Women Entrepreneurs :: Book Review – the Power of Convergence

This book includes success stories and shows not-so-successful implementations to give examples of how businesses can best link their business and technology objectives. In an ever-changing world of technological innovations, it’s easy to get caught up in the “bright shiny object” syndrome and forget about the business model or the needs of your customers. Small businesses can learn a lot from these situations and use the valuable strategies as they plan their growth.

Author Faisal Hoque, CEO of Business Technology Management Corporation (BTM), a leading management solutions, software, and services company,  shares some of his thoughts about linking business and technology.

Deborah Bailey: What prompted you to write this book?

Faisal Hoque: The main purpose of this book, as with my “social think tank,” is to help business leaders recognize the opportunities that are arising during the current global transformation. Today more than ever, all businesses-large or small-have access to very similar opportunities as one another because the world is so globally interconnected. This holds true whether you’re looking at it from an economic, business, and social standpoint.

My new book, The Power of Convergence, helps to quantify the financial impact of these global changes and the importance of gaining competitive advantage through continuous innovation and creativity, especially in the technology sector. In this new era of global business, many corporations have to opportunity to improve their financial performance by developing the critical capabilities that comprise an agile, innovative, and sustainable company. The application of appropriate technology has the ability to jumpstart corporate transformation, creating a space where innovative uses of enabling technologies can propel a business forward.

DB: What do you want readers to come away with?

FH: Advancement in technology has given rise to huge opportunities for anyone looking to break into a particular market niche by innovating on new and existing technologies. Technology has become ever more accessible, affordable, and continues to be an enormous factor in connecting us to a global community. Technology proliferates at a tremendous rate, leveling playing fields in nearly every endeavor it touches. Take Apple for example. They didn’t invent portable music or the Mp3, rather they built on the existing technology and found success through innovation and sleek marketing.

In addition, the book aids as a guide for using the only the most appropriate technology to achieve a desired business goal. Those who converge business and technology management are able to gain superior revenue growth and net margins relative to their industry groups.

DB: What are a few recommendations for changing management practices?

FH: In the current business culture, the problem of convergence is often understood as a disconnect between IT and business managers and their differing technology needs. Thus the problem is often looked at in terms of finding a solution that works moderately well for both parties. Instead of thinking of the two as independent silos with different needs, they must be thought of as part of a larger entity (and in fact they are). Convergence occurs when a leadership team operates across both spaces (technology and business) with individual leaders directly involved with orchestrating action in both spaces. Although some activities may remain strictly business or technology, most activities intertwine in such a manner that they become indistinguishable.

Because technology and business are changing so rapidly, it is necessary for managers to form new organizational structures in order to create and share new kinds of business knowledge.  This is imperative in order to apply emerging socio-economic business models to develop repeatable, reusable transformational processes. Simply put, IT & business must be dramatically restructured in order to keep track of changing trends and take advantage of constantly changing revenue streams.

DB: How can the start-up entrepreneur benefit from your findings?

FH: The benefit of The Power of Convergence for a start-up entrepreneur is that my system of conceptualizing management structures will allow her/him to create an agile and forward thinking company from the ground-up. Simply put, it will give the entrepreneur a head start among other businesses/enterprises that must shift their entire corporate structure to accommodate this change.

As many enterprises are already struggling with years of mismanagement, those who look to start with a blank slate are able pre-plan and bring business and technology managers together at the beginning. Because of the changing global marketplace, those entrepreneurs are now able to break the barriers to entry into markets that were unfathomable for the emerging entrepreneur merely a decade ago.