All posts tagged: trends

XaaS – Everything as a Service – The backend is a BIG business opportunity

Published by Gert Christen

Using an app to order your dinner delivered from your favorite restaurant? You just Xaas’d your food, a business that is growing at 25% per year, according to McKinsey. They predict that online deliveries could eventually make up as much as 65% of all food deliveries. Can your favorite restaurant even cook this volume? And does it make sense to cook a meal at a restaurant when the meal ist to be delivered? Apart from the kitchen, the infrastructure to prepare food for delivery is different than the one in a dine-in restaurant. What if – the kitchen could become a service? Some prominent entrepreneurs work on precisely this: Travis Kalanick, Uber’s former CEO, is buying up industrial kitchens and renting them out (per hour? per stove? per meal cooked? I don’t know). His customers are those who need to use a kitchen for a couple of hours to deliver ordered meals: Only pay for what you need; the kitchen as a service, the XaaS of food. You don’t think this will be big? Apparently, …

Digigram Newsletter of December 2019!

Published by Gert Christen

The bi-monthly newsletter of December 2019. Covering TikTok, the next hot trend, Xaas – Everything as a Service – and the backend business opportunity. Top of the month: 26 Swiss managers & HWZ master students in Silicon Valley, and one of my teams reached 4th place in the startup competition at UC Berkeley.
Meet me here: At UC Berkeley’s “Deplastifying the Planet” course starting in Jan 2020
On my table: Thanks are on my table. Wish all happy holidays and happiness & success for 2020

Hot Trend: XaaS – Everything as a Service is how we work and live today

Published by Gert Christen

In my last Digigram, I wrote about XaaS and wondered what would be next for this trend. Since then, I have concluded that XaaS includes much more than only technology platforms that virtualize assets in value chains: XaaS covers how we work and conduct business today, and how we consume modern products and services. New work = Gig economy = Work as a Service We all agree that companies such as Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Upwork, and WeWork disrupted the value chains and asset distribution in many industries. Like it or loathe it – the fact is that these models fit the way many people live their lives today. Both as consumers of services (e.g., getting even small items delivered by Amazon or bike couriers instead of going to a store) or as a provider of services (e.g., teaching via the internet or contracting via Upwork). The megatrends of changes in life- and work styles are what enabled the XaaS phenomenon in the first place. Especially Gen Ys love both sides of XaaS! It provides them …

Digigram Newsletter of July 2019!

Published by Gert Christen

Thank you Thank you to the more than 4000 of you who saw my first Digigram. I am surprised, delighted and very humbled. And I appreciate all of you who gave me your comments and feedback, I will try to incorporate them. Please enjoy a wonderful summer, happy reading and ‘till soon, Gert Explore Digigram – July 2019 Hot Technology: Blockchain, look beyond the noise and it’s very real! New trend: XaaS stands for everything as a service! Top of the Month Congratulations to Scoot, a pioneer in the electric moped rental space, for the acquisition by Bird, the electric scooter rental heavyweight. Meet me here: Meet me in Berkeley from next month. I am excited to have been appointed an Entrepreneurship Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. I wanted to continue to teach part-time ever since moving back to California and I couldn’t be happier to do it in Berkeley. Check out my first course here! What’s on my table? Summer reading: “Make Elephants Fly. The process of radical innovation” by Steven S. …