---
title: "The consumer forces shaping enterprise innovation"
description: "Explore how consumer tech trends are reshaping enterprise software, with 66% of employees using personal devices at work. Key insights for startup founders \u0026 VCs."
categories: ["fundraising"]
keywords: ["consumerization of IT","enterprise software","BYOD","Hadoop","Cassandra","Tomasz Tunguz","Theory Ventures","venture capital","startup innovation","technology trends"]
ai_summary: "Explore how consumer tech trends are reshaping enterprise software and driving innovation in the workplace."
date: 2014-01-01
lastmod: 2026-07-23
canonical_url: https://www.tomtunguz.com/the-consumer-forces-shaping-enterprise-innovation/
author: "Tomasz Tunguz"
---

Even in infrastructure, many of the big data technologies driving increases in IT spending like Hadoop and Cassandra were developed by consumer internet companies (Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Amazon, etc
date: 2012-10-17
---











<p>The first mobile phones were purchased by corporations and given to employees. Thirty years ago, most people used computers at work but not at home. Most of the innovation flowed from the enterprise into the home. Today, it’s very much the opposite.

<p>The big trends in enterprise trace the opposite movement both at the software layer and the device layer: consumerization of IT means using consumer channels to acquire customers and bring your own device (BYOD) means <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/10/forrester-66-of-employees-use-2-or-more-devices-at-work-12-use-tablets/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29">66% of employees bring their own devices to work</a>. </p>

<p>![image](https://res.cloudinary.com/dzawgnnlr/image/upload/q_auto/f_auto/w_auto/image_221_306807589" width="500px"></p>

<p>Even in infrastructure, many of the big data technologies driving increases in IT spending like Hadoop and Cassandra were developed by consumer internet companies (Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Amazon, etc). </p>

<p>This trend makes a great investment thesis: find all the advances in consumer technologies and bring them into the enterprise. I think this force will be the major driver of innovation for enterprise software for the next while. </p>