Digital Transformation — Seldom have two words been so abused

Anywhere and everywhere you look you find articles, videos, and presentation regarding Digital Transformation. Even in an industry so full of buzzwords as information technology, seldom have two words been more overused and abused.

Oh, it’s not that they don’t accurately reflect a specific type of transformation that companies must inevitably go through to remain competitive in an ever-changing exponential World. The real issue is that so few people understand that it is a transformation that is specific to each business and particular to each organization.

Frequently we are bombarded by service offerings and materials so similar as to seem cast from a single mold. Many created by people with so little understanding of the phenomena that are pushing us forward at breakneck speed as to be unable to explain what the word exponential, in Exponential Technologies, actually means.

About a year ago I was walking at the airport with a colleague when we ran into a billboard advertising a book about Digital Transformation that was published by a company we were both helping through the process of trying to understand how they could go through their transformation. Since that company, had not yet even figured out how to go through their transformative experiences, it seemed obvious that someone from Marketing had decided to commission such work as to prop up their image as a technology thought leader. While amusing to us, and being the subject of not too few jokes, this type of behavior does a great disservice to the uninformed who might give credence to the contents of the book, considering it based on the company’s own experience and the potential weigh of its well-known brand.

I can’t think of better words to describe how a company must come to understand the way in which digital technology is beginning to permeate everything we do. What we must overcome is the lazy thinking that it is just about creating apps, or selling subscriptions to services.

Depending on what industry you operate in it might be about digitally editing DNA to create new organisms, or it might be about locally 3D printing products from downloaded blueprints. Addictive manufacturing is poised to smash through several branches of traditional manufacturing over the next few years, for example.

We must look beyond what is ordinary in our day to day lives and try to imagine what might be usual in ten, twenty or fifty years. Consider how the advent of passenger jet airplanes changed the way people interact and flow around the World. Now try to imagine how much could change from having access to space become as ubiquitous access to different cities via airplanes.

Consider that SpaceX, the leading pioneer in reusable rockets, has obtained agreement from the FAA to launch over 4200 communications satellites to provide genuinely world-wide Internet connections. Imagine how many things might be different in the World based only on the fact that you will be able to have instant access anywhere on the Globe. How many applications continue to follow to operate in an offline mode in the areas where cell reception is bad or nonexistent? Now imagine how such applications will be impacted by being able to send and receive data in real-time continuously.

Not over 15 years ago the Human Genome Project was completed, at the cost of about 3 Billion dollars, after 13 years of work to map the human genome completely. Now, we do it in about two hours at the cost of a few hundred dollars. The impacts of this technology evolution alone will be staggering as more medical treatments can be tailored to specific individuals and previously unknown genetic disorders might be treatable before any symptoms manifest.
These are digital transformations which are starting to shake up established players in multi-billion dollar industries and are not the kind that you adapt to by creating an app, or a wearable device. These are the kinds of transformations that make you have to reassess everything you do and how you do it and eventually even question the feasibility of your business. Kodak was not able to challenge its business model, while Fuji was. Today Fuji is still with us, invested in other activities while Kodak went bankrupt.

The central tenet of Digital Transformation is a new way to look into the future to have a better understanding of the implications of technological evolution and the corresponding societal changes it brings about. Once you manage to achieve that, it is time to rework organizational culture. Without working on Culture, no company can successfully navigate the straits of change, for as was so candidly put by Peter Drucker: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” No amount of planning and consultants and training will be able to help a company change if the company’s culture is working against it.