The first achievements of the Industrial Revolution, which were hydro
power and steam engines, forced factories to be built in specific
places, and according to specific plans. With the advent of electricity
at the end of the nineteenth century, these obstacles were overcome.
Today,
we could compare the big digital companies, such as Google and Amazon,
to the electric companies in the early nineteen hundreds, observing that
the companies who saw how to take advantage of the potential of these
giants, by reorganising and evolving, were very successful. So how did
they do it?
Digital transformation has completely turned the five
fundamental pillars of every business upside down: their relationships
with customers, the competition between companies, the gathering and
using of data, the ability to innovate, and the value given to their
products.
First of all, the active participation of customers,
through their reviews, has a much bigger influence than any
company-driven advertisements, and has become a determining factor in a
business’ success, along with the intelligent use of a multitude of data
to which they have access nowadays. Companies need to play the long
game, knowing that their customers’ preferences change very quickly and
that competing companies are always looking for opportunities to break
through. The problem today, is that all companies are potential rivals,
even those traditionally linked to different fields: commercial nets
have become much wider and we need to take this into account.
In
addition, where traditionally the business of innovation used to be very
expensive, today’s digital technology facilitates continuous testing,
basically in real time, and new products are put on the market at a
speed that we have never seen before.
