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Macro and strategic trends in tech industry
Love this presentation from Benedict Evans on macro and strategic trends in the tech industry. Thank you, Ben. It raises the trillion-dollar question – what is the next big wave in tech? I think tech being systemically important to society ( with tech regulation) is a given and is already happening.
My 2c: I think (and hope) that the next big wave will be the purpose-driven tech companies that solve some of the biggest problems facing humankind than mere convenience. The next big wave of companies will be society, nature, and universe obsessed!
Source: Benedict Evans -
Six signs that your enterprise digital transformation has gone awry
Digital and business transformation are enterprise-wide initiatives and done right, it is teamwork at its best as there are multiple cross-functional teams involved and hierarchies within those teams. Think of a matrix web structure. What would it take to move so many people, especially if things have to be delivered fast? It is no wonder then that many digital transformations fail or fall way short.
How does one know the transformation is not going well? They maybe just one person amongst tens or hundreds or even thousands. There will be signs all over if you pay close attention. You do NOT even need to look at a status report, just look at these signs for yourself:
- You are unclear about your role and responsibilities or your team’s roles and responsibilities
- You simply don’t know or vaguely know how you’re making a difference. You’ve been asked to do certain things
- You see consultants brought in to mediate or align teams (particularly, business and IT)
- There is a business case, vision, objectives but only available to “higher-ups”
- You spend the majority of your time explaining or defending your work, not doing your work
- You worry too much about failure and the repercussions carry a heavy price
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Tech disruption across sectors
The chart below substantiates how much tech is disrupting the traditional sectors. You’d have qualitatively heard that software is eating the world etc. etc., but this graph (though not perfect) shows HOW much.
Simply put, Technology is a) eating into other sectors b) gaining market share, and c) revenue is leaking from other sectors (for e.g. Financials) into Technology.
If your company is in the traditional sector, this threat from Technology should pretty much define the business strategy. Covid is only going to accelerate this trend. How should non-tech companies defend? Stay tuned!
Thanks to bespoke for the graph
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SaaS trends and spend
Blissfully report is a gold mine of data for technology teams and leaders interested in SaaS trends and spend. One thing is clear, SaaS apps are proliferating in organizations and have to be proactively managed from a cost and experience perspective. Here is a snapshot of the 2019 SaaS trends from the report.
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Working 70+ hours a week?
From HBR: If You’re So Successful, Why Are You Still Working 70 Hours a Week?
“I really became a robot,” a manager at an accounting firm explained. She and her colleagues worked extraordinarily long hours, but, she said, “I thought it was normal. It’s like brainwashing. You are in a kind of mental system where you are under increasing demands, and you say to yourself that it doesn’t matter, that you will rest afterwards, but that moment never comes.”
Through my research, I’ve heard stories like this over and over again from people in accounting firms, law firms, consulting firms, and other white-collar jobs. We all know that chronic overwork is bad for our mental and physical health and can seriously jeopardize the quality of our work. We wish we could change the way we work, but we don’t really know how.
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Future of Capital Markets technology
From medium: Modernizing the Capital Markets Technology Stack: Centana’s Investment in Beacon Platform, Inc
Why do customers select Beacon?
Time-to-value and ROI. Today, companies continue to deal with cumbersome internal applications that have been stitched together, often with legacy code and/or 3rd party vendors in the Trading and Risk Management space which are “black box” and difficult, if not impossible, to alter.
Beacon’s entire code base is flexible and transparent (i.e. the code is made available to customers) and seamlessly integrates with existing software and other 3rd party solutions (like Murex and Calypso), or in-house proprietary solutions, which helps drive quick time-to-value and high utility.
In a fraction of the time and cost of alternative solutions, Beacon has helped customers achieve objectives such as migrating workloads to the cloud, expanding into new markets, upgrading legacy code by placing it within a modern developer wrapper and extending analytics and applications to customers’ end-users.
This may sound like an advertisement for Beacon ( I have nothing to do with it), but this is an example of where capital markets technology is heading… Vertical SaaS or cloud industry solutions instead of legacy or proprietary inhouse solutions
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Pictorial summary of various aspects of product management
From Bain Public: 10 Pictures That Will Shape Your View Of Product Management
Nice summary of product lifecycle management, product-market fit and other product management areas. I’d recommend this for companies of all types and sizes. Here is one of the pictures:
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June is diversity month!
From NBC News: In landmark case, Supreme Court rules LGBTQ workers are protected from job discrimination
June is diversity month. What a way to celebrate! Congrats to all! All humans are equal in dignity and rights – everywhere!
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that existing federal law forbids job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or transgender status, a major victory for advocates of gay rights and for the nascent transgender rights movement — and a surprising one from an increasingly conservative court.
By a vote of 6-3, the court said Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which makes it illegal for employers to discriminate because of a person’s sex, among other factors, also covers sexual orientation and transgender status. It upheld rulings from lower courts that said sexual orientation discrimination was a form of sex discrimination.
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Platforms and why most fail
From HBR: A Study of More Than 250 Platforms Reveals Why Most Fail
Here are the key takeaways from our research into why platforms fail:
First, since many things can go wrong in a platform market, managers and entrepreneurs need to make concerted efforts to learn from failures.
Second, since platforms are ultimately driven by network effects, getting the prices right and identifying which sides to subsidize remain the biggest challenges.
Third, it is important to put trust front and center. Asking customers or suppliers to take a leap of faith, without history and without prior connections to the other side of a market, is usually asking too much of any platform business.
Fourth, although it may sound obvious, timing is crucial.
Finally, hubris can lead to disaster. Dismissing the competition, even when you have a formidable lead, is inexcusable. If you cannot stay competitive, no market position is safe.
