Rashik Parmar

Innovation is happening everywhere. It is transforming how and what people purchase, and how they communicate and collaborate. There are ever-greater demands on organizations to innovate faster and at scale. In response, data and analytics are being used to create radical new business models and disrupt traditional industry structures. How are data and analytics driving new ideas and new innovation, and what can executives do to incorporate data-driven innovation more directly into their… Show more

Innovation is happening everywhere. It is transforming how and what people purchase, and how they communicate and collaborate. There are ever-greater demands on organizations to innovate faster and at scale. In response, data and analytics are being used to create radical new business models and disrupt traditional industry structures. How are data and analytics driving new ideas and new innovation, and what can executives do to incorporate data-driven innovation more directly into their strategies and initiatives? Show less

The search for new business models is hit-or-miss in most corporations, despite the extraordinary pressure on executives to grow their businesses. One well-documented explanation: Managers skilled at executing clearly defined strategies are ill equipped for out-of-the-box thinking. In addition, when good ideas do emerge, they’re often doomed because the company is organized to support one way of doing business and doesn’t have the processes or metrics to support a new one. If you tackle… Show more

The search for new business models is hit-or-miss in most corporations, despite the extraordinary pressure on executives to grow their businesses. One well-documented explanation: Managers skilled at executing clearly defined strategies are ill equipped for out-of-the-box thinking. In addition, when good ideas do emerge, they’re often doomed because the company is organized to support one way of doing business and doesn’t have the processes or metrics to support a new one. If you tackle business innovation systematically—rather than hoping people will get creative during an “innovation jam” or a special offsite—you improve the odds of success (and decrease the chances you’ll be left staring at a blank sheet of paper). Traditional, tested ways of framing the search for ideas exist. One is competency based: It asks, How can we build on the capabilities and assets that already make us distinctive to enter new businesses and markets? Another is customer focused: What does a close study of customers’ behavior tell us about their tacit, unmet needs? A third addresses changes in the business environment: If we follow “megatrends” or other shifts to their logical conclusion, what future business opportunities will become clear?

We propose a fourth approach. It complements the existing frameworks but focuses on opportunities generated by the explosion in digital information and tools. Simply put, our approach poses this question: How can we create value for customers using data and analytic tools we own or could have access to? Over the past five years, we’ve explored that question with a broad range of IBM clients. In the course of that work, we’ve seen advances in IT facilitate the hunt for new business value in five distinct—but often overlapping—patterns. Those patterns form the basis of our framework. We believe that by examining them methodically, managers in most industries can conceive solid ideas for new businesses. Show less