Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Tom Hogan, CEO of Kony (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: That is actually a segue into the kinds of opportunities out there that are open problems. It’s one thing for corporations to try to innovate and come up with new ideas and processes using all these technologies. It’s also that same activity and ideation process that is going on the entrepreneur side. I think people are thinking about how to take advantage of those kinds of capabilities as it pertains to enterprise mobility. Have you seen anything really compelling in that field?

Tom Hogan: There are ideas and approaches that we see everyday that you scratch your head and say, “I would have never thought of that.” In terms of big productized offerings versus use case ideas, I think it’s still early innings. In terms of opportunities at the entrepreneur level, I would think the best opportunities would come from use case ideas. The abused example is Uber. The reason everybody uses them is because it’s so pervasive. Who would have thought, even four years ago, that somebody was going to create a $40 billion business.

Sramana Mitra: It’s a $40 million market cap driven by very artificial valuation drivers.

Tom Hogan: I’d chuckle but it is what it is. Somebody’s investing at that valuation.

Sramana Mitra: It’s a very nifty service, no question.

Tom Hogan: One of the data points that analysts are touting is that one out of five companies that are viewed as leaders in whatever market they’re in today are going to be removed from their leadership positions by companies that have been formed after the year 2000 and companies that are the innovators in this digital disruption. It sounds pretty extreme, but you can start thinking about it. A classic example is the IBMs and HPs of the world, who 10 years ago, were the clear infrastructure leaders. The cloud comes along and then you have Amazon and others who have surfaced. On the app side, it’s the same thing—Oracle, SAP, Microsoft and then the advent of SaaS and web apps. It’s happening. What’s interesting I think is who are the winners and losers going to be when mobile really kicks into high gear in one or two years.

Sramana Mitra: I think in the next five to six years, we’re going to see very interesting stuff happening. That’s what’s exciting about our industry. Part of the problem with the rest of the industry is they’re all starving for talent because all the talents have flown into our own industry. As a result, we get hyper-creativity and hyper-reaction and excitement.

Tom Hogan: I totally agree.

Sramana Mitra: As a result, airplanes are not getting designed to go faster. All the other infrastructures that we, as consumers, need to use suck.

Tom Hogan: What’s really interesting where that pain has surfaced and been a source of frustration is in healthcare. The new generation sits in waiting rooms and then they’re called up to the desk to fill-out a piece of paper. They’re like, “What?”

This segment is part 6 in the series : Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Tom Hogan, CEO of Kony
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