Industries

You no longer have to be a “high tech” company to struggle with the challenges of technology-driven competition. Companies that make building materials, banks, pharmaceuticals, industrial gases, agricultural equipment – all find themselves subject to the roller coaster of technology cycles. And these cycles are not just the headache of the R&D or engineering organizations; these are corporate concerns.

Companies in the medical device industry, for example, have to negotiate not just the successive generations of improvements in technological components, but are also now grappling with how to integrate devices and information across the flow of patient care.

Companies in the enterprise software industry, having gone through dramatic consolidation of the biggest players, still struggle to offer cheaper, easier to install, and easier to maintain software that can help them simultaneously meet the needs of enterprises, small and medium businesses, and the vertical industries they serve.

Agricultural equipment is increasingly equipped with capabilities that interpret data fed in through sensors, the internet or satellite to help guide and control the farming process.

Pharmaceutical companies compete on the productivity of their Discovery units and that competition is increasingly turning to interpretation of massive amounts of chemical and experimental data.


And all industries worry about balancing resources and structuring technology to meet the demands of the many geographies they serve across the globe.

The good news is that when technology is at the root of the change, there is quite a bit shared between industries from which senior teams can benefit in their own strategic decision-making.