Driving Digital Strategy

1. Digital transformation requires reimagining your entire business model

"Digital transformation requires strengthening the core and building for the future at the same time."

Reimagine your business scope. Companies must broaden their lens and redefine their business scope beyond traditional industry boundaries. Amazon expanded from online retail to cloud computing, streaming services, and original content creation. John Deere transformed from a farm equipment manufacturer to a precision agriculture technology provider.

Rethink your value creation and capture. The digital era demands new business models. Examples include:

• Product-as-a-service: Philips offering "lighting as a service" to airports
• Freemium: Dropbox providing free basic storage to attract paying customers
• Subscription: Adobe shifting from one-time software sales to monthly subscriptions

Companies must identify complementary products/services and leverage network effects to create sustainable competitive advantages in the digital age.

2. Platforms and ecosystems are reshaping competitive landscapes

"Platforms provide unique advantages compared with traditional business models."

Platform benefits. Platforms aggregate fragmented supply and demand, providing:

• Greater access to sellers
• Better value to consumers
• Market growth by lowering transaction costs
• Asset-light scalability
• Innovation through large developer networks

Ecosystem strategy. Companies are moving from products to platforms:

• GE: Predix platform for industrial internet applications
• Goldman Sachs: Opening structured notes platform to competitors
• Mastercard: Creating a "landing dock" for startups to connect with its infrastructure

Successful platform strategies require careful governance, balancing openness with control, and managing complex partnerships in the ecosystem.

3. Open innovation accelerates problem-solving and product development

"No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else."

Leveraging external expertise. Open innovation taps into diverse knowledge outside the company:

• NASA crowdsourcing solutions for International Space Station challenges
• P&G sourcing 35% of innovations from external partners
• General Mills seeing 100% better performance from open innovation products

Benefits of open innovation:

• Diverse approaches to problem-solving
• Access to rare but valuable ideas
• Better customer insights from users
• Self-selection of motivated solvers

To implement open innovation effectively:

1. Define clear, modular problems
2. Create unambiguous evaluation criteria
3. Design appropriate incentives and intellectual property agreements
4. Overcome organizational resistance to "not invented here" syndrome

4. Smart manufacturing and predictive maintenance drive operational excellence

"Industry 4.0 represents a paradigm shift from centralized to decentralized production, where a machine no longer simply processes a product but where the product communicates with the machine to tell it exactly what to do."

Smart factories. Siemens' Amberg plant exemplifies Industry 4.0:

• 75% of operations digitized and automated
• Components communicate with machines to optimize production
• 99.99885% defect-free production
• 8.5x output increase without adding space or people

Industrial internet. GE's Predix platform enables:

• Real-time monitoring of industrial assets
• Predictive maintenance to reduce downtime
• Optimization of asset performance

Benefits:

• Improved productivity and quality
• Reduced maintenance costs
• Enhanced flexibility in manufacturing
• Data-driven insights for continuous improvement

5. Omnichannel strategies create seamless customer experiences

"The goal of a company should be to remove friction for consumers, and technology should be used to do exactly that."

Complementary channels. Instead of viewing channels as substitutes, companies should leverage their complementary strengths:

• Products: Online for variety, offline for immediate availability
• Customers: Target different segments through appropriate channels
• Customer journey: Support different stages (awareness, consideration, purchase)

Fusion of physical and digital. Innovative approaches include:

• Tesco's virtual stores in South Korean subway stations
• Sephora's mobile app for in-store product information
• Amazon Go's checkout-free shopping experience

Key principles:

1. Solve customer pain points across channels
2. Create consistent brand experiences
3. Leverage data to personalize interactions
4. Optimize channel-specific strengths

6. Data-driven marketing enables personalized customer engagement

"Every brand in the world wants to engage with the consumer, but have the brand managers paused to ask why a consumer would want to engage with a bar of soap, a can of soda, or a bottle of beer?"

Provide value to customers. Successful engagement strategies focus on solving customer problems:

• Unilever's Kan Khajura Station: Free entertainment for media-dark regions in India
• Mastercard's Priceless Surprises: Connecting people to meaningful experiences

Shift from storytelling to story-making. Engage customers in two-way conversations:

• Create broad, emotionally resonant messages
• Encourage user-generated content and participation
• Ensure consistency with brand values

Leverage micromoments. Identify critical touchpoints in the customer journey:

• Map consumer intent and context
• Provide relevant, timely information
• Create snackable content for short attention spans

7. Measuring marketing effectiveness requires new metrics and experimentation

"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is, I don't know which half."

Beyond traditional metrics. Digital marketing demands new measurement approaches:

• Look beyond clicks and impressions to actual business impact
• Consider long-term effects, not just short-term conversions
• Account for cross-channel interactions and attribution

Experimentation and causal inference. Rigorous testing is crucial:

• A/B testing for tactical optimizations
• Randomized controlled trials for strategic decisions
• Quasi-experimental designs when full randomization is impractical

Key challenges:

• Separating correlation from causation
• Accounting for long-term and indirect effects
• Integrating online and offline data
• Balancing privacy concerns with data collection needs

8. Managing digital transition demands organizational agility

"Digital transition involves managing existing business and building for the future at the same time. It is like changing the engine of a plane while in flight."

Navigate the transition period. Expect a temporary decline in profitability:

• Communicate the long-term vision to stakeholders
• Set realistic expectations for the transition timeline
• Invest in new capabilities while optimizing existing operations

Speed of transition. Consider three key factors:

1. Consumer behavior trends
2. Competitive landscape
3. Internal capabilities and organizational readiness

Organizational design. Create structures that foster innovation:

• Avoid isolating "digital" initiatives in separate units
• Build a "landing dock" for new ideas to connect with core business
• Encourage cross-functional collaboration and knowledge sharing

9. Artificial intelligence and automation are transforming talent management

"Routine and repetitive parts of jobs will be automated, and people will need to retrain themselves for the nonrepetitive aspects of the job."

Impact on jobs. AI and automation will affect most industries:

• 47% of US jobs at risk of automation (Oxford University study)
• 30% of tasks in 60% of occupations could be computerized (McKinsey)
• Shift from routine to non-routine, creative, and interpersonal skills

Data-driven talent management. New approaches include:

• Gamification for candidate assessment (e.g., Knack)
• AI-powered resume screening and job matching
• Predictive analytics for employee retention

Continuous learning. Organizations must prioritize skill development:

• Personalized learning paths based on individual needs
• Reverse mentoring programs
• Partnerships with educational institutions for lifelong learning

To thrive in the digital age, companies must embrace these transformative changes across their entire organization, from business models to operational processes to talent management strategies.

Last updated: April 27, 2025