Innovation or death: Why company executives need to be evangelists of new digital change

Very often, with the growth of a company, the level of its innovation decreases - potentially breakthrough ideas “slip” and get stuck in numerous approvals and meetings. Employees of such corporations, as a rule, meet almost any innovations "in hostility" - they, for example, do not want to learn how to work with new software products. The reason is that people do not understand the benefits of introducing new digital initiatives, and their managers simply do not have enough time to track the most important technological trends for the business, not to mention the practical application of new digital opportunities.

To solve this problem, it is very important to include external expertise in the process: both for understanding new trends and for finding the right digital innovation business strategy. In our experience, the first step to accomplish this task is to conduct targeted training programs that allow managers to become the main sponsors and evangelists of the digital revolution within the organization. Today we will tell about these programs in more detail.
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Brave new world

The speed of innovation is growing rapidly, for example, it took the radio 38 years to reach the threshold of 50 million users, and the social network Facebook reached the same figure in just two years. Over 50 years of computer history, the number of their users has grown from dozens of specialists able to handle complex mainframes to hundreds of millions of people who have at least a simple smartphone.

Such changes do not pass without a trace: technologies have changed (and will change in the future) the behavior of customers. A simple example - in the US, there are about 70,000 bars and nightclubs, where, theoretically, a man can meet a woman. With the help of the Tinder dating service, users generate 11 million pairs of matches per day - in order to introduce such a number of people, you need a lot more than 70,000 bars.

Digital innovations open up large-scale opportunities for business development and gaining new competitive advantages. For example, the financial group Accor manages four thousand hotels on five continents (and this is 500,000 rooms), and the company's capitalization is 7.8 billion euros. At the same time, Airbnb’s online property search and rental service does not own real estate (0 rooms), but only in 2013, 6 million accommodations of travelers in rented apartments were made through it, and the company's capitalization exceeded 10 billion. Euro Uber is one of the most expensive startups in the world: the company is not only valued at $ 17 billion, but also creates 20,000 jobs per month, doubling revenue every six months. And all this thanks to the use of the opportunities of “sharing economy”, big data, mobile logistics and other modern digital trends in the economy.

Need for Speed

4 companies: Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon cost more than 40 of the largest European companies combined, despite the fact that their development history does not exceed 25 years, and European magnates have been building their business for more than a century.



The age of companies is decreasing, and now, in order to make the right decisions, managers must understand the basic technologies and principles of the digital revolution. Under current conditions, each company must maintain the spirit of a startup - this is reflected in the use of flexible methods for developing and implementing innovations. Employees of organizations must understand why certain solutions have led to the success of other companies, and interact with start-ups for quick product launches.

All this is impossible without the active participation of managers, who must speed up the process of digital transformations. And, in particular, to work in several directions at once, such as:

• Digital Economy and its main components: understanding new business models for working on the Web, studying and using key success factors of GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon), attracting new sources of income in the digital world;
• Open and closed innovations, bases for the development of the technology business: using start-up creation methodologies for launching new products on the market, interaction with start-ups;
• DNA of the future company: understanding of new forms of interaction in companies, changing KPI and approaches to measuring productivity, the emergence of new specialties in the digital age;
• The impact of data on business development: the use of Big Data, an understanding of the main technologies available on the market, the use of API technologies and the principles of the Internet of Things;
• New customer experience: using the multi-channel factor to interact with customers, simplifying UX / UI, introducing the concept of "everything on demand", personalized approach to the client through new technologies.

How it works

Creating a successful digital company strategy is impossible without each employee understanding the benefits of new technologies. In the implementation of innovations should be involved all team members. In order to help managers convey key ideas to employees, we have developed a special seminar program.

During the course, the participants, together with the experts involved, focus on the key aspects of the business: transforming customer experience, finding new business models, studying the market (new players and competitors). Each topic has a separate session dedicated to a specific issue. The topic of the startup market is discussed separately - the participants study the most promising projects and their technologies.

In addition to theoretical lessons, the course includes master classes, during which experts demonstrate the practical application of new technologies in business. Workshops and sessions on rapid prototyping are also held, where concepts of new products and services are worked out, and special hands-on sessions in which participants study the possibilities of using new technologies and their application for various companies and vertical markets.



Special attention during the training is given to working with advanced gadgets and technologies that are just to become mainstream and conquer the world - classes in the interactive Tech Playground format allow participants to “touch” the latest devices and technologies and understand the possibilities for their implementation in existing business models .

The course organizes trips to business-iconic cities: San Francisco, London, Berlin, Paris and other centers of the technological revolution. In each of the cities, meetings of participants in the training program with local entrepreneurs and representatives of the technological “party” are held, which allows developing international business relations.

Who has already participated in the programs?

The representatives of some Russian companies, such as “The Alphabet of Taste”, “Beeline”, “Leroy Merlin Russia”, “Russian Venture Company” and others, have already completed training at the “Fabernovel Institute”.



We are planning to hold a business breakfast to discuss this topic and invite all interested representatives of the companies to take part in it. For more information, you can send an application to the address lev.samsonov@fabernovel.com .

That's all for today, thank you all for your attention. We will be happy to answer questions in the comments.