There’s never been a greater time for innovation that the times we’re in at the moment. With the cadence of new tech getting faster and faster, the competitive advantage that was once gained by technology specialists is diminishing.

By that I mean previously you’d have a technology specialist (DB architect, solution integrator) able to use or work a piece of technology that placed you ahead of the curve, and hence a competitive advantage.

“These guys can setup & configure out High available SQL Cluster that’s required to perform at 80 000 IOPS..” – so the technology specialist gives you the competitive edge.

Enter the era of cloud where there’s amazing evolving technologies at *everyone’s* fingertips – clusters, load balancers, high availability, virtual networks, security, DR, mobility notification services etc.

Technology specialists (while I love the great guys) need to expand their horizons and realise where they can add greater value – what value they added yesterday is different for the today/tomorrow.

So where to next?

Innovation – is the key ingredient. “How can I combine/use the tools around me better and more effectively to become more competitive?”

Innovation means change! The competition will be doing what you do before long.

Be prepared to change, do things differently tomorrow as we do today.

How do we do this? How do we innovate, encourage change? (this can be a scary thought for some)

There’s a great book – Mindset which I highly recommend if you’ve got a spare moment. Some great concepts in there.

Innovation can come from many different layers from the business, from the technology specialists, from any and everyone internally.

A great article that Michael Power sent my way – there’s a concept of giving a companies innovation rating.

Dow Jones Innovation Index Discussion

Interesting times….

Love to hear your thoughts.