MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Digital Success Requires Breaking Rules

In an earlier column, I discussed how digital technologies (social, mobile, analytics, cloud, internet of things, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and many more) are instigating two different transformations at established companies: one to become digitized (for operational excellence), the other to become digital (for rapid innovation). Both transformations are essential to sustained business success, but the technologies are the only thing that digitization and digital transformations have in common.

Companies need to continue to run much of their business with the top-down, disciplined approaches and accountabilities that are essential for digitization — but which don’t work for digital. There’s an inherent dilemma in this: Management needs to implement strict standardized processes, while also hoping the company will be agile and constantly able to change. These are basically opposites.

About the Author

Jeanne Ross is principal research scientist for MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research. Follow CISR on Twitter @mit_cisr.

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