Information Technology Reference
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much more consistent basis, and, last but not least, you may want to change from an
IT perspective. We spend a lot of time in focusing on what Jeffrey Moore calls the
systems of records, the basic systems you need to run your enterprise. Today is the
time for the system of engagements, the systems that allow you to operate, to
collaborate, to be able to do things faster and better as a group of people that want to
work together.
Those four classes of innovation are fuelled by technology innovation. I am not an
advocate of using technology for the sake of using technology. Technology is there to
help you achieve your business better, to help you create those new products, to
integrate services, to run your ecosystem better. And clouds, mobility, social and big
data are really technologies that will help us moving forward.
4
Social Media
So, enough about theory. Let me give you some examples. And let me start with a
really interesting one. About two and a half years ago, Fiat Brazil was asked to create
a new concept car, a concept car for an emerging market. I had the chance to talk to
the guy who actually set up the whole thing. He said that before they started they
expected that the Brazilians would want a large, you know, big car. But they decided
that rather than just doing what they thought the Brazilians wanted, they would ask
them. So they set up an IT portal. They did something which is called crowd-
sourcing, they asked people to help, to critique, to give ideas on that concept car and
they ended up with more than 17,000 participants on a day to day basis through
participating with the designers to create the car.
And what did they come up with? Something that looked like this: a very small,
very efficient car that could get through the traffic, the horrendous traffic of Sao
Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and a couple of other cities out there. What was unique was the
way they interacted with their potential customers. You know, what was the only
critique from their potential customers? That the car actually never got built and sold
because in the same process, they got ideas from 17,000 people, they also got 17,000
customers. You know, if you have been participating in building a car, hey, you want
one, don't you? So they could have taken it one step further, but that was not the
objective of the exercise. This project is called the Fiat Mio. There is a lot that has
been written about it. It is really interesting to see how technologies and how
approaches focused on social media can actually help us achieve new things, do new
things.
Let me give you another example that I like even better. A young guy in the U.S.
who created a small product to use with the iPhone. He went through the hassle to
take the patents, to find somebody to manufacture it and so on. His product became
successful and he sold the company off to an investor. He made lots of money and
then he turned around and said, now I need to create something else. He started
tossing with ideas of what other product he could invent and finally he said no, that's
not what I'm going to do. It was very hard to get this product from idea to market. Let
me set up a company that will help people getting products from idea to market. So he
set up a website. It is called “quirky.com”. You can check it. He proposed that
anybody who had an idea anywhere around the world can describe it on the website.
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