It's been clear for years now that small business startups don't build massive IT departments and big operations teams. Instead they focus on the capabilities which truly differentiate them in the marketplace – their strategic capabilities. They hire experts in these capabilities as employees and continue to improve their differentiation. At the same time, they look to source their more generic business capabilities from business partners and technology service providers.

We are going to see a seismic shift in big business in the coming years: there will be an increasing appetite to source generic capabilities from vendors and business partners; at the same time CEOs will focus increasingly scarce human capital resources on improving their strategic capabilities – the capabilities which give them a competitive edge.

While digital technology will remain at the heart of these strategic capabilities – leveraging cloud, big data analytics, mobile and social – the majority of technology services will be sourced from partners and vendors. The company's own technology resources will become more and more intensely focused on developing unique systems of engagement around strategic capabilities.

Next post: Capability-As-A-Service And What It Means For Technology Vendor Strategy

Previous post: Chasing KPIs That Matter