You are a tech company!
You are a tech company, whether you know it or not. Hopefully you embrace this sooner than later.
In 2019 Impossible Foods made an important decision to bring in executives from Motorola and Dropbox. Immediately, they were hit with a crisis when they ran out of their meatless meat. As most startups can relate, they were facing short-term challenges as demand skyrocketed. They were scalable, but they needed the right people to run it. Their decision to bring in tech executives with experience in expansions in times of breakthrough growth would prove successful.
Those in the tech space have the experience and the right connections to build out large scale systems and supply chains. Lessons learned from working in the tech industry including how to drive growth, how to scale, how to hire a team, and how to solve complex problems apply to all businesses including a budding plant based meat company.
It is about scaling. We can’t just do what we did yesterday, but a little faster and a little cheaper. We have to quickly respond to our customer and partner feedback. Continuously improving. With unpredictable demand we have to be able to adapt on the fly.
Another great example is Disney+ . In 2019 Disney launched it’s streaming platform Disney+. Disney+ has seen explosive growth and it’s stock price has decoupled from it’s earnings. Subscriber additions have been a major source of strength for the company over the course of the past year. The unprecedented closure of most of their other business units has been largely ignored as investors focus on the valuation of their direct to consumer tech.
There are plenty of other examples out there where companies are pivoting and embracing the changes driven by digital transformation.
The companies that have a strong vision, the right team to execute the plan, and the strong connection with their customers and partners will prevail as we recover from the pandemic.
I would argue that all of us should consider our company as a tech company.
We should all embrace
- Doing more with less. Automation, artificial intelligence and operational efficiencies will provide a competitive advantage going forward.
- Operating more lean, flexible and responsive. Decisions need to be made quickly to adapt to uncertain supply and demand conditions as well as customer and partner feedback.
- Quality. Continuous improvement, deployment and execution are key as competition increases expectations.
- Remote is here to stay. Legacy systems, infrastructure, and environments need to adapt to give people the data, information, access they need without putting themselves and the company at risk.
The next 1–2 years will be interesting to watch as companies reinvent themselves.
