Driving Business Value from Digital Transformation

Webinar with Dr. Michael Wade, Professor of Innovation and Strategy and Cisco Chair in Digital Business Transformation, at IMD Business School, located in Lausanne, Switzerland and Director of the Global Center for Digital Business Transformation, an IMD and Cisco Initiative

Author of Digital Vortex: How Today’s Market Leaders Can Beat Disruptive Competitors at Their Own Game

This webinar was hosted by the Center for Services Leadership Community of Practice on
Monetizing Data and Analytics

The Digital Landscape has changed over the past decade. While businesses and companies understand the power of digital innovation, many firms struggle with either taking advantage of the opportunities or reducing risks that accompany digital transformation. Automotive industry is a great example that demonstrates the impact of digital transformation. The push for development of autonomous cars affects a wide spectrum of industries: from transportation & logistics to insurance, law & order, healthcare, hotels etc. Similarly, other innovations such as block-chains, machine learning, virtual reality etc. will potentially have an impact on a number of industries.

While leading digital transformation, companies have to address two fundamental questions: “Why” and “How”. ‘Why’ pertains to understanding the opportunities and threats that exist because of a rapid digitization. “How” covers the capabilities and roadmaps traditional companies need to create to sustain competitive advantage. Yet, data suggests that most digital transformations fail – the reason lies in inability to push for organizational transformation alongside technology transformations.

Beyond technology, companies need to change their approach to business strategy. According to conventional thinking, strategies are developed with a clear understanding of where the company currently is and where it wants to be. However, in today’s world, predicting the future has become extremely complex. Instead, to compete in digitally disruptive environments, companies must build multiple strategies backed by core digital business agility. The following capabilities are key to building digital business agility:

• Hyperawareness
• Informed Decision-Making
• Fast Execution

Hyperawareness is being fully alert to the internal & external environments, particularly to changes that spotlight opportunities or risks. Data & information collection are the core for this principle, which can be accessed by humans, IoT machines or sensors. Key metrics to measure hyperawareness include the company’s ability to capture insights about/from its employees, customers, partners internal operating environment, competitors and about new digital technology & business trends.

Informed decision-making pertains to collaborating & empowering people to make quick, evidence-based decisions. Decision making power needs to be pushed to the edge of the network (Intelligence at the Edge) to gain speed & accuracy. Informed decision making is measured by the business’s ability to make decisions quickly & based on analytics, to empower people, to share information across organization and to access & display important data in real-time.

Finally, fast execution is putting decision into practice rapidly, mobilizing resources dynamically and continuously monitoring options and progress against goals. Fast execution is measured by our ability to act quickly based on new information, turn decisions into actions, dynamically acquire & allocate people & resources, continuously learn & adapt.

IMD’s digitization piano is one of the tools to help companies navigate the “how” of digital transformation. This tool breaks down the organization’s value chain into 10 distinct keys, broadly categorized under Digital Strategy, Digital Engagement & Digital Enablers. Companies should play multiple keys simultaneously instead of trying to address one specific area in isolation as they navigate their digital transformation journey.

Finally, at the core of transformation, the critical questions that companies must ask are:

• How to use digital technologies to improve performance?
• How to use digital technologies to build a more agile strategy?
• How do we digitize across organizations?

____________________________

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

BACKGROUND: Michael Wade is a Professor of Innovation and Strategy at IMD and holds the Cisco Chair in Digital Business Transformation. He is the Director of the Global Center for Digital Business Transformation, an IMD and Cisco Initiative. His areas of expertise relate to strategy, innovation, and digital transformation. Previously, he was the Academic Director of the Kellogg-Schulich Executive MBA Program in Canada. Michael has been nominated for teaching awards in the MBA, International MBA, and Executive MBA programs. He obtained HonoursBA, MBA and PhD degrees from the Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, Canada.

CLIENTS & INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE: At IMD, Michael teaches in several open programs and has directed partnership programs related to strategy and digital business transformation with Vodafone, Ooredoo, AXA, Honda, Zurich Financial Services, Credit Suisse, KONE, and Richemont, among others. He co-Directs IMD’s Orchestrating Winning Performance and Leading Digital Business Transformation programs. He provides consulting services, executive education and expert evaluations to several public and private sector organizations. He has lived and worked in Britain, Canada, Japan, Norway, and Costa Rica.

RESEARCH AND THOUGHT LEADERSHIP: Michael has published works on a variety of topics, including digital business transformation, innovation, social media marketing, information systems strategy, eCommerce, and SME performance. He has more than 50 articles and presentations to his credit in leading academic journals such as Strategic Management Journal, MIS Quarterly and the Communications of the ACM. One of his articles was among the top 20 cited articles in business, management and accounting worldwide for five years, according to Scopus (the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature). He’s published eight books, more than twenty case studies and appears frequently in the mainstream media. His Latest book is Digital Vortex: How Today’s Market Leaders Can Beat Disruptive Competitors At Their Own Game. He was named one of the top ten digital thought leaders in Switzerland by Bilanzmagazine in October, 2016.

APPROACH “I define digital business transformation as organizational change through the use of digital technologies to materially improve performance. It is a simple definition, yet difficult to master. Certain industries have been on the vanguard of this changes. Other lag behind. Eventually, digital will become the ‘new normal’. I enjoy working with organizations to help them come to terms about what digital transformation means for them, and then to take appropriate action.”