London Daily Post:
He always talks about his dreams and ideas and what the future has in him for the world. When you meet him, you’ll realize he has weaved a unique personality around himself, filled with the colors of his intelligence, wisdom, and creativity. Jeff Eiben, an expert in cloud computing technology and a successful entrepreneur, believes he is an ‘accidental innovator’, and he has got plenty of reasons for that.
“I trained as an electrical engineer in the days when engineering was the path into technology, but I’ve always been somewhat of an odd-man-out in the field. My mind naturally focuses on big-picture concepts over complex details. I’ve also had an atypical career, in which my natural tendency to observe and my specific experiences in the field led me to be an accidental innovator,” says Jeff while sharing why he calls himself an accidental innovator.
Starting from his childhood, he always had the thirst for learning about things that interested him. That included science and mathematics. However, his inclination toward the business world never let him consider a career as a technologist. His mother, though, had some different thoughts.
“Apart from my interests in science and technology, the reason I chose engineering school over business school was my mother and his convincing thoughts. She had been my support system all along the way after divorce between my parents. She believed that engineering offered the most flexibility and upside in the job market at that time. I wanted a job in business, but I didn’t go against my mother’s ambitions and used my unique skill set in engineering, and guess what – it worked big time!” says Jeff.
It worked because not only did he complete his graduation in electrical engineering with flying colors but also opened his own business, a cloud service provider, River Point Technology.
His colleagues believe Jeff to be the smartest guy they have ever met. Many suggested that he would rather learn the whole topic by discussing it with colleagues than reading textbook after textbook. “His rule was catching the concept – that’s it. No need to go into the complex details, but let the complex details come to you by understanding the core concepts. That’s how he used to simplify things, and no wonder it worked for him, and at many points, for us as well,” one of his university colleagues recalled.
Jeff has rarely been seen sitting idle. If there is an itch, he will not rest until he finds a solution for it. Failing is not a big deal for him. “I learn as much or maybe more from wrong decisions and failures as I do from my success,” is what he says about failures.
And then, when he finally succeeds after failing a few times, that solution he comes up with often becomes a trendsetter. That’s what he applied during his graduation years, and that is exactly what he did when River Point Technology came to standstill when companies didn’t show any interest in adopting cloud technology. But as expected, Jeff came up with a model called Value Creation Technology that outrightly resolved the issue.
Read the full article here.
International Business Times:
Learning is the essence of life. We don’t come into this world as ready-made intellectuals to take the world by storm and turn it upside down. But rather, we come here to learn and grow with time in different phases of our life. Some of us end up as quick learners, while others take the turtle’s pace.
While that’s completely normal, the point here is not to bore you with some very fundamental and oft-repeated truths about life, but to introduce you to an inspiring personality who is courageous, extremely quick at learning, shrewd in implementation, and perfectly demonstrates the significance of learning in our lives.
Jeff Eiben spent most of his time in technical sales roles in various companies he worked at before starting River Point Technology, a cloud service provider, now his primary business. Starting with Westinghouse Electric and followed by Mallet, Ansoft, and then VMware, he kept switching places from time to time, whenever he deemed fit. But while there couldn’t be any question on his sales performance, he was eyeing something else as well.
Growing up with an interest in science and technology, Jeff was always inclined toward these subjects. His graduation was also in engineering and because of his brilliant performance as a student at West Virginia University, Westinghouse Electric offered him a role soon after completion of his studies. The pay was healthier than his expectation. Everything was perfect. But what made him curious was the use of technology and its role in business growth.
In his following jobs, he observed similar trends in companies and was astonished to see the potential of multiple emerging technologies. Cloud computing was one of them. Though the technology was still at the threshold, a far-sighted person like Jeff could realize its long-term impacts once streamlined. To his surprise, the IT department at VMware chose to cast the idea of the cloud aside whenever it came up.
“Making matters more interesting for me, my employer and colleagues were laughing off the threat offered by cloud computing. In internal meetings, when I was asking about strategy, they were insisting that nobody would run production applications in such an environment,” shares Jeff.
However, Jeff was well-aware of the opportunity that cloud computing presented and eventually left VMware to start his own business, River Point Technology, to assist businesses in adopting the new emerging tech. He knew that it was game-changing. The flexibility and operational ease that cloud computing provided were peerless. The storage, server, internet, and software equipment would have been shunned and the labyrinth of wires gotten rid of.
But the dilemma was, first, companies were hesitant in disturbing their contemporary system in place and replacing it with something utterly new. And second, technologists lacked time to thoroughly deliberate upon the pros and cons of embedding cloud technology in their business. Jeff was caught in the crosshairs of misplaced speculation.
“River Point Technology was founded on the basis of my strength in reading the technology market and being able to see where it was going. Our goal at the outset was to help companies create a strategy and a roadmap for integrating new technology, particularly the cloud, into their organizations,” says Jeff.
But that goal could only see fruition when Jeff developed a model he termed ‘Value Creation Technology.’
read the full article here.
Forbes:
Jeff Eiben is the Founder and Owner of River Point Technology, a digital service provider in business since 2011.
As we all know, the last two years have brought about change on multiple fronts that will have both long-term positive and negative effects. One such change can be seen in the rapid pace at which companies have adopted digital transformation. This pace has had a significant impact on companies of all sizes. Having run a company for ten-plus years that focuses on delivering emerging technology solutions to companies, I’ve seen my share of early adopters, laggards and everything in between. The pandemic forced all of us to adopt new technologies, whether we were prepared or not.
Even prior to the pandemic, a driving factor behind the accelerated adoption of innovative technology was the support of digital transformation initiatives. The sad reality is that too often these initiatives did not succeed. Whether this resonates with you or you’re just now considering digital transformation within your company and want to avoid becoming a statistic, there are approaches to reduce this risk.
In my years of focusing on emerging technology, I’ve refined a framework that yields consistent results. It’s a framework l developed over the course of many failures and successes. I’ve even written a forthcoming book titled Minimize Risk, Maximize Return on Emerging Technology on this topic. Here, let’s hit the high points of the framework to get you thinking about your initiative.
Across industries, technologists spend the majority of their time focused on the existing (or “brownfield”) technologies that keep the business running. This is the reality when priority must be placed on ensuring a business’ main revenue streams are functioning. Unfortunately, this does not provide much of a window for them to explore emerging innovations, which could greatly support new revenue models or operational efficiencies.
Digital transformation fails for a variety of reasons beyond limited time to innovate, and I’m not looking to dissect that here. There are plenty of writings on the topic, and it’s important to acknowledge that innovating with technology isn’t for the faint of heart. But my own model seeks to boil down the complexities into a simple, consumable framework. Technical minds love to overcomplicate things, which can create barriers to innovation. My goal is to keep things simple and executable.
I’ve consolidated my framework into three segments: Choose, Incubate and Scale. It works because it considers all the aspects needed to successfully adopt new technology. The framework should not be considered a silver bullet to success, but rather a guide to systematically covering all the bases. Experience tells me that most don’t consider or have the discipline to cover all these bases. This results in failure or a limited return on the value of a new technology.
- Choose
To begin, the Choose phase is designed to quickly ascertain whether or not it is worth it to spend time introducing a given technology. Working with a limited window in which to innovate, you just don’t have time to go down dead ends. The Choose phase also functions as a mechanism to throttle your curiosity, as technologists (myself included) are prone to chase every shiny new object. The reality is there are plenty of buzzworthy emerging technologies with oversold value propositions that can get us into trouble.
Within the Choose phase, I break it down to a few key questions that determine if we should proceed. Is the technology solution a feature or foundational? Can we quantify business impact that aligns with the core strategy? Is the technology consumable for our company?
Foundational technology is anything that will be a platform for future company growth. By contrast, feature technology is peripheral, offering minimal impact to the business.
The quantifiable business impact is often skipped or not measured. But this consideration should in fact be the main driver, as it will impact the entire solution stack. I’m not simply talking about some half-hearted vendor ROI spreadsheet, but a complex consideration of all factors that will impact your true total cost of ownership.
Understanding if the technology is consumable by the company is also critical in the Choose phase. Plenty of great solutions die on the vine and become shelfware because they weren’t able to be consumed by the masses.
- Incubate
Once we’ve identified a technology worth investing in, it’s time to move to the Incubate phase. Here, businesses should pinpoint a business-driven outcome around which to build a proof of value (POV). In my experience, technologists need to stop wasting time on proofs of concept (POCs) to see if a technology works or not; typically, those are nothing more than science projects.
By contrast, detailing a thorough POV allows you to gain a quick win or failure. Since you are looking to maximize your time, either outcome is a desired result. Within the Incubate phase, you should also be looking to align with stakeholders to start breaking down silos. Gaining quick wins across multiple business outcomes can help get some cultural buy-in and build momentum around the solution.
- Scale
Taking that momentum forward helps set the stage for the Scale phase. This is typically a tough one for companies as all four legs of the stool need to be operating in concert: people, process, technology and culture. Without attention to all four legs, the risk increases. You may have success in pockets but not across the organization.
The focus in the Scale phase should be ongoing engagement and enablement. Early momentum can wane if other priorities and our day-to-day tasks steal the focus. At a minimum, you should consider setting what I term our Quarterly Fixed Agenda meeting. This is how we track progress and hold everyone accountable. It also provides all the stakeholders a seat at the table, making sure everyone is on the same page.
This framework is designed to be simple but effective. At the end of the day, however, successful adoption comes down to discipline and persistence. As I said earlier, there is no silver bullet, but this framework is proven to produce results with consumable, executable actions.
Read the full article here.