July 7, 2016
Need for Speed (N4S) vreated the foundation for the Finnish software intensive businesses in the new digital economy. N4S adopted a real-time experimental business model, and provided capability for instant value delivery based upon deep customer insight. The program was executed by the forefront Finnish software companies. The consortia consisted of 13 large industrial organisations, 16 SMEs and 11 research institutes and universities. The four-year program of Digile (2014-2017) was partly funded by Tekes.
The program had three major areas of focus:
Delivering Value in Real Time: The Finnish software-intensive industry has renewed their existing business and organizations towards a value-driven and adaptive real-time business paradigm. Technical infrastructure and required capabilities have been established to support the transformation.
Deep Customer Insight—Better Business Hit-Rate: Software-intensive industries in Finland are utilizing new technical infrastructure and capabilities as well as various sources of data and information to gain and apply deep insight into customer needs and behavior. This knowledge will enable the industry to improve sales and make significant returns on investment in the development of both products and services.
Mercury Business – Find the New Money: This target focuses on how companies and societies can behave like liquid mercury, finding and flowing into new grooves. Mercury Business is the ability to adapt to new business conditions and search aggressively for business opportunities in new markets with minimum effort. This new approach to business growth is enabled by continuous and active strategic focus, a new leadership style.
N4S shortened significantly the cycle time of program participants. The product development of certain participants speeded up even 100-250% without loss of quality. This also meant increased delivery capacity and customer satisfaction. Thanks to the program, the total sum of yearly savings of six big DIMECC shareholders (Nokia, Tieto, Ericsson, Elisa Appelsin, F-Secure, and Bittium) rise to 40,7 million euros. In the N4S program, thw Finnish software-intensive companies and research organizations tested real-time business models in practice. The program compiled the results and experience, forming a large-scale collection of advice and tools accessible to everyone. This N4S Treasure Chest helped companies to make use of the possibilities of digitalization and advises upon post-digitalization activities. The program also published 3 guide books and a total of 268 scientific articles.
N4S publications
Cookbook for successful Internal startups (2016)
A Cookbook for Predicting the Future – Introduction of Foresight Tools (DIMECC Result Publications 2/2017) provides organizations an easy way to find suitable and appropriate foresight tools and methods.
Continuous experimentation Cookbook (DIMECC Result Publications 3/2017) An introduction to systematic experimentation for software-intensive businesses provides an introduction to continuous experimentation, which is a systematic way to continuously test your product or service value and whether your business strategy is working.
