Technological Innovation and Digital Transformation

Overview

• Technological innovation causing disruption across various industries.
• Competitive dynamics shifting and new business models emerging.
• Incumbent companies scrambling for digital transformation.

Challenges in Digital Transformation

• Many organizations struggle with effective digital transformation.
• Success rates for transformation efforts are low (< 30%).
• Large organizations see lackluster performance despite costly efforts.

Keys to Successful Digital Transformation

• Future ready companies need ambidexterity and business-IT fusion.
• Need for agility and adaptability in organizations.
• Ambidextrous design for both exploiting current business and exploring new growth.
• Rethinking IT's role from supporting to driving business innovation.
• Shift from business-IT alignment to business-IT fusion.

Case Study: DBS Bank

• Large commercial bank in Singapore with presence in Greater China, Southeast Asia, South Asia.
• Achieved value-creating digital transformation; share price more than doubled.
• Named "World’s Best Digital Bank".
• Transition from 85% outsourcing to 85% insourcing in IT infrastructure.
• Created ambidextrous business foundation; focus on entrepreneurial qualities.
• Whole enterprise transformation approach; pervasive digital mandate.
• Shift from "digital first" to "digital to the core".
• Equipping employees with digital skills enterprise-wide.

Key Takeaway

• Organizations most effective when design matches environmental demands.
• DBS Bank serves as an example of a future-ready business.
• For further reading: "Designing a Future-Ready Enterprise: The Digital Transformation of DBS Bank" by Siew Kien Sia et al., in California Management Review, Volume 63, Issue 2.