Speakers:

Paul Levy & Joe Morecroft

Date:

17th July at 13:00pm

Location:

Mithras House, University of Brighton

Abstract:

Extech Cloud is a company based in Burgess Hill, West Sussex in the UK. The company is part of a two-year KTP (Knowledge Transfer Partnership) with the university of Brighton which comes to an end in the Autumn of 2019. (Paul Levy, Jane Priddis and Gary Priddis from the Business School have been part of the team).

CENTRIM’s Paul Levy has been lead academic on the programme and, along with change lead, Joe Morecoft, he will present to case history of the company as it has developed a strategy aimed at company growth, focused on moving its culture, practices and business approach away from being a tradition I.T service provider towards become a key influencer in its markets as more of a strategic partner with clients.

This has involved an approach that very much draws upon CENTRIM’s approach to positively disruptive, business-wide innovation. In the early stages of the programme, the company carried out an internal and external audit. This drew upon the traditions of action research with qualitative and quantitative methods used to assess past, current and potential business strategy. Company away-day sessions with staff collected experiential data along with analysis of key company metrics, including process and service costs.

Opportunities for change and improvement were identified as well as an assessment of potential positive disruptive innovation, including moving the company into new markets such as cloud services, as well as re-designing and innovating working practices.

There is much to tell in this story and the story is by no means over! The next challenge will be innovation in operations. Currently the company is exploring new sectors and innovating how it develops more strategic level partnerships with higher-value clients.

Drawing on theories of digital and commercial innovation, small business growth and development, disruption and new models of selling such as “influencer” strategy, the seminar will share the story so far and seeks views about evidence-based innovation, disruptive change, and how the story can be academically recorded and presented. And the biggest question is perhaps: where next for Extech Cloud?

There will be time for questions and discussion in what we hope will be a live, engaging case study.

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