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We use to speak spreadly about digital transformation. In most cases we use examples to demonstrate how can affect small and medium business. A lot of people are analyzing how city centers have been changed by e-commerce: self-owned shops are closing and there isn’t a chance to compete against global companies.
But there is another face of the coin. Many activities can gain from the digital world as they can extend their customer segment without any cost.
Look at a family conducted farm, producing high-quality products. They should have great storytelling: the story of the family, generations of people who had spent their lives in that specific territory and the story of how they produce.
They need only a stick of technology to tell those great stories to the whole world. With an internet connection and some freemium platforms, they can open a window on their days showing something great to potential customers.
Telling their own story and then selling directly their products will leverage high-level margins. They’ll become the leading actor of their business.,
This is the light side of the Force.

Cloud computing: 10Y.

Blockchain: 10Y.

This means that nowadays there are a lot of technologies that are going to be disruptive in some years. I think it is impossible to identify which are at the early stage of the evolution, but the second stage will be a fast growing. This is what happens in a nice. When the nice become the market a lot of people start thinking that there is an opportunity to make money. Those people used to be a consultant, so they can explain either why or why not. 

An effective businessman understands the «deep why» and can see how to gain vantage from the scenario. In his book, ‘The Innovator’s Dilemma’, Clayton Christensen predicted the idea of digital transformation almost a decade in advance. He analyzed some scenarios from the American computer industry of the eighties and nineties, comparing sustaining technologies, meaning the natural (organic) development of a proposition, and disruptive technologies. At first, the latter were low-performance, low-profit products, which had the potential to create new markets. However, what happened in the early 2000s made his book a reference work on the subject.

The theory behind the ‘innovator’s dilemma’ says that the most successful companies in any given technological context, are not able to perceive the threat posed by disruptive technologies’, at a structural level and, if they do, then the rigidity of their decisional processes prevents their management from changing the organization’s strategy in time.

The big companies, which understood the danger of disruptive technologies, realized that the solution was not to fight or ignore them. Instead, they saw them as an opportunity to explore new markets, and to update their own technological context. They supported their development and when they believed these technologies were mature, they were ready to integrate them. Sometimes they even created a department for them, even if it was simply to prevent their competitors from using that technology. These technologies became extensions of their own research and development departments. 

If we are establishing a Google paid search we can set some parameters and then the system will tell us how many people could be targeted.

The qualification reverse process is a roleplay that aims to understand how many customers could pay to acquire the value of our product and service. In my experience, this is a very critical point.

We set up that «who cares?» is the key question in every value proposition, and we understood that is too difficult to beat the product of a competitor improving its features. We must apply the «blue ocean strategy».

 So «who cares?» couldn’t be the result of market research. In contemporary markets, everything exists, I mean everything you can analyze. So the only reverse process we can assume is «testing our assumption». Pay attention, this doesn’t mean that we can stop “listening to the customers” or, better still, “the non-customers”. Obviously, this doesn’t mean that we should just ask them what they want. It’s a proven fact that they don’t know what they want, or at least, they don’t know how to describe it in terms that are useful for the person who is creating the proposition. Henry Ford said that if he had asked his customers what they wanted, their answer would have been “faster carriages”; nobody would have suggested inventing the automobile.

Testing a proposition is an art, and it should be done in the most rapid and inexpensive way possible, even before you have completed your model. Sometimes, simply exploring the customers’ interest is not a winning move. It’s necessary to discover what they don’t say, what they desire but is unable to express rationally.

It was like that for us. We based our work on some other success stories and, almost immediately, we saw that this was the wrong way. Then, we noticed that those who bought our products commented very positively when they came to pick up their purchase, about the fact that we were a big company with many years of experience in the sale of personal computers and relevant services.

Make mistakes soon, so you can be successful sooner. 

The first Industrial Revolution marks the split between “invention”, which has always been present in human history, and “innovation”, which, from that moment on, changed mankind’s way of life, so much so that it could be called a “revolution”. The term “invention” refers to the discovery of a specific technique, whereas “innovation” designates its application. The invention itself does not cause change, but its widespread and constant application does. There is some similarity between the meanings of “innovation” and “technology” and, consequently, the ability to “master” a technique becomes a competitive factor. Progress and industrialization have introduced a third element: the product, an object which has benefits for those who use it; however, these benefits can only be enjoyed if their application matches them. If we want to reap all the benefits of an innovation, we must adapt to its terms of use, first. This means changing the way we do things. However, if we try to avoid change, and attempt to use the product’s innovative aspects within the same context as existed before its invention, it is very unlikely that we will obtain the same results.

Industrial revolutions greatly accelerated technical and scientific progress, but every science develops from its past. Thus, the particular stage (of development) that one generation achieves becomes the starting point for the next. 

The protagonists are engineers, businessmen, and dreamers, who are men of their own time, who are influenced by the social and intellectual structure in which they grew up and worked. Furthermore, innovators are not all the same in terms of skills, talents and inspiration. Each of them must learn about the developmental level, where their phase of science was situated, at the time they set out on their path. Some of them merely learn and disseminate; but, there are others with exceptional drive who can control innovation’s direction, answering positively to the challenges they inherit from their predecessors. When combined, people, and the environment where they work, are factors that can either favor stability or encourage change.

The qualification process has the target to reduce the number of option. If we can influence some choices during the process, we are able to drive the customer to our uniqueness.

In a world with so many options, we must put in place a process that aims to differentiate ourself from the competitors. The outcome of differentiation? Be unique and integral.

“Qualifying” means characterizing; it indicates a significant and substantial element. This element will be the decisive factor that leads a customer to buy our new product/service. Identifying this element quickly, and acting almost exclusively on it represents the cost-effectiveness of the action, which is what maximizes the result.