“Yesterday’s tentative approaches won’t deliver; you need absolute clarity about digital’s

demands, galvanized leadership, unparalleled agility, and the resolve to bet boldly.”
by Tanguy Catlin, Laura LaBerge, and Shannon Varney

DIGITAL STRATEGY: THE FOUR FIGHTS YOU HAVE TO

WIN Paritosh Kumar
Roll number:200301015
Introduction:

• Digital strategy can’t be incremental since the mismatch between most incumbents’ business models and
digital futures is large with the technology and environment changing too quickly.
• Unfortunately, most strategic-planning exercises do generate incrementalism where resources do not move
between business units in an organization and the cause of such inaction may be individual interests, group
dynamics and cognitive biases.
• Digital strategy demands special attention.
• Leaders in many organizations lack clarity on what “digital” means for strategy. They underestimate the
degree to which digital is disrupting the economic underpinnings of their businesses. They also overlook the
speed with which digital ecosystems are blurring industry boundaries and shifting the competitive balance
• The only way for leaders to cut through inertia and incrementalism is to take bold steps to fight and win on
four fronts:
FIGHTING IGNORANCE
• Awareness of what digital is and ways it can change
business operation and competitive context.
• Lack of grounding slows down the rate at which a business
deploys new digital technologies.
• Having only a remedial understanding of trends and
technologies may lead to irrelevant investment and cost to
company.
• It can be done by-
Raising technology IQ:
• Company’s collective technology IQ,
• Educate leadership about relevant digital trends and
technologies.
• Assessment of digital capabilities and an evaluation of the
company’s culture
Overcoming competitive blind spots
• Start thinking as digital disruptors do.
• Understand digital’s impact on its current lines of business
• Exploring possibilities that can emerge when digital,
regulatory, and societal trends collide with today’s value
chain.
FIGHTING FEAR
• Getting left behind by digital first movers can be
hazardous to your company’s future.
• To make big digital moves, company must fight the fear
that their top team and managers will inevitably
experience.
• Redesign key processes across your organization to
encourage and accelerate change.
• It can be done by-
Honest dialogue:
• Organizing a top-team effectiveness program to surface
anxieties, build awareness of how they were affecting
decision making, and define how leaders could remain
relevant.
• Discuss behavioral shifts needed to gain “ownership” of
digital initiatives.
Support networks:
• Form communities to share best practices.
• Bring in speakers with specialized skills to reinforce
importance of digital change.
• Support networks dovetail with, and bolster, the digital
IQ–raising efforts.
FIGHTING GUESSWORK
• Pursuing an aggressive digital strategy involves leaps into
the unknown where it is likely to move into new areas and
overhauling existing businesses with new technologies
• Ambiguity and the need for speed sometimes gives rise to
guesswork and anxiety about the success.
• It can be done by-
Building the proof points:
• Anchor strategy decisions to a thesis about the business
outcomes that different digital investments will produce.
• A well-articulated view of the outcomes can help track how
well the strategy is working.
• Proof points must be grounded in digital reality.
Pilots and stage gates:
• Leverage availability of real-time data and the opportunities
they provide for experimentation.
• Hard data and insights on how things are performing rather
than relying on guesses would give more confidence to
push cutting-edge solutions.
• Develop a series of rigorous stage gates for investments and
break big bets into smaller investments.
• Testing allows to learn from mistakes and helps temper
risks of bold investment.
FIGHTING DIFFUSION
• Effective strategy requires focus, but responding to
digital inevitably risks diffusion of efforts between
reinventing the core by digitizing and creating innovative
new digital businesses.
• It can be done by-
A portfolio approach:
• Going through portfolio business by business, focusing
on three questions: Which emerging digital products and
services are missing from the portfolio? Which product
offerings and elements of the existing operating model
should be digitized or fully digitally reengineered to
improve customer journeys? And what areas should be
abandoned?
Big, mutually reinforcing moves:
• Systematic evaluation of value-pool opportunities across
the portfolio help to understand the need of change and
willingness to invest in digital businesses.
• Leverage foundational digital capabilities.
• Deploying the capabilities at scale across existing
businesses
THANK YOU