When it comes to achieving differentiation, you generally have three choices: you do something different to the competition, you do the same but better, or you do the same but cheaper.
Doing things cheaper is all about efficiency, and in the past decade IT investments have been focused on this.
The problem is that it is not sustainable, and you have to keep moving on the treadmill of development.
Doing something better is about as nebulous a concept as you’ll find.
It’s the realm of MBAs, management consultants and business gurus.
Doing something entirely different takes innovation and impeccable timing, and timing is something we have not fully examined from an IT point of view.
Here, we unravel some of the key issues around timing, namely prediction, reaction, and the business’s ability to respond to random or unforeseen events.