Strategic bet on technology

Do you consider techno as a source of competitive advantage? Are you going to beat the competition because your technology is better? 

Such type of the organizations should look for emerging trends, try, learn from mistakes and failures. Sometimes even non-tech companies choose this way.

One example is large retail chains. In order to optimize the business they want to understand the customer habits, preferences, monitor relevant changes. They will struggle surviving the competition without some form of business analytics or business intelligence.

The second example is about shifting attitude to technology - it is in publishing industry. At the beginning of the digital era, the absolute majority of publishers did not have strong capabilities in IT. One company invested in IT capabilities and developed an online publishing platform. Now they are the leader in digital publishing, and the yesterday's competitors became their clients - they pay to publish on the digital platform.

When technology becomes a crucial part of your main business, you most likely develop internal capabilities and your own know-how in tech space. Only you decides which way is better. This gives many opportunities, but, in the same time, this is risky - a wrong focus may ruin the business.