The Uruguayan Chamber of Information Technology (Cuti) organised a conference at the Golf Club in which experts and entrepreneurs agreed that the way to compete in the innovation market is to understand the big waves of technological disruption, strategically decide which ones are relevant for each company and combine existing new technologies in a novel way for their market.
The director of the Master in Management of Technological Companies of the ORT Uruguay University, Marcel Mordezki, argued that disruptive innovations are processed around large global companies and that their results, such as Mobile technologies, Cloud Computing or Internet of Things, are data of reality for Uruguayan companies. "These are tectonic movements of the largest companies in the world," he said.
In this sense, he indicated that large companies innovate and generate disruptions in the market, create solutions to existing problems, offer new products and make previous technologies disappear.
Given this reality, he pointed out that "great business opportunities are opening up for smaller players in the market who can bet on the innovative combination of existing technologies and the generation of fast, low-cost experiments". Devices that can monitor depression and anxiety, and mobile phones that monitor blood pressure, are some examples.
Mordezki also commented that on the one hand there is "the old school of innovation", which requires large teams, a lot of research and huge investments, while on the other hand there are companies with small teams that use infrastructure and software as a service, creating innovative solutions and launching them on the market using existing platforms. With this model, which according to the specialist is the one recommended for Uruguay, "competitive results are achieved but with much lower investments".
"The world is starting to follow a pattern of 'Uruguayan-style' innovation, understood as an environment with a scarce budget for innovation, without large departments dedicated to research, doing things small, experimenting, getting feedback from customers and re-investing only if they work. Big companies are trying faster models, they are being encouraged to experiment," the expert summarised.
Gabriel Camargo, CEO of Ingenious Softworks, a company specialising in behavioural design, said that the most important thing for a company to be innovative is "a change of mind". He added that although "it is becoming cheaper and cheaper to experiment and make prototypes", the process is only valid if it is "related to the will and a change of mentality".
Meanwhile, Álvaro Lamé, founder and CEO of Netgate, pointed out that his company began to innovate from its very foundation, twenty years ago, generating disruptive movements when it launched into the Internet services market and with the promotion of teleworking. "Technology and communications, the sector in which we operate, have taken us by the hand. When we started to innovate, we did so without knowing that it was going to have a disruptive effect", said the entrepreneur.
Finalmente, Gastón Milano, gerente de Desarrollo de Genexus, comentó que para el equipo que dirige el objetivo es solucionar problemas y para ello la innovación es una variable muy importante. «Tomamos la innovación como una de las cuatro vitaminas de la empresa. Las otras tres son la producción, la administración y la integración. Ellas guían nuestro trabajo y ninguna funcionaría bien sin las demás», afirmó.
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