In the beginning of the 20th century, Wright brothers made one of the most important inventions in the human history. One of the brothers sat in a cage and turned into a bird. First human flight was true. It transformed the world during the next decades. In 1900, it took four days to travel from the west coast to the east coast in the US, by train. Fifty years later, the journey took only six hours, by air. The world had changed permanently.
In the 1990s, the world changed tremendously again. People swarmed into the internet. Internet connected personal computers and people behind the PC screens. Use of E-mail became widespread, and people began to search information via search engines. In 2000s, the roles of computers and mobile phones mixed up. It became possible to execute same things with mobile phone that before could only be done with the computer. Smartphones came to stay.
In the 2010s, the information moved into the cloud. Working became mobile, which allowed people to work whenever and wherever they wanted. When information moved into the cloud, the world became smaller than ever before. The cloud revolution brought the advantage that only big corporations had before for any small enterprise to benefit. The innovation advance of corporations was inevitably eaten up.
Millions of individuals and small teams around the world have started to operate as modern era entrepreneurs by marketing, selling and serving customers globally. In the past, this was nearly impossible. Today, companies no longer need own hardware, because the capacity can be purchased according to the demand. Entrepreneurs can start new businesses smoothly, grow and scale the capacity as needed, and operate global business model without the dependence of own location.
Nowadays, we’re living in a networked business ecosystem. The capital alone will no longer form the competitive advantage. Today, competitive advantage is formed on a supreme value creation model. Small companies are often more agile than the big ones in establishing new customer value in this kind of business environment. Probably that is one of the reasons, why corporations have started to increase collaboration and activities together with startups.
The use of cloud services will expand rapidly in the near future. It will be extremely hard and challenging to succeed with a traditional business models. Instead, numerous opportunities exist to succeed with new innovative business models in the future. Cloud revolution has made this possible. It is extremely inspiring, like the invention of Wright brothers’ was in early 1900s.
Jarl Matti Anttila
CMO & Co-founder of Jakamo
