The new report, ‘Big and Small: How to do Bigger Things in Business’ found that bigger companies are now less productive compared with a decade ago and that the ‘productivity gap’ among the top and bottom 10 per cent of these companies is actually widening.
While more than half of the world’s 500 largest public companies now work with start-ups, citing the desire to stimulate innovation, the stagnancy of productivity gains suggests a lack of understanding as to how to reap the real benefits of a ‘start-up’ mentality. Partnerships between ‘big and small’ businesses are limited in scope, despite enabling technology readily available.
Phil Lander, Head of B2B at Samsung Europe says, “Large businesses and small start-ups have realised their future success depends upon the ability to collaborate with each other but true collaboration must go beyond signing up to a partnership. Progressive technology can be part of the solution by allowing large businesses to collaborate with start-ups successfully and securely yet this report indicates that large organisations are still lagging behind in terms of both innovation and productivity.”
The report warns that to thrive in the era of ‘digital Darwinism’, where new technologies such as mobility, the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence will rapidly shape business, companies of all sizes face ever-greater urgency to leverage technology to remain competitive.
Lander continues: “The continuing digitalization of business, combined with the rise in mobile working, highlights the importance of a platform like Samsung Knox and powerhouse smartphones like the new Galaxy Note8. Striking the right balance between open, flexible and mobile working and security will remain of fundamental importance as we move further towards a data-driven digital business culture.”
The report also found that small start-ups exhibit dramatically different approaches to mobile technology investment, which has become increasingly important with the growing prevalence of mobile working. One-third of workers in developed countries now fall into the ‘mobile worker’ category and by 2020, 48 per cent of the workforce in developing economies will also be classified as mobile, rising to 70 per cent among small businesses.
Large companies are often encumbered by set process, legacy technology, IT cost constraints and rising security concerns. The average company loses about one quarter of its productive output due to such organisational ‘drag’, equivalent to the loss of $3trillion a year in the US. One-third of decision makers in large firms believe that the IT provision does not meet their needs, double the number than in small businesses, which are highly agile, innovative and better connected, often via personal technology.
However, such agility is not without its challenges. Only 27 per cent of start-ups cite data security as among their top three challenges and less than one in five employees in small businesses are given training in security. This approach, often driven by cost, is concerning, given that the number of cyber attacks and implementation of more rigorous compliance continues to rise.
Nick McQuire, Vice President, Enterprise Research at CCS Insight, comments: “Despite their obvious differences, big business and start-ups are looking to technology to provide a competitive advantage – making them fitter for the challenges ahead. Our report underlines how both types of organisations’ future successes will lie in how well they understand one another, bridge their differences and work together.
“There are some shared attributes to success, such as the pressing need to prioritise device functions that make employees more productive on the move and specific lessons too. Large organisations must have greater tolerance for personal and new technologies and startups must prioritise security in their mobile strategies.”