Читать книгу Building a Digital Future - Lipi Sarkar - Страница 22

In most cases, companies use digital technology to counter the disruption of their businesses by competitors, existing or start-up, or use the same digital technology for the purpose to disrupt or create markets they are not operating in. Through the development of new business models, while utilizing digital technology, they gain a bigger market share, reduce costs, simplify the way of doing business, and most of all improve customer satisfaction and engagement. This sounds simple, and it is something every business owner is striving for.

Digital transformation, however, according to Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen,⁸ is “widely misunderstood” and commonly applied to businesses that are not “genuinely disruptive.”

Just look at the Fortune 500 list, where at least half of the companies have been replaced by new digital business model organizations since 2000. This does not mean they folded up shop. It just shows that they were bypassed by those organizations that were able to adapt and/or create a completely new business model in addition to their existing core business.

We are in the fourth industrial revolution, and it is not limited to just industries. It is a service revolution across all the sectors, and it is evident with plenty of casualties in the business world, filing of bankruptcies by iconic brands like BHS, Poundworld, Toys R Us, Thomas Cook, Roberto Cavalli, and the list is endless.

There is a growing list of start-ups with unicorn status (start-ups valued at over a billion dollars or more), and these businesses build by disrupting traditional businesses through technology (e.g., WeWork, Airbnb, WeChat). As referred to in Figure 1.1, businesses need to innovate and transform business models and also transform the technology ecosystems.