Tom Peruzzi's thoughts on digital, innovation, IT and operations

Potentially yes, but how to be sure? It is of tremendous importance that a growing organization knows what it is able to deliver and how to get additional knowhow/expertise/resource on board. This is not a prayer for externals but:

• understaffed organizations fail on a long term view
• there is no more space for innovation, thus you stop developing you, your employees, your organization
• Peaks should be offloaded, innovation stream not be broken
• you cannot know everything the way the market does

So keep in mind, that you should only run your strategic stuff and if you start innovation, bring the market experience in. This does not mean that external partners do all the work. Where necessary, they should support, assist, coach you, but you are the one who knows your business best and if you bring in externals, do not forget to manage them. They are just people, maybe good ones with special expertise, but they are people like your employees are, the need order, direction and management. An uncontrolled external is a potential high risk for your organization as he is seen as a special knohow carrier and he can not only break your project, he can damage your organization too.

So to summit, two things to say: Bring in external partners where necessary, nobody expects you and your org to know everything better than the market. And last manage partners to deliver successful and in-time projects.