{"id":293883,"date":"2020-03-23T09:00:54","date_gmt":"2020-03-23T08:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pulse.microsoft.com\/?p=293883"},"modified":"2021-01-04T08:08:59","modified_gmt":"2021-01-04T07:08:59","slug":"fa2-two-companies-that-succeeded-by-changing-their-winning-formulas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pulse.microsoft.com\/en\/transform-en\/na\/fa2-two-companies-that-succeeded-by-changing-their-winning-formulas\/","title":{"rendered":"Two companies that succeeded by changing their winning formulas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"intro\">Perceived wisdom often holds that if something isn\u2019t broken, then you shouldn\u2019t fix it. At first glance, this would seem especially true when you\u2019re already an industry leader.<\/p>\n<p>Why change something that\u2019s already working well and giving you a competitive advantage over an industry full of companies trying to supersede you?<\/p>\n<p>The answer lies in the fact that it\u2019s no longer an option to stick with what you\u2019re doing, no matter how well that\u2019s going for you as a company. Times have changed and if you want to continue to lead the way, you need to innovate.<\/p>\n<p>That means being open to new ways of doing things \u2013 and using technology to help you get there.<\/p>\n<h2>Overcoming the barriers to change<\/h2>\n<p>It\u2019s not always easy to take the initiative and become an innovator. It takes guts \u2013 and a will to continually push boundaries.<\/p>\n<p>Take the example of AkzoNobel. The Dutch company with a passion for paint has been proudly creating household brand names like Dulux and Polyfilla for many years. And as paint and color trends are ever-evolving, the process of color prediction is a critical part of the company being able to quickly meet modern demands as they emerge.<\/p>\n<p>So, when AkzoNobel started to think about how to evolve their tried-and-tested method of color prediction, the suggestion of turning to machine learning technology powered by Microsoft Azure wasn\u2019t initially welcomed with open arms by everyone at their labs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the beginning, we were quite sceptical about machine learning technology and what it could really do for us,\u201d says Rob Reijers, AkzoNobel\u2019s manager of global color apps development. \u201cWe always thought that our physical models\u201d \u2013 which form the basis for the company\u2019s ability to predict color accurately \u2013 \u201cwere the best that we could have.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo why would we change?\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>Innovation is the key to staying on top<\/h2>\n<p><iframe class=\"microsoft-one-player-video\" src=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/videoplayer\/embed\/RE4qbBl\" playsinline=true controls=true webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The paint industry is an incredibly competitive landscape. New colors emerge every day and manufacturers in the car and other industries constantly dream up new finishes to give their models an edge on the competition.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s why staying innovative has never been more important for AkzoNobel. And their use of machine learning has helped them to do that.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe were really surprised by the incredible accuracy of the results we could achieve with machine learning technology, and also by how quickly we could get these results,\u201d says Reijers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe whole experience completely changed my viewpoint on using machine learning. It has allowed us to be much more creative.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/customers.microsoft.com\/en-us\/story\/782131-akzonobel-chemicals-azure-netherlands-en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Read the full AkzoNobel story<\/a> and discover how the Dutch paint company became more creative than ever by using machine learning technology.<\/p>\n<h2>Creating new business models<\/h2>\n<p>Another company that has benefited from taking a bold approach to digital innovation is Eneco subsidiary, <a href=\"https:\/\/customers.microsoft.com\/en-in\/story\/781350-agro-energy-azure-netherlands\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">AgroEnergy<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Dutch company has specialised in the optimal running of greenhouses for decades. But in recent times, it has become an agricultural tech market leader on the back of its ground-breaking use of machine learning technology and AI.<\/p>\n<p>As the company shifted from being a single-minded energy company to a modern, data-driven service provider, they realised that the tech services they now offered their greenhouse customers could lead to the creation of an entirely new company.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere was this eureka moment when we realised that this was so much more than we ever thought it would be,\u201d says Laurens van der Spek, Head of Technology at AgroEnergy.<\/p>\n<p>And the key to arriving at that eureka moment was having the bravery and initiative to challenge the established way they were doing things \u2013 and make a change that would introduce new innovations to their already successful company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Perceived wisdom often holds that if something isn\u2019t broken, then you shouldn\u2019t fix it. At first glance, this would seem especially true when you\u2019re already an industry leader. Why change something that\u2019s already working well and giving you a competitive advantage over an industry full of companies trying to supersede you? The answer lies in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":838,"featured_media":293892,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1804],"class_list":["post-293883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-customer-stories-en","specials-transform-en","stories-how-can-i-make-my-company-more-innovative","stories-innovation-en","businessPriorities-data-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pulse.microsoft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293883"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pulse.microsoft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pulse.microsoft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pulse.microsoft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/838"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pulse.microsoft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293883"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/pulse.microsoft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":303159,"href":"https:\/\/pulse.microsoft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293883\/revisions\/303159"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pulse.microsoft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pulse.microsoft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pulse.microsoft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}