All change for the future

deepens, this gives the company the ability to develop digital services capabilities internally before retailing the services to other Kiwi businesses looking to keep pace with technological change. “We’re learning on ourselves,” he says.

Qrious’ first customer brief, for example, was analysing data for and supporting the growth of Skinny Mobile, Spark’s barebones mobile brand. It was only after developing those capabilities internally that there was a value proposition to be offered to external parties.

Qrious has recently acquired and absorbed another analytics company, Ubiquity, and is now “hitting around a million dollars a month in revenue.

“Most large organisations know they’ve got the information,” says Moutter. “They just can’t get it out, they can’t put it into a framework where they can manipulate it, and they can’t get it joined with the data they’ve got in other places, let alone external data.”

Cultural evolution

Remaining competitive in times of change has management implications as well. Moutter says Spark is currently considering whether to roll out agile working practices across its entire business.

Agile methodologies involve devolved accountability with self- managing teams, launching prototypes and minimum viable propositions as early as possible, before iterating based on customer feedback.

Beginning with Spark Ventures, the company has begun to apply the methodology more widely. There is now a Spark customer lab, where customers sit beside coders and provide real time feedback as products are fine tuned: “We’re now thinking about agile at scale. What if we made that our main operating model?” It’s a move Moutter says would be “an almighty leap”.

Protection of the areas where the innovation is most likely to occur is also important.

“One of the challenges for large businesses in growth is that when you have a $3.5 billion revenue line, everything new you start is de minimis,” says Moutter. “How do you give it organisational attention?”

Investors and other internal decision makers often have reason to be sceptical about how even a fast growing internal venture can actually matter much in the context of a major company. The revenue growth might be impressive in the context of a start up but seem irrelevant to some in the context of Spark.

“It takes a lot of work, and as the CEO I have to do a lot of protecting of new ventures. I have to push people to stop trying to interfere or shut it down. You’ve got to give them room to grow.”

We’re now thinking about agile at scale. What if we made that our main operating model? [It would be] an almighty leap. Simon Moutter