How Forward-Thinking MTSPs Thrive in a Rapidly Evolving Technology Landscape
November 1st, 2025 by Brian Suerth
Standing still is the fastest way to fall behind. For managed technology services providers (MTSPs), the pressure to innovate isn't just about staying competitive—it's about survival. The technology landscape shifts beneath our feet daily, with emerging cybersecurity threats, revolutionary cloud solutions, artificial intelligence breakthroughs, and evolving customer expectations creating both unprecedented challenges and remarkable opportunities.
At Technology Assurance Group (TAG), we've spent over two decades helping MTSPs navigate these turbulent waters. Since our founding in 1998, we've witnessed countless technology revolutions, economic upheavals, and industry transformations. Through it all, one truth has remained constant: the organizations that thrive are those that embrace innovation and change rather than resist them.
The Innovation Imperative: Why Change Is No Longer Optional
The managed technology services industry has transformed dramatically over the past twenty-five years. What began as predominantly break-fix IT services has evolved into a sophisticated ecosystem encompassing cloud technologies, cybersecurity, telecommunications, audio-visual solutions, video surveillance, access control, and managed print services. This convergence of technologies has created enormous opportunities for MTSPs willing to expand their capabilities and service offerings.
However, this same convergence has also intensified competition. Your competitors aren't just other IT companies anymore—they're telecommunications providers moving into IT, cybersecurity specialists broadening their portfolios, and even large technology manufacturers offering direct services to end customers. In this environment, innovation isn't a luxury reserved for industry giants with massive R&D budgets. It's a fundamental requirement for every MTSP that wants to remain relevant.
The statistics tell a compelling story. Organizations that prioritize innovation report higher customer retention rates, stronger profit margins, and more resilient business models. They're better positioned to weather economic downturns, adapt to technological disruptions, and capitalize on emerging market opportunities. Most importantly, they're creating businesses that attract and retain top talent—people who want to work for organizations that are moving forward, not standing still.
The Innovation Paradox: Why It's Harder Than It Looks
If innovation is so clearly beneficial, why do so many organizations struggle with it? The answer lies in what we call the "innovation paradox." The very factors that make a business successful—established processes, proven methodologies, comfortable routines—can become barriers to change. When something works, our natural inclination is to keep doing it the same way. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," goes the old saying. But in technology, today's cutting-edge solution is tomorrow's legacy system.
MTSPs face unique challenges when it comes to innovation. Unlike software companies or startups that can pivot quickly, service providers must balance innovation with operational continuity. You can't experiment with unproven technologies on your clients' mission-critical systems. You need to maintain existing service level agreements while simultaneously exploring new offerings. You must invest in new capabilities before you have customers for them, creating a chicken-and-egg dilemma that can paralyze decision-making.
Additionally, many MTSP owners and managers are so consumed with daily operations that they lack time for strategic thinking. When you're dealing with urgent customer issues, managing technicians, handling escalations, and trying to close new business, it's incredibly difficult to step back and think about long-term innovation initiatives. The urgent constantly crowds out the important.
The TAG Approach: Innovation Through Collaboration
At TAG, we've developed a distinctive approach to driving innovation and change that addresses these challenges head-on. Our model is built on a simple but powerful premise: innovation doesn't happen in isolation. The most transformative ideas emerge when smart people from different organizations come together to share experiences, challenge assumptions, and learn from each other's successes and failures.
This is why one of our core values is "highly conscious cooperative effort to help everyone succeed." We've created an environment where our Members—leading MTSPs representing over $1 billion in products and services—can tap into collective intelligence that far exceeds what any single organization could develop on its own.
Our professionally led peer groups provide structured forums for Members to discuss innovation challenges and opportunities. These aren't casual networking events or vendor-sponsored seminars with predetermined agendas. They're substantive working sessions where MTSPs openly share what's working, what's not, and what they're learning in real-time. When a Member successfully launches a new service offering, implements a game-changing process improvement, or navigates a difficult technology transition, that knowledge becomes available to the entire TAG community.
This collaborative approach delivers several critical advantages. First, it dramatically accelerates the learning curve. Instead of spending months or years figuring out how to successfully offer a new technology or service, Members can learn from peers who've already traveled that path. Second, it reduces risk. By understanding where others have stumbled, you can avoid costly mistakes and dead ends. Third, it provides validation. When multiple successful MTSPs are moving in a particular direction, it offers confidence that you're making sound strategic choices.
Ideas Over Knowledge: Fostering a Culture of Innovation
Another core TAG value states: "Innovation and ideas more than knowledge." This might seem counterintuitive. After all, isn't knowledge valuable? Of course it is. But we've observed that organizations that worship knowledge often become backward-looking, focused on what worked yesterday rather than what's needed tomorrow.
In contrast, organizations that prioritize ideas and innovation maintain a forward orientation. They're constantly asking: "What if?" "Why not?" "How could we?" This mindset creates an environment where creativity flourishes, where people feel empowered to challenge conventional wisdom, and where new approaches are welcomed rather than resisted.
Fostering this kind of culture requires intentional effort. It means celebrating experimentation, even when experiments fail. It means giving employees permission to question established practices. It means creating mechanisms for capturing and evaluating new ideas from throughout the organization. And it means ensuring that leadership doesn't just talk about innovation but actively models it through their decisions and behaviors.
At TAG, we see this principle in action constantly. Our Members don't just consume best practices—they create them. They bring new ideas to the table, test them in their markets, refine them through peer feedback, and then share the results back with the community. This continuous cycle of innovation keeps the entire TAG membership at the leading edge of industry developments.
Practical Strategies for Driving Innovation in Your MTSP
Understanding the importance of innovation is one thing; actually implementing it is another. Here are proven strategies that successful TAG Members use to drive innovation and change in their organizations:
Create Dedicated Time and Space for Innovation
Innovation doesn't happen accidentally. It requires intentional allocation of time, resources, and attention. Some MTSPs designate specific team members as innovation champions, giving them protected time to research emerging technologies, explore new service offerings, and develop pilot programs. Others establish quarterly innovation sessions where the leadership team steps away from daily operations to focus exclusively on strategic innovation initiatives.
The key is making innovation a scheduled priority rather than something that happens "when we have time." If innovation only occurs during spare moments, it will never happen, because there are no spare moments in a busy MTSP.
Leverage Strategic Partnerships
You don't need to innovate everything from scratch. TAG's strategic partnerships with leading technology manufacturers provide Members with early access to emerging solutions, technical training, marketing resources, and go-to-market strategies. These partnerships dramatically reduce the barriers to offering new technologies and services.
By leveraging the combined purchasing power of our membership, TAG Members also gain economic advantages that make innovation more financially feasible. When you can access better pricing, terms, and support than competitors, you have more resources available to invest in innovation initiatives.
Implement Structured Experimentation
Innovation always involves uncertainty and risk. The key is managing that risk through structured experimentation. Rather than betting the company on a completely new direction, successful innovators test new ideas through controlled pilots with friendly customers, limited-scope deployments, or internal proof-of-concept projects.
This approach allows you to gather real-world data about what works and what doesn't before making major commitments. It also creates learning opportunities that benefit the entire organization, even when specific experiments don't yield the desired results.
Invest in Continuous Education
Another TAG core value emphasizes "endless education and personal development." Innovation requires knowledge of emerging technologies, evolving best practices, and changing market dynamics. Organizations that consistently invest in training and professional development maintain the knowledge base necessary to identify and capitalize on innovation opportunities.
TAG provides advanced sales training programs, management development courses, technical certifications, and industry education that keep Members at the forefront of industry knowledge. But formal training is just one component. Equally important is creating a learning culture where people regularly read industry publications, attend conferences, participate in webinars, and engage in peer learning.
Listen to Your Customers
One of TAG's core values is "constant effort to contact, consult and partner with our customers." Your customers are an invaluable source of innovation insights. They experience technology challenges firsthand. They see how competitors are positioning themselves. They have unmet needs that represent opportunities for new service offerings.
Successful innovators maintain regular strategic conversations with key customers. They don't just respond to support tickets and handle service requests—they proactively seek to understand the customer's business challenges, strategic objectives, and technology aspirations. These conversations often reveal innovation opportunities that would never emerge through internal brainstorming alone.
The Critical Role of Financial Intelligence in Innovation
Innovation requires investment, and investment requires capital. This is where TAG's in-depth financial analysis and industry benchmarking become crucial innovation enablers. Many MTSPs struggle with innovation because they lack clear financial visibility. They don't know which services are actually profitable, where they're spending too much, or how they compare to industry standards.
Without this financial intelligence, innovation becomes a shot in the dark. You might invest heavily in a new service offering that seems promising but actually erodes profitability. Or you might miss opportunities because you don't realize how much financial headroom you have for strategic investments.
TAG Members gain access to comprehensive benchmarking data that shows them exactly where they stand relative to industry standards across dozens of financial and operational metrics. This creates clarity about where innovation investments will deliver the strongest returns. It also helps Members identify inefficiencies in current operations that, once addressed, free up capital for innovation initiatives.
Moreover, understanding the financial models that make new services profitable allows MTSPs to innovate with confidence rather than fear. When you know what margins you need, what utilization rates to target, and what pricing strategies work, you can approach innovation as a calculated strategic move rather than a risky gamble.
The Human Side of Innovation: Managing Change Effectively
Technology changes rapidly, but people change slowly. One of the biggest innovation challenges has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with people. Employees who are comfortable with current practices may resist new approaches. Technicians who've built expertise in particular technologies may feel threatened by shifts toward new solutions. Sales team members who've perfected their pitch for existing services may be reluctant to learn new offerings.
This is why TAG values "candid communication that leads to positive change." Successful innovation requires transparent communication about why change is necessary, what it means for individuals, and how the organization will support people through transitions. It also requires creating safe spaces where employees can voice concerns, ask questions, and provide feedback without fear of retribution.
Another relevant TAG value emphasizes "respect, patience, compassion, and cooperation in every relationship." Change is uncomfortable, and people need time to adapt. Organizations that drive change through intimidation or ultimatums may achieve short-term compliance, but they undermine long-term innovation capacity. People become risk-averse and stop suggesting new ideas when they fear the consequences of failure.
In contrast, organizations that approach change with empathy and support create environments where innovation can flourish. They invest in training to help people develop new skills. They celebrate small wins along the way. They acknowledge that mistakes are part of the learning process. And they recognize that the fastest path to successful innovation often involves bringing people along rather than dragging them forward.
The Accountability Factor: Embracing the "20s"
TAG has an interesting value: "20s, wherever found—those that embrace accountability for excellence." This refers to people who operate at the highest level, taking personal ownership for outstanding results. In the context of innovation, this principle is crucial.
Innovation initiatives often fail not because of bad ideas or insufficient resources, but because of weak accountability. Projects start with enthusiasm but gradually lose momentum. Responsibilities aren't clearly defined. Progress isn't measured. And eventually, the initiative dies quietly without anyone taking ownership for the failure.
Successful innovation requires clear accountability at every level. Someone needs to own the overall innovation strategy. Specific individuals need to be responsible for particular initiatives. Metrics need to be defined and tracked. Regular reviews need to occur where progress is assessed and adjustments made.
This doesn't mean creating a blame culture where people are punished for innovation efforts that don't pan out. Rather, it means establishing clear expectations, providing the support needed to meet those expectations, and then holding people accountable for following through on commitments. "20s" don't need to be micromanaged, but they do need clarity about what success looks like and how it will be measured.
Learning from Real Success: The TAG Operating Model
At TAG, we practice what we preach. We don't just teach theories about innovation and change management—we implement these principles in our own operations. TAG's leadership team owns and operates a successful MTSP in Southern California. Our success comes directly from implementing the best practices we share with Members. We do what we teach, and we teach what we do.
This means that when TAG introduces a new program, recommends a particular approach, or suggests an innovation strategy, it's grounded in real-world experience. We've tested it in our own business, refined it based on actual results, and validated it through peer feedback from other Members. This operational credibility creates trust and confidence that's impossible to achieve through consulting advice alone.
It also creates a continuous improvement feedback loop. As we innovate in our own MTSP, we identify new best practices that benefit the broader TAG membership. As Members innovate and share their experiences, we incorporate those learnings back into our operations. This symbiotic relationship between practical operation and collaborative learning is what makes the TAG model so powerful.
The Competitive Advantage of Collaborative Innovation
Some business owners worry that sharing innovation insights with peers might create additional competition. Why help other MTSPs when you could keep your best ideas proprietary? This thinking reflects a scarcity mindset that fundamentally misunderstands how modern business works.
In reality, the technology services market is enormous and growing rapidly. Your success doesn't require others to fail. Moreover, the pace of technology change is so rapid that no single organization can keep up with everything. By participating in collaborative innovation through TAG, you gain access to insights and experiences that exponentially exceed what you could develop independently.
Consider this: even if you have an innovative idea that gives you a competitive advantage, that advantage is temporary. Your competitors will eventually figure it out through their own experiments or by observing your market success. Meanwhile, you've missed out on dozens of other innovations that peer MTSPs developed while you were protecting your singular advantage.
TAG Members understand that rising tides lift all boats. By collaborating on innovation, they collectively advance faster than any could alone. They establish themselves as industry leaders, attract better talent, win more sophisticated customers, and build more valuable businesses. The competitive advantage doesn't come from hoarding information—it comes from accelerating your innovation capacity through collaborative learning.
Innovation in Practice: Key Areas of Focus for MTSPs
While innovation strategies and principles are important, MTSPs also need practical direction on where to focus innovation efforts. Based on TAG's extensive work with leading service providers, here are the key areas where innovation delivers the strongest returns:
Cybersecurity Evolution
The cybersecurity threat landscape evolves constantly, with new attack vectors, vulnerabilities, and threat actors emerging regularly. MTSPs that innovate in cybersecurity—adopting zero-trust architectures, implementing advanced threat detection, offering security awareness training, and providing comprehensive security assessments—position themselves as indispensable partners rather than commodity providers.
Cloud Optimization
Simply moving workloads to the cloud isn't innovation—it's table stakes. True innovation in cloud services involves helping customers optimize costs, improve performance, ensure compliance, implement multi-cloud strategies, and leverage cloud-native capabilities that transform business operations.
Remote Work Enablement
The shift toward remote and hybrid work has created enormous opportunities for MTSPs who can deliver seamless experiences regardless of location. Innovation in this area includes unified communications, secure remote access, collaboration tools, virtual desktop infrastructure, and employee experience monitoring.
Automation and Efficiency
As labor costs rise and technician availability tightens, automation becomes crucial. Innovative MTSPs are implementing automated monitoring, remediation, patching, and reporting that allows them to serve more customers with the same staff while simultaneously improving service quality.
Vertical Market Specialization
Generic IT services face increasing commoditization pressure. Innovation through vertical market specialization—developing deep expertise in healthcare, financial services, legal, manufacturing, or other industries—creates differentiation and commands premium pricing.
Measuring Innovation Success
How do you know if your innovation efforts are working? Successful MTSPs track multiple metrics that provide insight into innovation effectiveness:
- Revenue from new services: What percentage of revenue comes from offerings that didn't exist three years ago?
- Customer retention rates: Are customers staying longer because you're continuously delivering value through innovation?
- Average contract value: Are innovation efforts allowing you to expand relationships and increase customer lifetime value?
- Profit margins: Is innovation helping you move upmarket toward higher-margin services?
- Employee engagement: Do employees feel excited about the company's direction and their role in innovation?
- Market positioning: Are you being invited to opportunities that previously went to competitors?
- Talent acquisition: Are you attracting higher-quality candidates who want to work for an innovative organization?
TAG's benchmarking programs allow Members to track these metrics not just internally but also relative to industry standards. This provides crucial context for understanding whether innovation investments are delivering competitive advantage or simply keeping pace with market evolution.
Overcoming Innovation Obstacles
Even with the best intentions and strategies, MTSPs encounter obstacles that can derail innovation efforts. Here's how to address the most common challenges:
Limited Time
Solution: Schedule innovation time just as you would schedule customer meetings. Block out specific times for strategic thinking, market research, and innovation planning. Consider quarterly off-site sessions where leadership focuses exclusively on innovation without daily operational distractions.
Resource Constraints
Solution: Start small. You don't need massive investments to begin innovating. Pilot programs with limited scope can validate concepts before major commitments. Also, leverage TAG partnerships and peer experiences to reduce trial-and-error costs.
Risk Aversion
Solution: Reframe risk. The biggest risk isn't that an innovation experiment might fail—it's that standing still will make you irrelevant. Also, use structured experimentation approaches that contain risk through limited-scope pilots.
Knowledge Gaps
Solution: Invest in education and leverage peer learning. TAG's training programs, vendor partnerships, and peer group interactions provide multiple pathways for acquiring the knowledge needed to innovate confidently.
Internal Resistance
Solution: Involve skeptics early in the innovation process. Often, resistance stems from feeling excluded or threatened. When people have input into change initiatives and understand how they'll be supported through transitions, resistance typically diminishes.
The Future Belongs to Innovators
Looking ahead, the pace of technological change will only accelerate. Artificial intelligence, quantum computing, edge computing, 5G networks, Internet of Things proliferation, and technologies we haven't even imagined yet will continue reshaping the business landscape. The MSPs that thrive won't be those with the biggest offices or longest histories—they'll be those that most effectively drive innovation and change.
This doesn't mean you need to chase every shiny new technology or completely reinvent your business every year. Effective innovation balances continuity with change, maintaining excellence in core services while strategically expanding into new areas that create additional customer value.
What it does mean is developing innovation as a core organizational capability—something you do continuously rather than occasionally. It means creating systems, processes, and cultures that support ongoing experimentation, learning, and adaptation. It means surrounding yourself with peers who challenge your thinking and expand your perspective. And it means committing to endless education and personal development that keeps you ahead of market changes.
The TAG Difference: Innovation Through Partnership
At TAG, our mission is to advance your business through education and collaborative effort. For over 25 years, we've helped leading MTSPs across North America drive innovation and change that transforms their businesses and delivers exceptional value to their customers.
We do this by providing the resources, knowledge, peer connections, and strategic partnerships that make innovation accessible and achievable. Our Members don't innovate in isolation—they innovate as part of a community of excellence where collective intelligence exceeds what any individual organization could achieve alone.
Whether you're looking to expand into new technologies, improve operational efficiency, increase profitability, accelerate growth, or build a more valuable business, TAG provides the framework and support to make it happen. We combine the best business and management practices, advanced training programs, in-depth financial analysis, professionally led peer groups, marketing programs, and manufacturer partnerships into a comprehensive platform for driving innovation and change.
Most importantly, we understand the challenges you face because we face them too in our own MTSP operations. We've implemented these principles, experienced the obstacles, celebrated the successes, and learned from the failures. This operational credibility—doing what we teach and teaching what we do—ensures that TAG guidance is always grounded in real-world practicality rather than theoretical idealism.
Your Innovation Journey Starts Today
Innovation and change aren't distant future concerns—they're immediate imperatives. Every day you delay developing innovation capabilities is a day your competitors gain ground. Every month you avoid addressing changing market dynamics is a month you fall further behind customer expectations. Every year you postpone strategic transformation is a year you miss opportunities that may not come again.
But here's the good news: you don't have to figure it all out alone. TAG has spent 25 years developing proven frameworks for driving innovation and change in managed technology services businesses. Our Members represent the best of the industry—organizations that have successfully navigated technology transitions, expanded service offerings, improved profitability, and built market leadership positions.
Their experiences, insights, and lessons learned are available to help you accelerate your own innovation journey. Through TAG's peer groups, training programs, benchmarking data, vendor partnerships, and best practice resources, you can compress years of trial and error into months of strategic progress.
The future of your MTSP depends on decisions you make today about innovation and change. Will you embrace the collaborative innovation model that's helping leading service providers thrive? Will you invest in the education, peer connections, and strategic resources that accelerate transformation? Will you commit to continuous innovation as a core organizational capability?
At TAG, we're passionate about helping MTSPs answer "yes" to these questions. We're committed to advancing your business through education and collaborative effort. We believe in a highly conscious cooperative effort to help everyone succeed. And we're dedicated to creating an environment where innovation and ideas flourish, where candid communication leads to positive change, and where passionate engagement drives excellence.
The technology landscape will continue evolving at breathtaking speed. Customer expectations will continue rising. Competitive pressures will continue to intensify. But organizations that embrace innovation and change—that view these forces as opportunities rather than threats—will not only survive but thrive in the years ahead.
Your innovation journey starts today. The question isn't whether you'll need to innovate—it's whether you'll do it proactively as a strategic choice or reactively under competitive pressure. The MTSPs that choose the former, supported by TAG's collaborative innovation framework, are building the industry-leading businesses of tomorrow.
Posted in: Strategizing