalities are business suicide. The companies that will thrive and survive are those who recognise these ‘poisons’ as opportunities and act. Agility, openness and most crucially, controlling your data, are all vital to having control over your business’ future and its ability to not only survive, but thrive when faced with disruptive change.
Jonathan made the point that it is often innovations that have evolved outside a given market that go on to completely rewrite the rule book. As such, he identified the ethical and open use of data as vital for survival. Ultimately, both consumers and businesses should benefit when conventional business models are brought into question by disruptive market forces and innovations.
I honestly encourage you to take the time to watch the full video of Jonathan´s keynote.
OXS15 | Jonathan MacDonald – Disrupting the Value-chain: Innovation at Scale and Technology-led Bravery from Open-Xchange on Vimeo.