AI's Impact on IT Management: Navigating Microsoft Updates, Talent Shortages, and Automation with Elliott Hyman

[00:00:14] What does the future of IT management really look like and are we ready for it? With Microsoft pushing further into app orchestration at the OS level and RMM tools increasingly weaponized by attackers, traditional architecture is under pressure. Today, Elliott Hyman joins me to discuss the next steps for secure IT operations. We're going to also delve into the complicated reality of AI, why productivity gains are unclear, how leaders are misaligned on readiness,

[00:00:44] and whether entry-level jobs are quietly disappearing. Welcome to the Business of Tech Lounge, the live version of the Business of Tech podcast. It's Wednesday, June 4th, 2025, and I'm Dave Sobel. We'll be welcoming questions and comments throughout the show, so please submit them in chat. If you have a question, we'll happily respond to it. Now, I want to thank Sales Builder, our Patreon sponsor whose support makes this show possible. Focus on your IT sales workflow with the power of automation.

[00:01:13] And visit them at salesbuilder.com. That's B-U-I-L-E-R dot com. Now, a reminder, I am watching that chat and we'll take questions live during the show. Now, Elliott Hyman is the CEO of the Lyra Technology Group, a division of Evergreen Services Group that includes a portfolio of managed services providers. Previously, he served as CEO of Wolf Consulting, Evergreen's first acquisition. He holds a bachelor's degree from Vanderbilt and an MBA from Northwestern. Elliott, welcome to the show.

[00:01:45] Hey, Dave. Thanks so much for having me today. I'm excited to have you. I so enjoyed our conversation when we discussed last for the recorded interview. I knew you'd be fun to have on for these live shows. Now, I'm going to dive right in because we were prepping for this. I'd send over to you some of the new news around what Microsoft is doing with Windows orchestration.

[00:02:04] For those that aren't familiar with this, Microsoft is launching a Windows update orchestration platform that allows app developers to integrate their update processes right into the Windows 11 framework. The idea is to create a unified system for scheduling and managing updates across devices and allowing independent third party developers to plug in. The end result, Microsoft expanding Windows update to handle third party applications.

[00:02:31] Now, I had somebody who spends a ton of their time thinking about tools and strategies and architectures. I kind of felt like you'd have some thoughts on what Microsoft dictating control over third party apps might mean to the current ecosystem of tools. Yeah, I mean, so as consumers, you know, this feels like a movement that, you know, you go back to the iPhone, right?

[00:02:59] Like 10 plus years ago, whatever it is. It's always been this sort of very controlled update experience, controlled download experience, right? Windows tried to do the Windows, Microsoft store, whatever they're calling it. And, you know, anyone who uses an iPhone would probably say that's a pretty clean update experience and a good user experience.

[00:03:21] So, you know, I think Microsoft going back to the store and now with this is trying to sort of copy a lot of what Apple had done with the ease of updates, ease of finding software, buying software. You know, I think it's a good thing for the end user and MSPs will will figure out, you know, as our job is as tech changes, figure out what services do do our customers need and how do we make make their businesses better.

[00:03:49] So I have no doubt we'll we'll adapt to this as we have with with a lot of the other changes that have occurred. Well, I have every confidence of your ability to adapt. I'm more just curious of the thought of the the philosophy and the architecture here. Right. It makes sense to me if we think about what's happened over on the mobile side, you know, we've we've kind of both you mentioned the iPhone. Android does a pretty good job of that, too. Right. And giving an OS level of updating.

[00:04:12] If we think about the the Windows ecosystem broadly, third party developers certainly can write their own update scripts. But Microsoft offering something really does feel like it's solving a need. Right. Is this this is kind of a centralized thing? There is a need. Every updater needs to have a thing. Every software developer needs to have a way of doing this. And Microsoft offering a set of tools saying, hey, optionally, you could do this makes a lot of sense to me.

[00:04:41] Right. But what's intriguing to me is, is the kind of crushing blow it might have to these third party patching applications. Right. Is as well, if Microsoft can do it. Why do I need you write these third party applications? So so I would think about it like as you think about this, how do you how is it like how architecturally do you feel about like leaning into first party for this versus the perceived control that these third party application patch management tools would give you?

[00:05:11] You know, so it's interesting. One, I think, to your point about it being optional. Right. So there will be some that probably opt in. I think the article that that you sent ahead of time mentioned, you know, will major publishers like Adobe, you know, participate in this until they're at 100 percent. It's not 100 percent solution. I also look at, you know, whenever things like this come along, I try to think about what have we seen that's like this before? So I think about like Windows Defender. Right.

[00:05:41] And, you know, as Defender got better, you know, there were questions of does it replace some of the outside stack stuff? And for some it has and for some it hasn't. And, you know, the market and the the customers, the Windows universe is so large and so complex that there will be room for for all of these solutions. You know, would be my my expectation. Let's start a little bit.

[00:06:09] One of the things that, you know, MSPs traditionally have thought a lot about is this idea of standardization. Right. The idea of the more standardized tools that we can roll out, the better that we can manage our customers environments and keep that stability. Give me a little bit of a sense because I mean, I'm with you on the idea of like, hey, there's a solution for everything. But at the same time, if you're trying to standardize your your toolkit for that level of efficiency, you want to lean into a very standardized stack here.

[00:06:37] But by your own admission there, you're sort of saying, well, I'm going to design the solution that makes the most sense. Give me a little bit of a sense of the way that you view that tension between standardization versus the ability to deliver those individual solutions. Yeah, it's a great question. It's one that we think a tremendous amount about because, you know, we go back five, six years. So Evergreen's been operating the MSP space now for about seven and a half years.

[00:07:07] I would say for the first five, six, we caught a lot of flack on our lack of standardization across the businesses. Right. And that each individual business that that joins the group, you know, has their own stack and they make their own technology decisions.

[00:07:25] I think within an individual, you know, customer service unit, it's really important to have standardization for all the reasons that we all know for for efficiency, for, you know, what we deliver to our customers is the combination of technology and people and know how. Right. Right. So you have to you can't know everything. Right. Maybe one day when we get our neural links implanted, we'll be able to.

[00:07:53] But until then, you can't know everything. You can't do everything at a level of excellence that that customers want to pay for. So, you know, I think that will continue to be the case. I think when we think about organizing work, it's, you know, keeping the the number of things that an individual team person or team needs to know deeply at human scale.

[00:08:15] So we do that, you know, our business units or businesses that are within the broader library umbrella. But I think we, you know. You know, there's also some of our larger businesses that have practice, you know, practice units where maybe they specialize in a different stack.

[00:08:36] So if you're matching, you know, people to software technology and sort of know how that's what customers pay us for, which is that that solution, the tech solution. So you're going to be able to do that. You know, it's interesting. I think you said something. I kind of want to unpack it a little bit to make sure that I'm understanding it correctly, because I love the way you talk about like sort of the business unit, customer unit, like the way you're thinking about it that way. When you're working with customer, you know, new customers or onboarding customers or customers are making changes to their technology stack.

[00:09:04] Are you even potentially across sort of the layer of plans? Are you looking at potentially moving customers from one to another to find the right specialization? Like saying, hey, this customer now has different needs. We're going to move them over here to this different group. Are you thinking about it that way because you've achieved a certain level of scale in the organization? You know, customers are are are really good at a lot of things.

[00:09:30] They're not really good at being told to move service providers because we want them to. I wish it were that easy. In fact, actually, that's almost the entire story of M&A in the industry is that there's so many options for MSPs that when people make a choice, they're making that choice for a reason. And the more you mess with that formula, the less likely there is to be a match.

[00:09:57] And so, you know, one of our sort of early ahas was like, hey, we don't define what's better. The customer defines what's better. And I think in the industry, you see a lot of a lot of folks who say, well, we are we're going to change all these things out for you because, you know, this is what we believe to be better. And the customer disagrees and they leave. And so, you know, sorry.

[00:10:29] Yeah. Can you repeat this question? Well, no, you've led me right into the next question then. So because in a way you've also re answered the standardization question in a way that customers are not necessarily going to allow that imposition from their perspective of a standard stack. If you're saying a customer saying, I don't want to do it that way, they may have, you know, they may lean into another bit. And I think that actually sort of leads us to kind of my next set of thinking, because if we're thinking about this, the technology stack, you know, I quit these days.

[00:10:59] Hey, I made it, you know, 12 minutes into a broadcast without using AI. Right. So so that's like the longer I can go without having to bring it up. That's a thing. But but in fact, I think that's the next portion of this conversation. And I kind of want to get your take a little bit on three sets of data points that I've just recently tracked across the show.

[00:11:18] The first is a recent Kindrel survey that noted a disconnect between the business leaders and the I.T. executives where 16 percent of CEOs believe their technologies infrastructure is insufficient. Forty two percent of I.T. leaders share that view. Right. So the business leaders are thinking, oh, I'm in good shape here.

[00:11:39] And then I couple that with a report from SignalFire that says they're tracking a reduction in entry level job opportunities for new graduates and less experienced workers. There's actually been a five point eight percent increase in unemployment for new college graduates and new college hires are down 50 percent from pre pandemic levels.

[00:12:01] And then we'll layer this on with the last one with the University of Chicago and the University of Copenhagen reveal that the use of I may not actually be enhancing productivity. Their analysis says that I users only saved about three percent of their time. Right. So it's interesting. We've got this combination of, hey, we may be hiring less because of current conditions, but I may not be giving us productivity gains.

[00:12:25] Oh, and by the way, executives are expecting a lot out of this where I.T. leaders aren't doing it now, bringing that to you've been thinking about this a lot. In fact, you know, Evergreen and the Lyra technology show, you guys recently acquired a company that specializes in A.I. Like where are you thinking about the best applications for A.I. in your stack and where makes sense and where does it?

[00:12:48] Yeah. So this is something that I get made fun of for how much I talk about and espouse A.I. usage. Elliot, this is a safe space because I'm a believer. Is it? OK. So this is a safe space. And that's how I describe it. It's it's a religious conversion. Right. In a lot of ways, like, you know, a year ago I was, you know, probably disappointed that more people didn't want co-pilot.

[00:13:17] And that was my exposure to A.I. And over the last, you know, six to nine months have delved much more deeply into using the soft, the sort of A.I. powered software products and specifically chat GPT, because I think that open A.I. is doing that. I found it the most functional models and product is the chat GPT app.

[00:13:44] And so here's the thing with like measuring, I think, today, A.I. productivity gains. People are really slow to learn and adapt. I think that's, you know, if you look at technology adoption relative to what you imagine being possible. Right. So a lot of us in the tech industry are spending a lot of our time thinking about these tools, how they can be used, how they can be, you know, how they can make our businesses better, more efficient, improve customer experience.

[00:14:14] Customers are busy doing their lives right there being lawyers, being wealth advisors, they're being, you know, they're manufacturing, they're all the different, you know, taking care of people, our health care customers. That's what they're busy thinking about and doing. And, you know, I mean, I saw even in my own experience adopting A.I. tools into my workflow, the biggest barrier was me having time to figure out what can this thing actually do?

[00:14:42] Like, what can it actually do for me? How can I use it? And so I think these early stages right now that we're in are, you know, you've got a small number of our users, early adopters who are leveraging it a lot more. And the vast majority of the world is just, you know, I, I saw an interview that Sam Altman did, where he said, you know, if you told me that we had a model as powerful as 03 out in the world, I would say the whole world is different.

[00:15:08] And we have that model. It is amazing. I use it all the time. I use it every day. But, you know, I woke up this morning and, you know, I made my eggs and the sun rose and, you know, it was rainy, you know, like nothing had really fundamentally changed.

[00:15:23] But, you know, I am, to use your word, a believer that it is coming. You know, the exact timing is, is hard to say, but there's going to be, you know, the adoption curve, if you look at some of the numbers on the adoption of this stuff, it is, you know, faster than any technology we've seen.

[00:15:45] And I think it's going to really accelerate. And as people learn to use it and integrate into their businesses, which is a big part of what our companies want to offer SMBs. I think it's going to be massively disruptive. Now, for if you're watching this live, you've got a question, throw it in the chat box. We'll definitely take any questions. But, but I know that. So the first one I've been thinking about is, is, okay, you've identified the same sort of thing way my thinking is, too.

[00:16:11] There's an opportunity here to work with customers and start infusing the technology into it. And my thought process has been, there's also work that needs to happen on data readiness, right? That if you're going to actually do this effectively, you've also got to spend a bunch of time making sure customers' data is actually in some level of organization. I don't want to over-rotate on that. I'm not saying like you have to make sure every little piece is in a perfectly formatted relational database.

[00:16:41] It's not that tight, but you certainly have to understand what you have, who has access to it, who should, what's protected data, what's not protected, what are the rules around it. As you're thinking this out, are you viewing this as a area where you're going to lean into kind of custom workflow work with customers? Or are you thinking more along the lines of finding products that do a good job and implementing them? Like, give me a little sense of what opportunities you're looking for with the customers.

[00:17:11] Yeah, it's all of the above. Okay. You know, I would say it's like 30 years ago if you said, you know, how are you going to bring the internet to customers? Okay. We're going to breathe the internet, right? And that's kind of the world we live in today. And I think it's the same thing with AI.

[00:17:28] So we're going to bring in AI-powered products or, you know, we already have companies selling products that essentially give customers access to, you know, all the major LLMs.

[00:17:43] And we have companies that are doing automations for customers that leverage generative AI and, you know, more traditional AI as well that are massive unlocks for these customers. We provide a tremendous amount of value.

[00:18:03] You know, we have examples of automation projects where we're saving clients 10 people of work. And so, you know, when I think about the future of the industry and what gets me super excited about the potential here is, you know, you think about the vendor stack for a typical SMB. You've got, you know, maybe you use a PEO.

[00:18:31] You definitely have an accountant of some sort. You definitely have an attorney. And I think historically, you know, you go back to the beginnings of the MSP industry. We were probably at the bottom with like the guy who takes out the trash, right? And then you went, you know, a little facetious, but and today we probably sit below your attorney and your accountant, but above most of your other vendors.

[00:18:56] And I think that done well, your technology service provider can move, you know, above your attorney, above your accountant as the most valuable vendor for an SMB. And I think that's going to be made possible by some of the stuff that AI and automation can do for SMBs. Are you already starting to see a pattern of criteria for like what successful projects look like or maybe customer traits, like ready customers to create successful customers?

[00:19:26] Like what are the patterns you're starting to see of like, yeah, these are the areas where we know we can do a pretty good job so far? You can do. I mean, you can do a pretty good job with anyone who is, you know, working in an all digital workflow that is in any way repetitive, which is a lot of people in our economy. There's an opportunity there.

[00:19:50] The process that I was describing earlier where we saved about 10 FTEs for a client was essentially an order entry process. Needed required, you know, touching a bunch of different systems, you know, reading an email, entering data, checking it, whatever it is. Pretty typical office work, right? Right.

[00:20:13] And we were able to create an automation that completed the entire workflow in the time that it took the human being who had been doing the job or continue to do the job, but her job changed a little bit just to read that initial email. We could run the whole process. And so, you know, there are with creativity and good question asking and a willingness to sort of tinker and experiment.

[00:20:41] I think a huge portion of office work is going to be done via AI and automation is not a controversial topic, but I am definitely converted to being a believer of that. Well, so reminder for listeners and watchers, if you've got a question, you hear it live, throw it in chat and I'll throw it up there. So the other portion of that that's interesting to me is particularly as guys, I think we're both thinking about the operations side of this.

[00:21:07] There's a lot of the internal operations of a technology organization that can get replaced by AI, right? There's a lot of ticket processing. There's a lot of categorization. There's probably a bunch of diagnostic stuff. There's a bunch of, you know, there's even resolution stuff that can all be automated away. Like how much of that are you thinking will get converted over into, you know, AI powered automation rather than me just calling it AI, like AI powered automation?

[00:21:35] Like how much of the typical MSP work are you seeing going that direction? Today's current work, the majority. Okay. I think we're talking 70, 80% probably of current work. Um, but the way that I think about it is, um, you know, it used to be, if you were a farmer, you had to write, dig every hole.

[00:21:58] And I'm about as unagricultural as a bad choice of analogy, but whatever the things are that people have to do to plant and harvest by hand, they were doing those things. Right. Um, and over time, uh, we developed tools, um, that, uh, allowed us to be much more efficient, use, you know, less, uh, work that required less intensive human effort.

[00:22:25] Um, frankly, safer and, and better, um, in a lot of ways, more productive. And, you know, the world didn't, you know, we didn't have, you read all these things about, Hey, the world's gonna be 50% unemployed or whatever kind of stats that they're out there. Uh, people find a way to be productive. They, they find a way to contribute and they find a way to earn.

[00:22:43] So, uh, there'll be an adaptation in, in our business, um, to different types of work, but I don't see, I don't see the number of people being employed, um, by MSPs over time or in technology more broadly, um, decreasing. I see that increasing, um, but the work they do will be different. Yeah. I'm, I'm with you and this is two completely non-farmers talking. I watch Clarkson farm on Amazon, right? But I'm not doing better than that, but, but I'm with you on the theory, right?

[00:23:12] The idea is, is like the farmer expertise hasn't gone away, but the tasks that they're doing, the, the digging, the, I don't throw seed on the ground directly. You know, I have machines that do that. Oh, by the way, I can actually like automate the planting of that, but I'm still planning where it goes. Like I'm with you. So that leads sort of the last area that I was really interested to talk about, but particularly if we think about the data we just saw on entry level people and the changes in hiring.

[00:23:36] Like how is this changing your approach to what, who you're hiring and what are you seeing out there in kind of the labor market now? Yeah. I mean the labor market, listen, we've been through quite a ride over the last five plus years in the labor market. Um, there was this thing called COVID that happened. I don't know if you remember that. We all keep forgetting about it. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't that long ago.

[00:24:01] Um, there's, you know, it's been a really interesting, um, process in the labor market. Ultimately there's not enough people. Uh, so I'll say there's two things. One is there's not enough people with the tech skills that we need. Um, and I say that not just the tech skills, but also the soft skills, the creative, the creativity, all those things. There's not enough of those people. And, you know, I don't see a clear path to there being enough of those people in the near term.

[00:24:30] Um, and I think we layer on that the fact that like for our companies, we want to be hiring, you know, top quartile, top decile talent only. And so, you know, uh, those people are always very hard to find, um, and very hard to, to get and to keep. And, you know, the way we think about it is we want, we want to do that. Um, so, you know, we, our strategy is built around being extremely competitive in the labor market.

[00:25:00] Um, regardless of the sort of circumstances or, or the environment. Now, how much of that are you thinking is, is, and I'll use like the classic framing of buy versus build, right? The idea of like, if you go straight to the labor market, you can get an advanced person. You buy them, right? They come up, they come with the skills versus the, I'm going to take somebody and I'm going to invest in them and I'm going to grow them up. Like how much are you thinking about the difference between buy versus build in your hiring right now? Um, we are always build first.

[00:25:29] Um, we, we believe in, you know, uh, we want to be the best place for, um, for people to spend a career. Um, that's the type of companies that we want to be. So, uh, you know, we are developing, we're investing in developing people, um, constantly and, and we're increasing that investment.

[00:25:49] Um, we're building out, uh, different tracks that, that folks in our businesses can be on to, uh, continue to develop their skills, um, and, and plan their careers. Uh, and we're also building out more and more programming for our folks that we call something we call Lyra OS, which is a bunch of different things, uh, related to knowledge sharing across our businesses.

[00:26:14] Um, but in particular, there's a, there's a very large, uh, education, technical education piece that, uh, that we're working on. So, um, we're, you know, we, we will absolutely go out and buy talent that we need. I mean, I think that's a necessity of business at times, but our preference is to, uh, invest in our people for the longterm and have them, uh, grow with us. Gotcha. Well, I've got questions coming in.

[00:26:38] So I'm going to take the first one here from Steve, who's asking which companies are creating AI native apps for MSP internal use? Elliot, are there any particular tools that you've been looking at in the MSP space that are, are meeting those criteria for you? Uh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, so we have a bunch of our companies that use, uh, Roost, uh, Hats AI, um, uh, a new company that our, our former CTO started called Synthrio is doing some really interesting things. Um, and there's many, many, many more.

[00:27:08] I mean, uh, you know, the one joke I've made recently is, you know, the best thing to say before you ask someone for money is AI right now. Uh, so everyone's trying to do something related to AI. Uh, but those are three that, that we're seeing pretty, you know, uh, growing adoption with. Yeah. The, uh, the folks at Moovilla have done, I've had on the show, like they've, they've, they've built a, a machine learning AI driven project management piece. Arguably the PSA players themselves have started making differing levels of that.

[00:27:38] Uh, you know, both, uh, Atera, Syncro and SuperOps all made recent announcements in terms of their investment. Both ConnectWise and Kaseya have made announcements about theirs. I think it's differing level of success in terms of how deep that integration is, but arguably it's very, it's somewhat early in terms of the product rollout. I'll ask you like put a bit of a followup question there. How much are you thinking about the need to build some of those tools yourself versus buy them out there?

[00:28:08] Like, are you thinking you're going to have to do a lot of building to, to deliver the AI solutions internally that you want? Uh, define building. So, you know, if we say, uh, customization, you know, building, uh, you know, we have a Lyra analyst that actually one of our human analysts made, uh, that's, that's in chat GPT. Um, and they built that in chat GPT. Um, I think we're going to do a lot of building within platforms.

[00:28:37] Um, but we're not going to build platforms. Uh, I don't think, you know, there's multi trillion dollar companies that are. Going to invest hundreds of billions and are investing hundreds of billions of dollars in this stuff. Um, right. And we don't see that as where we play best. Um, but you know, we, we will certainly be in the agent building game. Um, I, I expect that that we'll be building agents for ourselves and for customers very regularly. Okay. So there's not a great set of definitions here.

[00:29:05] So let's muddle through it a little bit to try and get a sense. My, my thinking then is, is if I asked maybe a little bit of a lightning round, like you're probably not calling APIs directly at the core models. For example, like you're not, like you're not writing software that does that. Right. I'm calling. Okay. So that makes sense. Uh, you're probably a yes for like, Hey, customizing copilot or chat GPT or like doing those kinds of, so that would be a yes. That's a yes. Yeah. Okay, cool.

[00:29:35] And then, then it would, because we're stacking on top of that, like customizations of, uh, bots within like a RUIST or, or, you know, like those we get into all of those would be yeses for, Hey, we do that kind of work. Right. Yes. Okay, cool. So that, that gives me a little bit of a sense because you're right in each level of that is a different kind of build and the API direct call stuff, uh, having done it personally is kind of messy and hard.

[00:30:00] So, well, you know, as I kind of wrap up our, our time here, I want to get a little bit of a sense of like, Hey, you know, you're watching the market just as much as I am. Um, like knowing our crystal balls are kind of broken and cracked, like what are the things you're looking for in the next, say six to 12 months that you're looking for? Like what are two big trends that you're keeping an eye on right now to say, like, these are the important ones that are going to come out in the short term?

[00:30:30] Um, that's an interesting question. I would say there's, there's, I'm not sure it's even, uh, you know, one's probably new and one's not. It's the things that we've been talking about, right? It's, it's AI. Um, it is the one a like, I mean, I've used this analogy before, but it's 1994, it's 1995. Like we're about to see an explosion in change and in value creation that we haven't seen in 30 years. Um, it might be bigger than the internet.

[00:30:56] So I think spending too much time on anything else is maybe, uh, you know, missing the plot, um, frankly. Um, and, uh, you know, for us, the other pieces, uh, is always talent. And so, you know, if you ask, where do I spend my time? It's thinking about AI and just thinking about talent or, you know, two of the big ones. Um, and, you know, I think that, uh, you know, people plus technology is what we sell. Right.

[00:31:23] So, uh, I think spending, spending our time there makes, makes sense. I don't know. I think that is, that's a perfect place to end it. Cause I'm with you. Like that thematically, that's exactly what we do. Ali, I always enjoy having, talking with you. Cause you always come with really interesting ideas. If listeners are interested in learning more, reaching out, what's the best way for them to get in touch? Yeah, they can, they can shoot me an email. Um, it's ehyman at lyratechgroup.com. Um, and I, I would love to, uh, talk to anybody, uh, in the business or, or not.

[00:31:52] Um, I love meeting people and talking shop. So, well, I always enjoy having you on to talk a little bit of shop. This has been great fun. Thank you for joining me for the live show today. Now I want to preview an interview that's coming out this weekend. I sat down with Steven Hinch, who's a seasoned expert in the MSP delivery space to explore the relationship between innovation and corporate structures.

[00:32:16] He delved into this idea of the curse of the corporate business model, highlighting how the pressure from predictable profits stifles disruptive innovation in large organizations. Here's a preview of that interview. And you've got a book I wanted to ask you about. You've kind of put this all together in a book called winning through innovation. And you describe the curse of the corporate business model. Tell me a little bit about the curse and what we're, what we're all fighting here. Yes.

[00:32:45] So, um, they, a major corporation, uh, multinational corporation typically, um, has to respond to the needs of their investors. And investors, particularly Wall Street investors expect you to make predictable profits every month and every quarter.

[00:33:08] However, the problem with innovation is that innovative ideas, particularly really disruptive innovation ideas are going to take you down a new path. Um, they're not something that's going to contribute to this month or this quarter's profits and revenues. And they may not actually return any investment until a few years down the road.

[00:33:33] So corporate executives, um, have to respond to these, uh, these investors and they're trying to do everything they can to get that, that new innovation out, even maybe before it's ready because they want to generate, um, revenues.

[00:33:52] So that's, that's the first thing, um, that, you know, corporate metrics don't really reward, uh, investment in new untried ideas that are going to take a while to pay back. Second thing is that managers don't see the rewards, uh, commensurate with the risk. Now, if you're in a startup company and you're very successful, you can become a multimillionaire pretty quickly.

[00:34:20] That doesn't happen very often, but it's like a great inspiration in the corporate world. If a manager leads a project that's successful in innovation, they may get a few hundred stock options. Uh, they may get a promotion, but if they're not successful, their career is permanently derailed. And, uh, so most managers don't see the, uh, the reward being worth, worth the risk.

[00:34:48] And there's usually in the corporate world, there's very little, um, motivation to have to take that risk. You don't get penalized for not taking it.

[00:34:57] Um, and the final thing, the third thing in, um, this corporate, the course of the corporate business model is that what I have found is that managers in the corporate world are not, uh, as, uh, they don't like risk as much as somebody in the, uh, the startup world.

[00:35:19] Um, they, um, they, they don't mind doing incremental innovations that will return, uh, rewards pretty quickly, but any kind of disruptive innovation, that's not what they want to do. Um, and if, if that kind of person that really liked that kind of thing was in the corporate world to begin with, they left and went to startups.

[00:35:40] So the, you, you, you can still be innovative in the corporate environment, but you just have to understand how to deal with those three obstacles to success. Steve is a former TeamLogic IT owner and has extensive knowledge about our industry. He's got some fascinating insights into the future of our space. Now, my Patreons already have this interview now.

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[00:37:01] If you have a question and are listening to the recording, send it in at question at mspradio.com or in the chat box and comments below. I'll answer right there. Thanks for joining me for the Business Tech Lounge and I will see you next time. Bye bye.