Explore Digital was started to provide a solution to ‘innovation stagnation’.

Some background

Over the last few years our company founder, Rick Bell, was repeatedly observing gaps in the market whilst working on both client and service provider sides of the fence. These gaps exposed an ever-growing need in the market for:

1. Access to people with experience - Supply of qualified and experienced digital technology professionals to businesses both internally and externally (and the gap has been growing at an accelerated pace!)

2. Agility - Being able quickly responding to market changes and emerging opportunities with innovative, digitally-enabled business solutions.

3. An ability to bridge both technology and business – Experienced people who have hands-on experience in both starting/operating a business and evaluating/deploying complex emerging technologies and can speak/translate the language on both sides of that equation.

Add some complications with a global pandemic

• Evaporation of business confidence - Since the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Victoria on 25 January 2020, the Australian business world has been turned completely upside down. Multiple waves of lengthy lockdowns and mandatory restrictions being placed on both individuals and business alike, has resulted in the decimation of income streams and consequently, business leaders lacked the confidence to project where the business will be in a year or even 3 months down the track.

• Borders Close and skilled labour shortages - With the impact of COVID-19 still decimating world populations, and forecasts of international borders remaining effectively closed several years out, the reduced movement of domestic/international skilled labour has been vastly outpaced by the by the urgent needs of business to accelerate digitisation, digitalisation, and digital transformation efforts in an attempt to eke out promised cost savings, greater asset utilisation, increased worker productivity, or new revenue streams/markets (such as online channels etc.).

• Project delays and cancellations - Indeed, domestic talent shortages are already being felt through increased labour costs, project delivery timeframes being missed, or innovation-related projects being forced to either pause or be cancelled altogether.

• Innovation investments a lower priority - With a constrained ability to forecast business conditions beyond a few months, a mindset of just trying to keep the lights on persists. Business innovation budgets continue to be de-prioritised in favour of protecting revenue and minimising operating costs but at the risk of being potentially uncompetitive in the medium to long term. This focus on the urgent (tactical) at the cost of the important (strategic) is what Rick has termed ‘innovation stagnation’.

Considering the suffocating business environment of ‘innovation stagnation’, Rick wanted to challenge the dynamic around how innovation initiatives, digital solutions and related services were consumed by business.

Instead of monolithic, expensive and drawn-out procurement of digital services, there needed to be a way to quickly engage the required level of expertise and experience in digital and emerging technologies on an as-needed basis and effectively working as a ‘Digital Innovation Lab’ within your own business.

…and with that - Explore Digital was launched.