Speed of business - and business transformation matters, says IDC's Bob Parker. And Sauber's Axel Kruse shows it matters in the business of F1 speed, in the closing keynote of the World Conference's first day.
Liveblog Team
Read time:8min
“Digital transformation is not providing a downloadable PDF,” commented Jon Briggs. And then he introduced a man who knows exactly what it is.
IDC has been tracking technology and how people use it for over 50 years.
There are two common questions I get about digital transformation:
The first platform was reach. The second platform was relevancy. Now, we’re talking reciprocity. Lego is a great example of a company that’s been having this conversation. It goes back to the Mindstorm product, which hackers started customizing. The first reaction was “call the lawyers” but then the CEO said, “wait, what if we let them do it?” and that started the conversation with the customers. But then Fusion was a failure. Children don’t have the patience to build a stop motion movie. Why mention failure? This conversation requires the courage to fail in public.
Creating the experience promise doesn’t mean a thing if the backend systems can’t deliver on it.
This trio is scale to scope to speed.
Tim Cook was VP of operations at Apple before he took over, and he understood the value of speed in adapting the business and the supply chain. It was a huge part of Apple’s success. Local Motors designed and built a 3D printed car pattern in less than a year. It won’t pass road legislation but it was a huge achievement in an industry that typically takes four times that. Engineers typically respond well to these community contributions, because they thrive on the conversation about their products.
Syntax – Semantics – Socialization
Schindler did a project where they put sensors in elevator cars and used location services in their servicing. But it’s what they did afterward that was much more impressive. They realized that they had information on how billions of people move through cities. They bundled it up and started selling it to cities and urban planners.
Most organizations are still just starting this journey. 64% of organizations are what we term ‘digital explorers’ or ‘digital players’. Only 22% are transformers or disrupters. There are barriers – technological and cultural – to move through each stage. Still, 3rd platform spending is growing with double digit growth, while second platform spending is shrinking.
Line of business is going to lead here, with board sponsorship. IT, you’re going to have to partner with the line of business to get this done.
There are three architectural constructs:
So here’s some advice for a CIO:
One final thought:
My daughter does equestrian eventing. There you have to:
In digital transformation:
Our race team? 50 or 60 people at the track and two drivers. We have 350 people in Switzerland as well. And we’re a small team in Formula 1. We’ve come a long way. What does that mean?
Well, we’ve done more than 40 years in Formula 1 and we’ve been world championships in many other races. We won the 24 hours of Le Mans and the World Sports Prototype Championship. We’ve had good times and we’ve bad times. In the good times, you have to be prepared for the bad ones. Have a plan B. But just as important is to tell people in the bad times to be ready for the good times. We got the chance with BMW and we have the chance again with Longbow Finance.
We have employees from 28 countries – Formula 1 is not at all localized. We are a technology company with customers and technology partners. Formula 1 is a marketing platform. It’s one of the most important ones – it reaches a lot of people. It has a similar reach to the Olympic Games every year! We have 119 broadcast stations, reaching about 515 million people worldwide (roughly the population of Europe).
Now the car. On one side, yeah, it’s complicated. On the other, it’s really simple. We don’t have to worry about a range of temperature conditions. We don’t have to worry about driver comfort. If he has a good argument like being cozy makes him faster, I’ll listen. Otherwise, I don’t care. In fact, we only care about performance, safety and reliability.
Yes, we will lose cars. There will be crashes. But if you’re making mistakes and have a 10% scrap rate, you should be polishing your CV. So that leaves performance, which everyone is focusing on. We have to be fast and that is so difficult when everyone is doing it. Our product lifecycle is nine months. We have to relentlessly move forwards.
Every race is different. In theory, you want a different car for every race. You want different aero parts for the different tracks to make the most of the chances to build speed, on the straight or otherwise. The time of one car for the whole season is over. We need the systems to manage that and have the car changes ready in time. We need tight processes and work fast. And because we’re small, we need to work smart. We cannot afford to try multiple versions.
The most important thing is the aerodynamics. More downforce on the car, with less drag. And we use Computation Fluid Dynamic to model it. Then you build a 60% model and put it in the wind tunnel. And then you test on the track. We cover the cars with sensors to gather data. The aerodynamic work never stops – and it will never stop.
We model fuel tank slosh. The more fuel in the car, the slower you are. We could go lower than the fuel we take now but there must be enough left at the end of the race for testing.
We have such good competitors that I am so happy to have such strong partners like IFS that can do things we need better than us.
Without data, F1 wold not be the same. But it re-informs our industry partners. BMW learned from our carbon cage for the drivers. They learned how to check for damage and repair it. In F1 we can chuck it away. You can’t for a €120,000 that’s had a crash. So, yes, we have the F1 car as the final product, but we are also creating things for the aerospace industry, for the car industry and even for the health industry. We’ve just milled a titanium backbone piece.
<b>Adam Tinworth</b> has been a business journalist for two decades and a blogger for 15 years. He provides all forms of publishers with advice and training on digital content, lectures at City University on digital journalism, and provides comprehensive event note-capture services. <b>Matthew Buck</b> makes Drawnalism. This is the practical business of recording knowledge for people to remember. He is a journalist with a wide experience in most known forms of print, pixel and crayon based media. He enjoys working with the best live blogger in the business, Adam Tinworth.
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