The duct tape guide to digital strategy

​The value of technology is found in the new capabilities it enables for a business, not simply in owning it. As with duct tape, a single technology may elicit many possible strategic moves.

Digital strategy is about adapting the organization to a changing environment in a way that leads to a sustainable competitive advantage. The theory of affordances may help organizations tackle the digital strategy development process proactively.

The term affordances was created by psychologist James J. Gibson to describe the possible ways that humans or other animals can interact with their environment. It treats the animal and its environment not as fundamentally separate from one another but as inextricably entangled. The environment determines the actions available to the animal while the animal can alter the environment in ways that change its capabilities for acting. For example, an affordance of the electric lightbulb is the ability for people to see or read at night, which, in turn, allows employees to work in nondaylight hours.

In his 1979 book, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Gibson offers the following definition of affordances:

This concept of affordances was subsequently picked up by the fields of computer science and information systems to describe how people interact with technology. An affordance perspective suggests that people and information technology are fundamentally intertwined with one another. Technology changes the possible actions of people and organizations, while the ways in which people and organizations use technology change the effects of the technology in practice.

More recently, this perspective has been extended to the organizational level. Technologies can change the organizational environment in which they are used, enabling a new set of affordances. As companies learn and employ new digital affordances, organizations will need to change in response. A key implication of an affordance perspective on digital strategy is that it shifts the focus from the features of the technology to a focus on how technology enables new strategic actions for people and organizations to engage.

At the most basic level, an affordances perspective suggests that merely owning and implementing technology is not enough to deliver business advantage. While this insight may seem obvious at first glance, it is striking how often organizations behave as though it isn’t. They either believe that the mere adoption of the latest technology will improve their business prospects, or they focus all their efforts on implementation, without applying the time or resources to make the types of organizational changes needed to benefit from the possibilities the technologies offer.

Perhaps the most paradigmatic example of a nondigital object enabling multiple actions is duct tape. Duct tape arrived on the scene in the 1940s as a durable and flexible tape that could be used in various wartime applications. The original version was army green and its original name, duck tape, reflected its water-repellent character. Post-World War II, the product found new uses in construction, including holding metal ducts together. A change in color to gray and a change in name to “duct tape” followed.

Even though the early civilian application for duct tape was to literally seal ducts, the possible actions this object enables in different settings is staggering. It can be used as a clothing decoration, to build wallets, to fix various issues in spaceflight, to stabilize helicopter rotors, to craft vessels for carrying water, and even as a treatment for warts.

To say there is only one “right” use for duct tape is silly. Likewise, it is silly to say there is only one “right” way to use certain technologies. Social media, for example, is a digital equivalent of duct tape. Some companies—like many of the major media outlets—use Twitter to broaden the reach of their content.