What you don't know can hurt you. When it comes to digital transformation, many top enterprise executives may have to learn this lesson the hard way.
Good times or bad, digital transformation is a firmly established reality. Yet many business leaders are still struggling with how to approach, deploy, and manage a seemingly endless string of disruptive technologies.
A recent survey of 1,186 global senior executives, conducted by IT services provider DXC Technology, and research and thought leadership firm Leading Edge Forum, found that although most business leaders understand the benefits of digital transformation, many continue to struggle with cultural, technological, and market-oriented changes.
The way business was done yesterday is no longer sufficient today, observed Adrian Penka, vice president and North America operations strategy lead at Capgemini Invent, firm Capgemini's digital Innovation and transformation unit. The COVID-19 crisis has driven home the fact that businesses need to innovate in order to survive and prosper. "The current situation requires leaders who swiftly react to the new circumstances, put key digital transformation initiatives on their agenda, and inspire their employees to adapt to the new way of working," he said.
Marco Iansiti, a professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School, noted that uncertainty and fear can drive leaders to proceed with caution. "There's much reluctance to up-end mission-critical processes ... as technology is not always as reliable and failsafe as it needs to be." Iansiti, co-author of Competing in the Age of AI, also believes that leaders should become more proactive. "We need leaders that appreciate the challenges of data-centric models, from algorithmic bias to cybersecurity, and from privacy to worker retraining," he advised. "There's a need for a generation of leaders who are familiar with both the potential and challenges of artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on business and organizations."
Many business leaders delay implementing powerful new technologies until competition forces their hand. Dustin York, an associate professor and director of undergraduate and graduate communications at Maryville University, points to Eastman Kodak as a classic example of a company that lost everything by failing to jump on a powerful new technology -- one that was actually developed in-house. "They had the ability to make digital pictures way before it was mainstream, but they were afraid of what digital would do to their company," York explains.
