FountainBlue’s November 3 VIP roundtable was on the topic of ‘In Search Unicorns’. Thank you to this month’s participating executives and to our gracious hosts at Western Digital. Below is a compilation of ideas and thoughts from our conversation.
Our executives this month had extensive experience with both large companies and with start-ups and even investment/corporate development experience. They had the following advice regarding the search for unicorns.
- No matter where you are in the start-up-to-enterprise spectrum, remember that:
- Companies big and small are challenged with integrating new technologies and solutions into their offerings in order to stay relevant to their customers and keep up with market demands.
- Leaders from start-ups and companies need to balance their desire to manage innovation from within or create innovation at start-ups and get integrated into the enterprises.
- Work efficiently and effectively, within the environment, culture and ecosystem you’re in.
- The flexibility and excitement of a start-up might be better than the stability and resources of a corporation and vice versa, depending on your current objectives and perspective. Choose the best option for yourself and be open to re-evaluating your selection.
- Develop a comprehensive plan for creating, nurturing and growing technologies and ideas organically from within a company, and also strategically identifying and integrating start-ups worthy of acquisition.
- Find adjacent technologies and markets for current solutions so that you can expand into new areas.
- Create and manage an ecosystem of partners to support development and business expansion goals.
- Keep passion and innovation alive, even when a company gets big and processes slow down how quickly things can get done.
- Watch how the Terrible 5 (Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Apple, FaceBook) are impacting other companies in your space and respond accordingly.
- Ensure a culture fit with potential acquirees to increase the likelihood of a successful integration.
- The hiring of quality technical people will challenge the growth trajectory of companies big and small.
- Focus first on the trend, then on the people who can create a solution to address that trend, and then on the idea.
- When creating a new solution in the same market, having the same clan of co-founders makes sense. When creating a new sector and market, recruit from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences and help the team work together.
Here are some hot new areas to watch for:
- Machine Learning and AI solutions which automate reporting and processes
- Technologies and solutions around self driving cars
- Fitness and health-tech solutions for the consumer, but perhaps paid for by insurers, companies, even the government
- Hardware and software solutions which leverage open source modules
- Aggregating, managing, organizing, searching, storing huge volumes of digital content
- Practical wearables which are also disposable
- Device/IoT security and management
- Edge computing as the evolution of embedded computing
- Block chain use cases in finance, healthcare, transportation etc
- Integrated services and solution will be more prevalent than individual devices/units/sales
The bottom line is the unicorns are not born overnight. There are plenty of technologies and leaders who have the potential to become those billion-dollar-unicorns. Actually achieving that unicorn status will take collaborative, systematic execution on plans extended periods of time, riding market waves and serving customers over five to seven years.
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