So you have a digital strategy. Kodak did too, and that didn't prevent the Rochester film giant from disappearing. There are lessons to be learned by looking more closely to the story.
After months of hesitation, you finally nailed it. Digital will be everywhere. You will digitize your customer communication, and revamp your Web site. You will have an app, you will connect to Whatsapp, and what not. Oh, and there will be big data everywhere. You've got it all covered.
In considering your grand digital strategy, you may want to take a look at a once-great company, Kodak. As everyone knows, Kodak is now defunct and the cause of its demise lies in the digital revolution. The story we all know goes as follows: Kodak' business model was based on selling films for cameras. As the digital revolution took off, the need for film disappeared. Kodak didn't notice, and slid into irrelevance. By the time they woke up, they didn’t stand a chance.
The real story is different: Kodak invented the first digital camera in 1975; Kodak's top management was warned by an internal report that the market would become digital as early as 1995; and it was Kodak which commercialized one of the first digital cameras in 1990. In fact, for all these years, Kodak was at the forefront of the digital revolution.
And boy did it have a strategy! By 1994, Kodak even had a digital-savvy CEO: George Fischer, recruited from Motorola, a technology giant of these days. He had a PhD from MIT, and he made sure that their Board was advised by John Scully, the former CEO of Apple. With the right people at the top, full awareness of the unfolding digital revolution and the leading-edge R&D, Kodak unleashed a very aggressive digital strategy. Kodak invented the first megapixel sensor in 1986. A digital camera was produced with Apple in 1994. That same year, they had 23 distinct digital scanning projects underway. Kodak introduced the first Wifi-equipped digital camera in 2005. By the early 2000s, Kodak had added the Net to its digital strategy, liking and various social networks to its photo booths. And the list goes on. In fact, Kodak was so aggressive with its strategy that it even produced a film to make it know, in 2007. Titled "Kodak is not playing grab ass anymore" it has become a poster child of a firm desperate not to fall behind a disruption it unleashed to the world.
And yet, fall behind it did.
