Everybody talks about it, but academic research is lacking
Cloud and innovation have become two dominating concepts in today’s business world. Surprisingly though, insight in academic literature on how Digital innovation initiatives actually take advantage of Cloud are lacking. For this reason, Weolcan is eager to contribute to the academic landscape by collaborating with the Rotterdam School of Management on a research project that aims to identify how companies in the Netherlands exploit, or are planning to exploit Cloud to support innovation. In this blog, we'll provide you with a brief introduction to this research and explain how you can contribute as well.
Cloud enabling your Innovation Strategy
Having an Innovation Strategy in place has become a necessity for most businesses to remain relevant for their customers. Questions to ask in pursuit of determining an Innovation Strategy are: Does your business want to enhance existing offerings? Does your business want to introduce new products or services to generate new revenue streams? Is your Business interested in implementing completely new business models? Answering these questions will provide insights on the long-term vision of the company and raise further questions on the business needs to achieve it. We strongly believe that Cloud technology is an enabler of a company's Innovation Strategy and therefore we are eager to scientifically prove the link between exploitation of Cloud benefits and a company's innovation ambitions.
Technology Savviness as a qualifier for disruption
Cloud technology is maturing and increasingly becoming the standard. Some benefits are clear and easy to exploit, while others are harder to pursue. By default, using Cloud provides fast access to high quality infrastructure, a flexible cost structure compared to making large investments upfront and self-service characteristics. However, we often see that actual (disruptive) innovation, leverages more advanced benefits which may include the ability to scale up and down as desired, fast time to market, and easy exploration and experimentation. Cloud can also enable global delivery models 'by design' and the availability of smart components such as analytics, machine learning and IoT. The catalysts in leveraging these more advanced benefits of Cloud are advanced skills, expertise and commitment also known as Technology Savviness.
What about you?
How does your company facilitate Cloud to drive innovation? We would highly appreciate if you share your experiences and take between 10-12 minutes to complete the survey and make a valuable contribution to the research. By participating you can win a free training by Weolcan and the results will be shared.
