Kathy Gibson at Fujitsu World Tour, Bryanston — Co-creation is not about glib solutions, or pandering to buzzwords: it’s about real business solutions that meet real business needs.
Hannes Burger, MD of Fujitsu SA, explains that co-creation comes from co-operation with intent and honesty.
“We don’t want to sell 70% of all the servers and storage systems in South Africa,” he says. “I would rather have 10 customers where there is trust and integrity; where we work together, and reap the business results of co-creation.”
Fujitsu’s growth is not so much because it builds excellent systems, he adds, but because it focuses on trust and engagement with its partners.
“Co-creation is not about putting four people in the room and following one leader,” Burger stresses. “It takes time: you have to listen to people, create intellectual property, then come back and do it again.”
Buzzwords like artificial intelligence, big data, robotics, hyperconvergence and others abound in the IT industry. “But the most important things is to manage all of this, with trust and openness.”
The results of co-creation are visible, Burgers says. “We have co-created 837 solutions with businesses in the last 12 months.”
As a partner-centric organisation, Fujitsu has worked with partners on all but two of these deployments, and those two were with the permission of the relevant partners.
Fujitsu brings together people, information and infrastructure for co-creation.
The company focuses on human-centric innovation, says Juan Porcar, a vice-president of Fujitsu.
To achieve the goal of extending digitalisation into the business, it is important to understand the business processes as well as the technology.
“So you need experts from both fields. This process is what we call co-creation. It is the best method for creating solutions.”