“The CTO’s key tasks are not those of lab director writ large but, rather, of a technical business person deeply involved in shaping and implementing overall corporate strategy.”
~~ W.W. Lewis in MIT Sloan Management Review
In most businesses, it comes under the responsibility of C-level executives (CXOs) to assess potential new technologies, profitable mergers and acquisitions and configure business strategies for a company.
So, how can CXOs make their businesses sustainable or, more importantly, grow when it’s only getting tougher every day to see what’s coming around the bend?
What is the problem with current outsourced reports C-level executives Consume?
One undeniable fact is that CXOs can’t afford to be uncertain about insights they are going to take an action around as this may hamper the growth of a business. It is for this reason they need to nurture strong relationships with their technology heads like managers, IP counsels to get access to relevant technical information they seek.
To make ends meet, they must look at different market permutations and combinations. However, for successful strategy creation and execution, CXOs not only require good information, but they also need it faster to ensure they do not miss the right opportunity.
Getting information from multiple teams leads to good results but is a time-intensive process. Therefore, CXOs in such scenario outsource the task to consultants. This solves one problem but leads to another. An analysis by external consultants is so customized that it only gives answers to a particular set of questions. Thus, a CXO can see only one part of many pictures.
What Can C-level executives do to get the right information to make decisions?
So, what’s the solution to this problem? How can they have faster access to all the required information? Will they always have to compromise either time or flexibility? These were some of the questions that perplexed us as well at GreyB. As a technology research and consultancy firm, we deal with many R&D heads, CTOs, CIOs, and Patent Counsels.
At GreyB, the second phase of our work starts when a client starts consuming our insights. For us, it becomes vital to know how our work is helping our clients and what else we can do to help them meet their end objectives. Hence, project discussions and support are usual, which helped us learn that hyper-customized reports help them achieve only a few aims.
After finding that multiple clients face the same problem, we tackled the issue. The idea was to develop a solution that not only answers questions but also encourages asking more questions and finding answers.
Another criterion we considered was that a team at clients’ end should be able to use their knowledge of the domain to extract insights from our solution. In other words, we focused on making it something that makes its users ask more questions. In other words, we have been giving crayons and a canvas to our clients so that they can draw freely.
I will walk you through the solution we prepared in the next article. For the time being, you can have a look at FTO Inspired Landscapes, which is the same solution that solves a business concern and helps multiple Heads of Business—patent Counsel, Product Manager, CTO, CIO, and CEO—at the same time. Every team may have their own concerns, and it can help them find a solution.
If you don’t want to wait for the next article, you can simply email us at sales[at]greyb.com. A one-on-one session would be better to find out how we together can tackle your most pressing business and innovation-related issues. Let’s talk-
Authored By: Gaurav Sharma, Associate, IP Solutions
