The competitive environment is changing

During the last two decades digital technology has empowered companies to buy, sell, source and communicate globally. The global market brings great opportunities as well as tough challenges. Price transparency, commoditization and global competition, caused by the openness of the internet, make the competitive environment harder.

Consumer needs and expectations are changing

Digital technology has empowered consumers too. Digital technology has given consumers unprecedented access to information and the tools to communicate and to act globally. As empowered consumers, we have different needs and expectations than our ancestors: we expect personalized services and 24/7 availability, finding like-minded people on the Internet has given us more buying power, we consume and produce tons of media on different devices, we want lots for free and we expect companies to be sustainable and transparent.

The growing gap

The information revolution has taken over the living room faster than it did with the meeting room. Consumers are not bound by complex decision making processes. They adopt new behavior and develop new expectations faster than many companies. The gap between companies that are still stuck in industrial age thinking and the empowered consumer is growing.
Some industries – such as the music and media industry – experience daily that the empowered consumer doesn’t like their traditional business model anymore.

Rethinking businesses

This gap however, is an opportunity for companies that understand how the information revolution is changing the playing field. Senior management and entrepreneurs’ concern is the alignment of their businesses with a changing environment. They need to challenge or even rethink their existing business concept to thrive in the information age.
A lot of successful innovations are not mere technical innovations, but the rethinking of the whole business concept. The company Apple for example understood that people are willing to pay for music at their fingertips instead of ownership of a disc. With a single product-service combination Apple has changed the whole music industry.

Why buckminster exists

Buckminster helps companies to become information age companies. While digital strategy is often limited to communication strategy and underrepresented in companies, Buckminster sees digital strategy as a business driver that needs senior management’s attention.
By bringing in a digital expert’s view and the voice of the empowered consumer, Buckminster challenges existing business concepts and offers new and inspiring business ideas to create customer value and ultimately top and bottom line results.