Technology
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Harnessing Infrastructures and Connecting Markets
At the forefront of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, hypergrowth companies are deeply indebted to the enabling attributes of technology’s central role in the global economy. Through technological innovation and investment in developing infrastructures, companies are given a new frontier to explore in terms of creating and disseminating value to other businesses and customers.
Hypergrowth companies often have an innovative approach to the employment of technology, even if they are not creating something new. Harnessing technology to realize undeveloped opportunities is a hallmark of hypergrowth. This approach leads to the now quite familiar phenomenon of disruptive innovation. Straightforward disruptions were understood and identified first, such as the move of web to mobile, but more complex disruptions are just emerging, transforming industries. Hypergrowth companies match existing technology to new applications and new technology to existing application areas. In some cases, this blurs the lines of industries altogether and challenges regulatory frameworks.
One essential element for hypergrowth companies is employing existing and recently developed infrastructures for growth. Building new technological infrastructure is usually too slow for hypergrowth firms unless they have a long-term vision and enough funding to build the service and the market in unison. Current examples would suggest that huge market opportunities lie in ongoing and recent technology shifts, industry transformations, demographic and societal changes. Research indicates that hypergrowth companies are highly data-driven and that data is enabled to adjust the fit between the technology, the business and its offerings.
Connecting new markets through technological platforms is another visible trend in which many hypergrowth firms are engaged. Enabling business-to-consumer, consumer-to-consumer and consumer-to-business communication, collecting essential data for strategic decision-making, and value development are just some of the ways technology and markets are becoming integrated. Creating double-sided markets and facing hard to solve supply-and-demand balances are examples of how technology is being utilized, resulting in hypergrowth opportunities for intrepid businesses.
Technology, solution examples
Title | Key Growth challenge | Solution | Solution example |
8.1 Even the best technological solutions require the right timing | Right-paced innovation cycle to introduce new solutions to the market | Focus on timing decisions in order to improve product-market fit | Technology, Asia, CEO “Unique solutions are born through innovation: often uniquely combining existing technologies in a new manner – and innovating something new on top of it. When doing something completely new, the first-mover position is difficult because it takes time and others will have time to follow. If anyone introduces the innovation or new infrastructures too early to the market, that usually burns too much money for hypergrowth. On the other hand, if you spend too much time on planning and protecting IPR, time-to-market might take too long. But once competition is getting near, it is too late to start thinking about these issues. Mastering timing is today’s key solution to technology.” |
8.2 Keeping the edge | Maintaining the edge and utilizing the best available new technologies | Leadership involvement in technological decisions and apply critical and objective approach | Unicorn, Silicon Valley, Co-Founder “When we founded the firm, we wanted to make everything simpler. We challenged our competition and after hard work proved that common technology standards could be changed. And we did it successfully and fast. Usually there is a lot of talk about past successes from the financial perspective: how hard it is to change early enough if the company has been successful. When any developer creates something new and it is a success, the mindset narrows for exploring new. This starts to happen very quickly – both with in-house and best-in-the market technologies. Leading a hypergrowth tech firm is about keeping the edge in the technological choices. Our solution is to objectively analyse best possible options and that might mean that we need to regularly throw away also good solutions and options created by our engineers. And as the co-founder, I need to continue to ensure that we do not fall in love with our own creations.” |
8.3 No one can change the external factors | Technological disruption of the company | Utilize lean start-up tools for transformation, create and communicate hypothesis for future success and start testing them | Hypergrowth Company, Asia, CEO |