Marketing 5.0

CHAPTER 5The Digital-Ready Organization: One Strategy Doesn't Fit All

In the 1950s, a group of scientists experimented on monkeys on Kojima island. The scientists regularly dropped sweet potatoes on the beach sand for the monkeys to eat. One day, a young monkey named Imo learned that the potatoes would taste better if she washed them first. Imo began teaching her close friends and older family members about the new food hygiene habit. The change started slowly. But finally, when the majority of monkeys adopted the practice, the rest began to accept it as the new norm. The phenomenon is known as the hundredth-monkey effect, which refers to the required critical mass for a behavioral change to happen.

Similarly, younger generations are the ones leading the way when it comes to digital transformation. Generation Y and Generation Z combined are the biggest consumer market in history. Businesses are aligning their strategies to the preferences of these generations. And they are also the biggest in the workforce and are influencing companies from within. Thus, they have a tremendous impact on bringing digital technologies into the mainstream. But for the digital lifestyle to be the new norm, the change must be massive and evenly spread across generations and social-economic status.

The digitalization process happens fairly quickly around the world. On the one hand, everyone seems to embrace the digital lifestyle and cannot imagine living without it. And yet, the inertia still exists. ...