Digital Doesn’t Have to Be Disruptive

by Nathan Furr and Andrew Shipilov

NEAR THE END OF A LONG LUNCH overlooking tranquil Lake Geneva, a senior vice president at a leading global company confessed to us: “We have a dozen committees on digital transformation; we have digital transformation initiatives; we are going full steam on digital transformation . . . but no one can explain to me what it actually means.”

At a very basic level, the answer is simple: The much-used term simply means adapting an organization’s strategy and structure to capture opportunities enabled by digital technology. This is not a new challenge—after all, computers and software have been around for decades and have brought changes both to products and services and to ...

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