The world is rapidly changing. A year ago, we couldn’t possibly imagine where we’d be today. As we slowly emerge from the COVID cocoon, certain transformations we made out of necessity will undoubtedly remain.
The leaps and bounds digital health has made, a shift toward remote work and learning environments, and the proliferation of digital platforms fueled by cashless payments are just a few examples of what’s different now.
So how do you become a change leader and stand above your competition? To continue and even accelerate this pace of innovation will require ever-advancing technologies applied through lean methodologies and creative approaches.
At Star, this is what we do every day. Join us in this discussion of sustainability-driven innovation seen not solely through what we create but how we do it.
To be sustainable, you must deliver value
A few years back, technology could literally make a marketable difference between you and your competitors. Even until recently, it could be as simple as you having a website and them not. But that’s changed. Everybody has an app, a website, data in the cloud, and other digitally-enabled offerings.
It seems to be a good example when Keynesian theory wins the known battle as we all know demand does create supply. Unfortunately, a supply of mediocre products and plain experiences is what we are left with today in both the digital and physical worlds.
Consequently, technology is not about getting smarter anymore, but rather a focus on fool-proof convenience and excessive automation. Take a look at any different app categories you have on your smartphone. Whether it’s social media, finance, email, or anything, you’ll find a lot of overlap between them.
There are more and more solutions that over-engineer while becoming less specialized and more generic. This creates a lot of waste from any angle you look at it. From app production to storage and, in many cases, abandonments, the energy costs alone are staggering.
Globally, it is estimated that data centers consume about 200 terawatt-hours annually, which is more than the entirety of some countries including Poland, the Netherlands, and Thailand. And these figures are projected to at least triple over the next decade. How much of this is going into creating digital experiences that provide no value to people? To try to contextualize this, the average person has 80+ apps on their phone. On average, they use the same nine apps daily. In fact, 25% of apps are only used once after downloading.
We’re not here to pick on apps in particular. Instead, we want to emphasize that sustainability boils down to creating something of real value to your audience — whether in the digital or the physical world. This is what the true meaning of Green IT is. As Chekhov famously said, “Brevity is the sister of genius.” So too will the future of computing be founded on concise, efficient, and useful applications.
See how we’re helping Lufthansa’s sustainability goals take off.
A team of 8 experts can build you anything
The truth is technology was never much of a commodity (and we say this as tech companies ourselves!) It's always been the people behind the tech and how they leveraged it to create value.
Many impactful and sustainable solutions were built by just a team of eight. Sure, there are also numerous projects with 100+ developers, working in parallel streams, on multiple components, and producing many lines of code daily. However, is the amount of code proportional to its value? Does quantity guarantee quality? The majority of “enterprise” cases show a negative correlation between the two.
At Star, we take a different approach. Our team focuses on a specific business goal or customer need instead of providing vanilla professional consultancy services. We deliver a crazy mix of technical expertise, domain knowledge, entrepreneurship mindset, bold and agile thinking. Our value is not measured by "size " or "scale," it is rather a synergy of the right skill set for the particular problem.
That is why we have these rare beasts at Star who drive complex initiatives towards the endgame. Our key team members include technology strategists, design strategists, product managers, industrial architects, and technical program managers who do more than just engineer products but can sense immediate needs and where opportunity spaces for authentic innovation lie.
Consequently, taking this design-driven approach is incomparably better for huge projects where there is inevitably so much waste, enabling us to be green from the start. This, in turn, helps our partners become greener and more efficient themselves.
The core of what we offer isn't that we can just build you a single product or solution that can help improve efficiency or capture new opportunities and provide you with the fundamental tools for optimizing your business in the long run.
Versatile and dynamic approaches
We are not your run-of-the-mill consulting firm. First and foremost, we stand apart because from ideation through launch, we provide you with skills, expertise, and resources to ensure your ideas thrive in the market. No matter what innovation stage you're in, we can help you define, evaluate, refine, execute, and even provide post-launch product management and support.
As part of this, we consider our relationship with companies not as a boutique but as a culture of partnership that has to be genuinely followed. We only take on projects that we believe possess genuine potential for innovation and practical use.
We value the uniqueness of each customer, tailoring our services to a particular setup. Beginning with start-ups, we offer diverse services to help these disruptors firmly establish themselves and make the transition to major industry players. In these early stages, they may need to further develop their idea into real deliverables or other types of assistance. For them, we play a variety of roles as VPO, CPO, and Chief Architect and are trusted with the core functions of their future IP.
Then we come to Corporates and Innovation Labs. They often have at least a decade of experience and strong customer bases. Often they are looking to launch a new product or service or enhance their existing one, and they need somebody to come in and take equal ownership of product delivery as part of a bold, new offering. With them, we'll work alongside their in-house teams, augmenting them with our own experts to help achieve their goals.
At last, we come to large enterprises. These are named brands like Xerox, Nio, Panasonic and ADI with their own unique challenges. Above all, we try to be a breath of fresh air because we understand compliance, procurements and advanced procedural overhead and deliver product-driven innovation.
When these name brands start or continue on the complex path of digital transformation, they need somebody like us who can not just deliver excellent products but also in the right package for them. We do this through our advanced delivery framework, fully compliant with global engineering and industrial standards and ensuring ultimate quality and traceability, so essential for the Big Whale clients. It's not an easy path, but it's immensely rewarding to see our expert-driven approach at such a large scale.
Sustainable technology starts with Star
Sustainability, Green computing, or whatever you want to call it, is not just a part of a business's ethical responsibility. It also deeply impacts their bottom line. From being an important part of their branding and messaging to optimizing their operations and just being prepared for the future, it will only continue to grow in importance for firms of any size, type, and history.
The bottom line is that achieving it requires the right partner and the right approach. But don't take our word for it. Instead, look at our record of success. With over 350 partners and 560 completed projects and growing, we stand proudly by it.
Go ahead and check out our case studies yourself. Whether it's our ongoing digital health partnerships with industry leaders like ZEISS and Constant Therapy, groundbreaking automotive innovation with disruptors like Nio, or anywhere else we work, you'll find one thing that connects all these projects: a firm commitment to excellence backed by our diverse team of experts.
