Adapt or die... how companies (should) deal with digital disruption

There are plenty of articles and studies about how digital disruption is affecting If you only look at Artificial Intelligence and Big Data, the Singularity University recently concluded that Health Care, Banking and Insurance are at the verge of a major shift. But then, one might argue about what exactly is meant by digital disruption.

The report “Building your digital DNA, Digitaltransformation in progress” offers a great overview of the industries that will be most impacted by digital transformation, and the timeframe with which they will so:

You can argue about the exact position of the industries on the chart – I for one would give healthcare and government a place more to the upper left of the spectrum – but the importance of this graphic is the relative positioning of the industries.

The report gives a great number of case studies of companies adapting and preparing to this shift. But more importantly, through these case studies the authors have been able to distill four ‘types’ of digital businesses:

Most companies will recognize themselves in the ‘centralized’ and  ‘champions’ model, though the fully prepared companies will behave like the ‘business as usual’ (BAU) model, where “business is flexible and responsive to change at all levels” and teams “form and disband dynamically according to business needs”.

There are very little certainties in these rapidly evolving times, but certainty is that most (not all) businesses will need to get to this BAU mode in order to survive.

Read the full report here.