International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) is remarkable in that it has been at the forefront of every single business revolution in the last 50 years. From PC to the internet, to mobile computing to the cloud, the company has adapted to every one of the huge changes.
Large corporations have been faltering in recent times and startups have been gaining ground. The phenomenon is primarily due to digital economy leveling the playing field. After the Second World War, the corporations expanded into huge organizations that stifled them while tech revolutions like internet made it possible to have capabilities they could not have gotten otherwise.
Four disruptions that changes the corporations are:
Lean Manufacturing
Agile development
Design thinking and
Lean Start up
Each of the four things has the commonality of change is not only methods or procedures but a change in culture also. This is what keeps them from being eaten by large corporations. To compete in today’s environment, the firms’ even need to change how their organization functions.
Cloud Tech is the latest in technology upheaval that could have an earthshattering impact due to contribution of valuable information distribution thus nullifying scale advantage. Phil Gilbert, IBM’s head of design launched the IBM Design Thinking to address the change brought forth by cloud.
IBM Design Thinking brings users at the beginning of the product develop process instead of the end. It has been so successful at cutting down production times that it now teaches others how to do it.
International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) last year launched Bluemix as a “a platform as a service”. Bluemix is an operating system for cloud and provides developers the tools needed to create new application while also providing resources like Watson and other third party services.
Today, large organizations have lost most of its competitive advantages, however if a large corporation acts like how IBM has acted with Bluemix then they could regain the edge due to scale.
