As we explored in my previous blog, today's rampant pace of innovation can be likened to a Digital Vortex, where ideas, technologies, and even entire industries are swept to the center of the Vortex - recombining and merging into disruptive new business models.
In such an environment, digital business transformation is critical - and demands decisive top-down leadership. Nevertheless, as our Digital Vortex research revealed, 45 percent of companies don't consider digital disruption a board-level concern.
That represents a dangerous level of complacency, especially for market incumbents. We allknow the names of seemingly immune incumbents that rested easy as innovative disruptors combined technologies into new business models - challenging and disrupting them from seemingly out of nowhere. Those disruptors were innovative, agile, and, of course,digital(see chart below from our Digital Vortex research).
Source: Global Center for Digital Business Transformation, 2015As Chris Skinner, author ofDigital Bank,told our team, "If banks aren't digital, they're going to be dead in the water." Chris was interviewed for our white paper on digital transformation in banking, but the concept holds true inall industries. Whether manufacturing, retail, public sector, healthcare, media, or any other industry, digital transformation is no longer a luxury; it is a necessity.
This begs the question, how do executive leaders of market incumbents - who may be encumbered by the very strategies and processes that led to their initial success - begin to lead the charge to the center of the Digital Vortex?
In my last blog, we discussed five key questions that business leaders should ask as they assess their current state of digital readiness and maturity. Beyond that initial assessment, they will need to guide their organizations carefully.
I believe success will require focus on these five key areas, which illustrate how a true digital business can function:
As I see it, these steps toward digital transformation will arm incumbents with the ability to combine technologies in unexpected ways at the center of the Digital Vortex. Once that happens,incumbentscan be the agile disruptors that no one sees coming.