How well are legacy industries like the financial industry approaching emerging technology?
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I agree 100%, A lack of understanding and a history of failure with new IT systems (because of their lack of understanding) has a lot to do with this problem as well. Some of the emerging tech is more complex or shifts the complexity to areas that a lot of legacy companies have never been good at managing. I believe that if some of these legacy orgs don't transform their digital value delivery streams they will just be replaced with a new company that doesn't need to transform.
Where I work, we do diligence for private equity firms, looking at more legacy targets, and I see a fair amount of denial, “we know we need to get to cloud digital transformation but it's off in the future.” And in your research recently, even pre and post pandemic or during pandemic, have you seen that as well? Like the level of self-awareness, has that improved or not?
The ones that were in denial before have religion, but the problem is they're going for all sorts of dumb investment decisions, because when we ask, “how likely are you to invest in emerging technologies?” They're off the scales, like, yes, we totally are. And then you get to the ones who have been on this journey for a while, and they're just giving you normal, reasonably balanced views on emerging technology. Like, “yeah, we'll do some when it makes sense.” But the newbies are all-in and they're just going to make a bunch of bad decisions. Just because it's emerging does not mean it’s going to help them pull themselves out of this.
A lack of understanding of where the emerging tech would fit into even the next 18-36 months of the company’s horizon, or how would it be monetized stops folks from making a decision some times. Without the clarity on ROI, the decision-maker sometimes says, “I don't know what to do, so I'm just going to stall and not make any decision.” Business executives sometimes maintain status quo until something dramatic happens and acts as a catalyst for the change. With a clear understanding of what to digitize that will add either to the top or bottom line is what most folks are looking at. Some are moving fast and some will drag their feet.