How to Read and Respond to Weak Digital Signals

In the digital age, when competitive landscapes can be transformed overnight, the need to spot and react to changes early has never been greater.

Venkat Venkatraman

February 22, 2019

One of the most difficult challenges companies face is knowing when the environment they’re used to operating in is shifting. Often, identifying the change requires reading and acting upon ambiguous, inconclusive bits of information that are mixed into the “noise” of everyday activities and therefore easy to overlook.¹ The “weak digital signals” may emerge initially as blips, but they can grow swiftly to transform the very foundations of an industry.

To companies in the packaged software industry in the 1990s, ...