Creating a consulting business with longevity means having core "themes" that hold the organisation together even as industry trends, best practices, and technologies change over time.
At Aware we are still settling on our core themes but the current view is as follows:
Things change, and much has been made of the need to react to change. But we don't like the word "react" as it's too limiting. Our relationship to change should go beyond reacting. We also want to be able to effectively drive change, and to hold back from reacting to change that isn't going to be enduring (i.e. we want to know a "fad" when we see it).
Depending on how we define robots, the robots are already here. All of the talk of "artificial intelligence", "machine learning", and robots is less about availability of different technologies and more about how these technologies are impacting how we organise our businesses, customer experiences, and societies. We work at the intersection of the simple, easy-to-use capabilities available at marginal cost from technology vendors and the significant impact the availability of these capabilities have on how we manage operations and customer engagement.
Blended or hybrid operating models will always proceed all-robot approaches. This is partially because the way technology improves and is embedded into existing operating models means it typically replaces part of a job before it replaces a whole job. But consider also, the work of Garry Kasparov (and others) in "advanced chess" and "freestyle chess" where the battle of man versus machine in chess has moved on to understanding how different combinations of collaboration between humans and machine perform.
We often think in terms of protecting personal information - and se we should. But this sort of protection is only the first step in maturity. Once we effectively establish consumer's rights over their data in both law and in practice we can build eco-systems of data sharing that actually create value for consumers, businesses, and society. The data we have about us all is a digital shadow of ourselves. How we think about freedoms, rights, obligations, the common good, public services, etc in this digital space will be as rich and open-ended discussion as we've had about our physical selves since the enlightenment...
The Internet of Things starts with sensors and ubiquitous networks - but what's the end game. Asset heavy organisations have already started to build shadows of their physical assets that can be used to understand strategic scenarios across market entry, crisis, maintenance, and demand events. The digital shadows of assets allow both real-time optimisation and long-term optimisation of performance.
Engaging in a strategic partnership is a big deal. For the partnership to work effectively it must be managed as a relationship, not just a series of unrelated engagements. But also, there is a level of sharing regarding the organisation's strategy. We understand that you need to manage multiple strategic partnerships and can create a partnership that only shares as much as you are comfortable with - and the evolve that sharing as the relationship matures and trust grows.
