Case-Studies

One day I got call from an executive at Ticketmaster. They are a multi billion dollar company selling tickets to the world’s largest concerts and sporting events. Ticketmaster was having three problems. One problem came from the marketplace: Lots of companies were trying to get into the online ticketing business, like StubHub and other startups. These companies, since they were small and nimble, could do disruptive things quickly, so Ticketmaster was scared of them. ...

After enjoying initial success, a mid-sized tech company in the San Francisco Bay Area began faltering in the face of bold competition and an increasingly crowded market. The company’s R&D was encumbered by numerous shortcuts taken to patch up issues and could no longer deliver value as rapidly as their customers demanded. In our work with the CEO we pinpointed the essential elements for his operation to regain its innovative spark. We realigned the priorities of the business, shifting investment away from underperforming areas and toward a streamlined R&D process. We helped the client take the unprecedented step of ceasing new R&D efforts for a period of six months in order to clean house. Along the way, we ensured that short-term thinking did not imperil these investments. After this period we restored normal operation. ...

In late 2010, KT, South Korea’s second-largest mobile phone network operator, was in the process of launching three IaaS clouds and transforming itself into the first cloud service provider in Korea. Executive management, middle management, and line staff were unfamiliar with the ramifications of this transformation and sought the advice of a seasoned consultant and cloud expert. KT engaged the services of Orchestratus, led by Shlomo Swidler. Shlomo acted as IaaS Product Manager and Cloud Application Architect. Shlomo diagnosed these specific challenges: ...

“I feel like we’ve been stuck for the past year and a half,” the director said. 18 months prior, the startup company he founded was acquired by a large multinational firm. All twenty employees chose to carry on as members of the new corporate division, and the director went from being a controlling partner in his own business to being a middle manager. Since then, the director had overseen the integration of his product into the parent company’s offering. But the startup spirit had gone: his team could no longer deliver product improvements rapidly, nor could they delight customers with fast complaint turnaround time - and employees were increasingly frustrated at having their hands tied. Market share had fallen, and a new competitor had begun to make significant inroads. The director was concerned that his organization was losing its ability to innovate where it mattered most: for the customer. ...