By Adam Bates (@AdamBates_KPMG), Global Head of Innovation, KPMG

The combination of cloud, mobile and analytics is impacting just about every business model across most markets. That is a given. I also believe that these technologies are accelerating change. Hence businesses must accept that they cannot sit still and assume the storm will pass – it won’t.

There is no shortage of long standing businesses that are facing the need to adapt. The high street is dealing (or not) with competition from Amazon. Many universities are wondering how to adapt to the impact of Coursera and other online education providers. Car manufacturers are joining up with car-sharing startups like Zipcar.

One key challenge for large businesses is their ability to foster innovation and challenge their sometimes sacred existing business models.

Some, like IBM, have demonstrated the ability to do this and take decisive action. Many others do not, and as a keen photographer for me Kodak is the best (or worst) recent example. Smaller companies and start-ups do not have that emotional baggage.

Square is a great example of a new company challenging the way payments are made. Buying a Square reader for $9.95, downloading an app and being able to make transfers from someone’s credit card is truly transformational. Few people in Square had prior banking or payment experience, hence were able to think in a more radical way

In today’s stormy environment management in large corporations need to regularly challenge the way they think.

One great way is to work closely with start-ups and seeing…

– new business models developing, failing and some succeeding really, really quickly

– lean processes for developing ideas with none of the inertia besot of so many large corporations

– how cutting or even bleeding-edge technology can provide an answer to a problem the large corporation did not know existed

There are a number of ways of doing this. Take this example – GPT Group is a large office and shopping centre developer in Australia. It recently invested in Silicon Valley start-up Liquidspace which developed an online marketplace for professionals to book workspaces and meeting rooms. In my view, seeing the future of offices is a really interesting and strategic move for GPT.

KPMG in the UK opened an office in “silicon roundabout” to be physically much closer to the start-up scene than from where I sit typing this note down in shiny tower down in Canary Wharf.

It is a bit like when I started photography back in the 1970s. I enjoyed playing around with negatives in dark-rooms producing prints from a vat of toxic chemicals. Today I shoot on digital and print my photos in daylight. Do I miss the darkroom? No. Businesses sometimes need to move on and leave behind old ways which do not fit in today’s world.