Winning the digital transformation race: Three emerging approaches for
leading transition
Research defines three new pathways for organizations to manage digital transformation

Date:
July 28, 2020
Source:
City University London
Summary:
New research has outlined three new approaches that digital
innovators can take to reduce the risk of failure and seize
competitive advantage in the industry.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
New research from Professor Feng Li, Chair of Information Management at
City's Business School has outlined three new approaches that digital innovators can take to reduce the risk of failure and seize competitive advantage in the industry.


==========================================================================
With the coronavirus pandemic forcing many organisations to operate
remotely, adoption of the latest secure technologies has taken on greater importance for many industries -- presenting great opportunities for
providers of these technologies, but also great challenges of meeting
demand, staying ahead of competition and surviving in a fast-moving environment.

Professor Li interviewed senior leaders at eight global digital champions including Amazon, VMWare, Slack, Alibaba and Baidu to find out what
their strategies were for innovation.

The findings can be summarised into three main approaches that are
emerging:
* Innovation by experimentation: a continual process of developing
ideas on
a small scale without high upfront investment, and then leveraging
and rapidly scaling up those that turn out to be successful.

* Radical transformation through incremental approaches:breaking
up large
scale projects into strategic investments with measuring capability
at each stage allows companies to radically innovate several
projects at once in small steps. This method also mitigates the
risk of a single large project failing and allows businesses to
judge which projects will yield the highest returns or biggest
impact on investment.

* Dynamic sustainable advantages through portfolios of temporary
advantages:due to the fast-paced nature of the digital economy,
competitive advantages are often short-lived. Implementing a
strategy for successive and incremental temporary advantages can
yield significant long-term gains.

All three strategies use elements of diversification and portfolio
management to mitigate costs of failure, as is often seen in investor portfolios.

Professor Li said the nature of digital innovation lent itself to a
highly dynamic approach.

"Digital technology is a highly volatile, fast-paced sector," he said.

"It is important for companies in the field to recognise that competitive advantages are short-lived, and that there is no 'end-point' for
innovation.

Throwing all your weight behind one project as a start-to-end activity
is highly risky and serves little long-term benefit even if successful.

"Sustainability can only be achieved by continuously reinventing the
wheel while seeking new investment opportunities.

"The coronavirus pandemic has both challenged and opened doors of
opportunity to traditionally non-digital organisation to innovate methods
of banking, education and even living room gym classes.

"This is placing added pressure on industry incumbents to stay ahead of
new disruptors, putting further emphasis on the need to have new irons
in the fire and the ability to change direction quickly and efficiently
between innovations."

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by City_University_London. Original
written by Hamish Armstrong. Note: Content may be edited for style
and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Feng Li. Leading digital transformation: three emerging approaches
for
managing the transition. International Journal of Operations &
Production Management, 2020; ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) DOI:
10.1108/IJOPM-04- 2020-0202 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200728113511.htm

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