THE NEXT 10 YEARS—CONNECTING FAST TECH TO THE ENTERPRISE
I don’t think that super smart tech kids (at least in the Valley) understand much of anything about enterprise tech and they don’t want to. But what they fail to realize is that the next 10 years will be a time of connecting fast tech to the enterprise and it will be an exciting place for smart techies who want exposure to lots of hard problems, many of global scale (vs. working on just one startup). Also it could be a great place to find a really hard problem you can get passionate about to solve in a startup.CIOs should make this case to technology interns and STEM undergrads. To survive and thrive, enterprise IT will need to live and breathe the fast technology that is second nature to technology interns. Startup-minded technology talent can serve as kindling to spark a fire of discovery and disruption that enterprises are primed for in the coming years. Rather than relying on third parties to access this talent, enterprise CIOs and CTOs should pursue this type of talent with a vengeance to increase the technology quality and velocity in marketing, innovation, product development, IT and analytics.
Cultivating an environment capable of nurturing premier technology talent requires the CIO to:
- Accept that the negative perceptions the next generation of talent holds about enterprises technology is a problem and threatens the future of enterprises
- Learn about the places where fast tech lives
- Figure out ways to engage with fast tech hubs, which could include: participation in open source, sponsorship of incubators, VC co-investment, putting staff in residence in labs/incubators, more investment on campus STEM programs
- Alter innovation, solution development and talent processes to incorporate these talent pools
- Combat the enterprise elements that stifle change and speed by using smaller experiments and prototypes and creating agile teams to address smaller scale problems to build momentum, stories and skills
- Develop a clear story and tell it to anyone who will listen in the fast tech world.
Image shared by Rennett Stowe
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