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OpenNetworks' i8 drives transformative thinking

Lauren Kate Rawlins
By Lauren Kate Rawlins, ITWeb digital and innovation contributor.
Johannesburg, 14 Sept 2016
The BMW i8 hybrid sports car is a new take on the concept of a sports car with a petrol-electric engine.
The BMW i8 hybrid sports car is a new take on the concept of a sports car with a petrol-electric engine.

OpenNetworks says South African companies and CIOs are hesitant to change, until they experience the power of transformative thinking for themselves.

The company established this during a trip to the US last year, when it took clients for a test drive in a Tesla. Before, clients did not believe a car with an electric engine could go as fast, or faster, than a petrol-fuelled sports car.

The change management firm helps South African companies overcome their digital hurdles and antiquated processes using Google Apps for Work, such as Gmail, Drive and Docs.

OpenNetworks CEO Hywel Glyn-Jones says he deals with the same hesitations with every IT team in a wide variety of businesses. These include not wanting to migrate to the cloud and worries about down-time in connectivity.

He says some of these fears are legitimate, but not implementing some change will hinder businesses. A "hybrid" approach needs to be adopted.

Extended metaphor

This is where the company's decision to purchase a R1.8 million BMW i8 comes in.

Glyn-Jones says the i8 is a new take on the concept of sports car: a petrol-electric with a small combustion engine in the back and an electric motor in the front. The result is that it outperforms other super-cars while using less petrol than a Mini.

"The point is that it transforms how you think about cars. You start thinking differently and even driving differently," he says.

"The environment in which we live is increasingly demanding changes in thinking. It requires new ways of working. We are transforming to a digital culture. When you drive the i8, you feel like you are sitting in that world, experiencing transformation on wheels."

Glyn-Jones says the same transformation is happening within organisations.

"We need to start thinking differently. In this world competitors can come, Uber style, from places that we did not even know existed."

He says the Internet, mobile devices and cloud technologies are the developments that make digital transformation possible.

The reason the company bought an i8 and not a Tesla is because: "It is a symbol of change. The electric motor represents cloud. The petrol engine is the old world of servers and legacy thinking.

"The electric motor is definitively better than the petrol one in the back, just as surely as cloud computing is faster, more powerful and cheaper than the old servers. While, for practical reasons, a hybrid solution is the current reality, the future is fully electric for the car and digital for business."

Meanwhile, he says electric cars built from the ground up, like the Tesla, can be compared to the likes of Uber.

"These are not existing companies that transformed; they were born digital and electric. So even though we know the result is better, the reality remains that existing companies cannot simply start again. Instead, they need to transition quickly to create digital culture," says Glyn-Jones.

The firm bought the car this year and has already used it with customers to change mind-sets through the visceral representation.

OpenNetworks says more than two million paying businesses use Google Apps for Work and that over 60% of the Fortune 500 companies have 'gone Google'.

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