Taking back the lead after falling behind technologically

1. Dave Litwiller
May 16, 2023
TECHNOLOGY REACCELERATION
TAKING BACK THE LEAD AFTER
FALLING BEHIND
MAY 16, 2023
DAVE LITWILLER

2. BACKGROUND
• Long-lived technology businesses occasionally fall
behind the frontier of advancement for their industries
• Even perennial leaders can find themselves off balance
from time to time
• The ability to architect and execute a technology catch-up
to retake the lead is one of the long-term success factors
for scale-up stage technology businesses in large, high
velocity markets

3. BACKGROUND
• The usual warning signs of falling well behind the
technology vanguard:
• Quantitatively:
• Loss of market share and profit pool
• Declining R&D productivity relative to peers
• Increasing difficulty affording necessary investments
relative to competitors
• Qualitatively:
• Ever more nuanced and qualified narratives of where the
company’s technology and market leadership remain
intact
• Declining buzz about the company in its ecosystem
relative to the aura that it once had

4. BACKGROUND
• Businesses that want to reassert technology leadership
face a choice between:
• Buying other businesses or insourcing from firms which
have technology leadership, or,
• Rebuilding from within
• Buying or insourcing from other businesses can be
expensive
• Moreover, integration is particularly risky when a business
has faltered; its agility to assimilate a more adaptive player
or its technology may be in question
• Re-accelerating the technology roadmap mainly from
within is often the preferable and more practical option

5. OVERVIEW
• Today’s talk is a look at the primary tools, techniques,
skills and cultural adaptations to reaccelerate the pace of
internal technology development:
• Rearchitecting the technology stack and groupings of
components and subsystems for enhanced development
and release speed
• Selectively leveraging the best of the ecosystem, and
expunging not-invented-here (NIH) sentiments
• Evaluating and embracing advantageous industry
standards
• Overhauling risk management and contingency planing

6. OVERVIEW
• Further levers:
• Greatly improving the speed and quality of technology
transfers, both internally and externally
• Adaptively pulling forward elements of future technology
nodes
• Increasing transparency to build confidence among
stakeholders of ultimate success, and their willingness to
commit talent and resources
• Re-grounding the context and adapting culture to achieve
required tempo and alignment

7. OVERVIEW
• Further levers:
• Sourcing capital to fund technology reacceleration
• Achieving sufficient scale to sustainably stay in the lead
once back at the forefront

8. REARCHITECTING THE
TECHNOLOGY STACK
• Thoroughly deconstruct and reconstruct architecture and
high level design to meet the needs of target applications
• The fine line to walk:
• To respect and advance what the company is legitimately
best-in-class at in R&D and technology, while reimagining
both the vertical and horizontal groupings of components,
modules and subsystems to realize the overall
reaccelerated vector of functionality and performance
• It often takes iconoclastic leaders who also have deep
knowledge about the legacy technology approaches and
R&D culture as well as end application success drivers to
be able to navigate these competing forces well

9. REARCHITECTING THE
TECHNOLOGY STACK
• The more that the optimization of the go-forward
technology approach can be distilled to one or a very few
leading quantitative figures of merit, the more readily a
large and distributed R&D organization can be aligned
around the new technology direction and rate of
advancement
• Otherwise, with more diverse metrics, the more tempting it
becomes for vestiges of the old ways of doing things to try
to hang on to outmoded ways by associating with overly
narrow preferred subsets of performance indicators

10. REARCHITECTING THE
TECHNOLOGY STACK
• The selected figures of merit need to have a very strong
relationship to customer-defined value in most cases
• This is the time to be focused mostly outward, rather than
inward

11. REARCHITECTING THE
TECHNOLOGY STACK
• The selected technologies and groupings going forward may
need to be quite different than in the company’s past
• Rearchitecting requires multi-disciplinary skill in a way that
the legacy workflows, hierarchy and reward systems of the
legacy enterprise often don’t handle well
• To rapidly affect technological change usually requires
corresponding change in the R&D organization:
• People
• Tools
• Onboarding & Training
• Workflows
• Communication and decision mechanisms
• Reporting structures
• Reward systems
• Goals and objectives

12. REARCHITECTING THE
TECHNOLOGY STACK
• It takes a lot of open-minded thinking among multi-
disciplinary architects to properly reimagine the technology
stack and technology groupings
• An individual and institutional growth mindset like this
provides the capacity to rebalance all the sub-technologies
which need to contribute to the overall technology package
and application success
• The breakthrough that then becomes possible:
• Co-optimization of contributing sub-technologies in new ways
to achieve system level breakthroughs in performance and
rate of future advancement
• This transformation is the crux of reaccelerating the overall
technology roadmap and stream of enabled products

13. ECOSYSTEM
RELATIONSHIPS
• The relationship with the ecosystem usually undergoes
significant change during technology reacceleration
• There needs to be a wholesale reevaluation of what the
available best of breed solutions are in the market web
• Leading edge capabilities often need to be sourced in new
and different ways
• This applies similarly to core product technology, as to
supporting design and analytical tools, data repository
access, and production environment

14. ECOSYSTEM
RELATIONSHIPS
• At the same time as putting new ecosystem relationships
in place, resources should be provided to extricate the
company from legacy relationships which are becoming
obsolete as the technology reacceleration takes hold
• Don’t let vestigial relationships hang on and become an
encumbrance

15. ECOSYSTEM
RELATIONSHIPS
• Table stakes to effectively leverage the strongest potential
contributions from the ecosystem are to confront and
curtail not invented here syndrome
• NIH thinking often has taken root based on past success
when the company could (or had to) develop and sustain
leading edge capabilities for more of its tech stack than it
can when it needs to reaccelerate
• Identify the best of the ecosystem anew and pull from the
players that can provide it
• Limit what your technology team works on to the most
critical and differentiating in order to concentrate
resources to retake the lead

16. ECOSYSTEM
RELATIONSHIPS
• Benchmarking is usually required to adequately assess
which tools, development and infrastructure to retain
internally, vs. what to source externally
• As reacceleration efforts progress, ongoing benchmarking
similarly helps to see if desired results and relative
performance are being achieved, and the best form of
further course corrections

17. ECOSYSTEM
RELATIONSHIPS
• Aspects of benchmark organizations and technologies to
assess:
• Performance
• Reliability/yield
• Productivity of development organization
• Time to market (idea to launch)
• Rate of technological attainment
• UX and DX

18. INDUSTRY
STANDARDS
• Use industry standards to source both best-in-class as
well as good enough externally, and marry both with
industry leading internal capabilities
• As an industry grows and matures, there is often an
increasing body of external R&D and talent to access if it
can be engaged correctly

19. RISK MANAGEMENT &
CONTINGENCY
PLANNING
• Identify everything that is risky about the technology
roadmap for reacceleration
• Qualify each risk:
• Probability
• Immediacy
• Scale and scope of impact from delayed availability or
underperformance
• Ability to contain or mitigate adverse outcomes elsewhere in
the architecture or ecosystem
• Likelihood of impact to grow over time
• Rank the risks
• Develop back-up plans for everything that is risky
• Activate staged back-up plans (contingency plans) for the
most likely failover scenarios

20. RISK MANAGEMENT &
CONTINGENCY
PLANNING
• Most importantly, create clear cutover criteria about the
circumstances under which to move from the primary to the
contingency plan if/when the time comes
• Define how long and under what circumstances to continue
contingency development
• Regularly review the overall risk matrix and plans
• A typical review cadence is monthly during high-speed
technology catch-up
• Overall, the risk management methodology and contingency
work is the cornerstone of predictable execution
• Consistent delivery becomes self-reinforcing by building
confidence and optimism among employees and partners
upon whom ongoing reacceleration success depends

21. RISK MANAGEMENT &
CONTINGENCY
PLANNING
• Monitor especially closely the central assumptions or
dependencies of the validity of any technological branch
currently selected as the primary path
• There can be cases where unexpected breakthroughs in
adjacent or contributing technologies requires a roll-back
(briefly) before rolling forward again at greater speed
incorporating the breakthrough on a modified path
• If there is inadequate consideration of ongoing related
developments, the organization can end up in a web of
workarounds based on a suboptimal constituent technology,
without a viable path to roll back to then more cleanly and
quickly roll forward
• Flexibility to roll back as well as forward is critical in high
speed, risky technology development
• Modular and flexible are the watchwords

22. TECHNOLOGY
TRANSFER
• Revisit the whole of technology transfer, both internally
and with external partners (suppliers, customers,
complementary technology vendors)
• A lot of the overall time and budget for developing leading
edge technology at scale is spent on group to group
transfers, both development stage to stage internally, as
well as larger hand-offs to and from external parties

23. TECHNOLOGY
TRANSFER
• Each transfer is often a source of significant opportunity
for improvement, to gain time and save cost
• A constructive form of inquiry as part of planning,
executing and adapting technology transfer is to
constantly ask,
• “What would efficiently pull forward information and context
about downstream success into upstream activities?”

24. TECHNOLOGY
TRANSFER
• The basics for achieving elevated success rates and
speeds:
• Place people on both side of each interface who feel keen
responsibility to timely success of the transfer
• Staff so that at least a third of the team handling each
transfer has experience doing similar technology transfers
• Develop the team so that at least a half have a strong
understanding of the reciprocal effects of change
upstream, downstream and laterally, and in consideration
of both the technology itself and the overall technology
reacceleration program

25. TECHNOLOGY
TRANSFER
• Further tech transfer tips:
• The more frequently transfers occur, the faster and better
people can get at it
• Tech transfer is a skill, and it benefits from regular practice
like any other skill
• Preferring a regular flow of transfers counters the risk of
“bigger-ism” to ever less frequent and riskier transfers
• The temptation of bigger-ism is as alive and well in
tech transfer as in many other areas of technology
development

26. TECHNOLOGY
TRANSFER
• Incentives and mindset:
• Weight incentives strongly toward the receiver’s
experience after the transfer
• Success needs to be seen by all as the transfer being
complete after receiver qualification, integration, and ramp-
up to target performance, quality and throughput
• No hot potato passes with insufficient concern for how the
receiving group fares

27. TECHNOLOGY
TRANSFER
• Physical proximity and co-location:
• Transferring people, temporarily, along with tools and
technology helps a lot with communication
• Co-location and shared project rooms also make
technology transfer go better and faster compared with
spatially and temporally disbursed efforts

28. TECHNOLOGY PULL-
FORWARD
• As a general rule, any element that can be pulled forward
from a later technology node to an earlier node should be
• Doing so exposes the portion of the subject technology
more quickly to the rigors of system integration, test,
verification, validation and field use than it otherwise
would undergo
• Pulling parts of the technology forward also increases the
surrounding body of knowledge, including operations and
applications
• Moreover, doing so lowers the risk of later technology
nodes, simplifying downstream contingency planning and
development

29. TECHNOLOGY PULL-
FORWARD
• Earlier readiness of technology elements also increases
the options available to respond to unexpected
opportunities and competitive challenges that may arise
• As well, select pull-forward of technology sub-parts allows
more concurrent development of high risk technologies to
take place
• Greater value and customer impact can be realized from
the technologies which come through quickly

30. INCREASE
TRANSPARENCY
• For best-in-class collaborators to be willing to strongly bet
on a company’s success reaccelerating technology
development after a lapse, they need to see an increased
degree of transparency and accountability, in order to
develop confidence and trust
• Expect to need to be more open in order to:
• Build credibility about plans,
• Demonstrate sufficiency and sustainability of resourcing,
and,
• Show leadership’s commitment to execution

31. INCREASE
TRANSPARENCY
• This required level of ongoing disclosure is often
unfamiliar and uncomfortable for companies which were
formerly at the technology forefront with leading market
share
• Partners which have ample reasons to be skeptical and
hesitant need to be given a fresh outlook to be willing to
really engage and commit

32. INCREASE
TRANSPARENCY
• Provide ongoing updates and outreach about the
company’s progress and commitment to success to each
of:
• Pivotal customers
• Technology partners
• Technical and other staff, as well as candidates
• Admittedly, openness like this is a risk, especially if the
technology reacceleration stumbles
• But, well reasoned confidence and demonstrated
commitment from the top of the organization is infectious
and usually a necessary precondition for success

33. CONTEXT & CULTURE
• A prior era of industry leadership can breed insularity,
complacency, and even hubris
• At a reacceleration of technology, new ways of thinking,
new openness to ideas, and willingness to let go of
outdated orthodoxies all become table stakes for success
• In short, knowledge of the business context, goals, and
culture to succeed in the new era all need to be reworked
at the transition to a new, faster pace of more focused
technology development and delivery

34. CONTEXT & CULTURE
• For R&D and related teams, be clear and persistent about
the new direction, goals, means, and measures of success
• Reward those who can think and act in new ways
• At the same time, be prepared to sanction or part ways
with people who can’t make the shift
• In total, it is typical for about 30% of the leadership to
need to change
• This is often the threshold of sufficient new thinking and
ways of working to succeed with the cultural change
required to execute a quick technology reacceleration

35. SOURCING CAPITAL TO
FUND REACCELERATION
• The financial demands can be very large to fuel a lengthy
burst of R&D and other investments to retake the
technology lead once behind
• Sometimes, internal resources available to fund a
reacceleration on their own are not enough
• A further complication is that when a former technology
leader is back on its heels competitively, debt and equity
financing can be very dear

36. SOURCING CAPITAL TO
FUND REACCELERATION
• One path to consider for securing funding:
• In concentrated markets (esp. B2B or B2G) there are often
a handful of large players in the ecosystem who stand to
benefit disproportionately from the success of the
reacceleration
• In those cases, it is sometimes possible to seek partner
funding, often in exchange for early or otherwise
preferential access to the resulting technology
• It may even be technologically essential to form such
partnerships, simply because the partners possess such a
depth of knowledge about the application and optimization
of the subject technology of the reacceleration, that it is
impractical to proceed without deep mutual commitment

37. SOURCING CAPITAL TO
FUND REACCELERATION
• When taking in funding from one partner like this, it is
frequently desirable to take in similar funding and co-
operation from at least one other
• Doing so provides a counterbalance to the whims, desires
for outsized influence, and performance variability of the
first

38. SUSTAINING
REACCELERATION
• Retaking the lead is one thing, staying at the forefront
long term is another
• At the outset of planning for technology reacceleration,
know the numbers of the viable financial model at the
completion of the reaccelerated technology roadmap and
business model evolution to be able to stay at the
vanguard
• This includes ongoing R&D levels, other expenditures,
and investment capacity to self-sustain and reinforce
ongoing leadership
• Ultimate success requires both ongoing technology
leadership and robust financial performance

39. FURTHER READING
• Benchmarking
https://www.slideshare.net/davidjl/strategic-intelligence-in-growth-stage-technology-
businesses-dave-litwiller-june-2018
• Culture and Context Change Management:
https://www.slideshare.net/davidjl/leading-transformation-and-accelerating-change-at-
scale-apr-20-2021-dave-litwiller
• Turnarounds
pp. 109-120: https://www.slideshare.net/davidjl/rapid-advance
• Multi-disciplinary systems engineering
https://www.slideshare.net/davidjl/systems-engineering-dave-litwiller-march-2019

40. FURTHER
DISCUSSION
For additional dialog about technology reacceleration in
scale-ups and scaled enterprises:
dave.litwiller@communitech.ca