About This Blog

Welcome to Being Guided: the blog for a new book I am working on called Going Non-Linear: Moving Beyond Billable Hours. The concept of Non-Linear Revenues was first raised by Indian IT services firms, such as Cognizant and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in the mid-2000s, citing the problem of managing a large-scale people business.

The book (and e-book) will focus on how and why UK-based professional services firms of all shapes and sizes can move beyond the limitations of billable people-time to creating a truly international, scalable venture - in the cloud. This is all about moving beyond the inherent linear relationship between revenue and costs that constrains a people-based business.

As the name implies, Going Non-Linear is the transformation from Linear Revenues to Non-Linear Revenues: moving from people-based services to platform-based services. Whilst many earlier generation software businesses were created from know-how in a particular industry or domain knowledge, a lack of capital restricted many UK players versus their US competitors.

In recovering from the credit crunch of 2008, it is now universally recognised that for UK, the only way out of austerity is creating an export-led recovery. Our creative and knowledge-intensive industries are a bedrock of the UK economy. But, unlike 10-20 years ago, capital is no longer the constraint for a UK-based services firm becoming a global software player.

Thanks to the power and pre-built business logic of cloud computing ecosystems, from world-class players such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and salesforce.com, knowledge-intensive services firms can take the journey from Linear Revenues to Non-Linear Revenues, without the need for large sums of capital. This opens up a significant opportunity in UK.

Over the weeks ahead, I will be publishing blog posts on the tops of Going Linear, including the need to bust the myths of business-as-usual thinking around what it takes to start not a 'software venture' but a 'Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) venture'. This is all about leveraging the inherent advantages of cloud computing to eliminate location disadvantage for UK players.

Whilst cloud computing provides the natural technology foundation for Going Non-Linear with social and mobile apps, leveraging the scalable (hence Non-Linear) model for SaaS and monetisation on a global scale through subscription fees, this also has a specific new opportunity presented by Big Data: the latest wave in IT innovation.