The goal of most digital business transformations is to improve operational efficiency and customer experience. These two dimensions create a 2 x 2 framework that describes four types of firms, with future-ready firms—enterprises that have figured out how to succeed on both dimensions at once—in the top right quadrant.
CLASSIC TOPICS
PATHWAYS TO FUTURE READY
Future Ready firms are ambidextrous, using digital technologies and practices to speed up and cut costs as well as to innovate and delight customers.
| Future-ready firms are able to innovate to engage and satisfy customers while at the same time reducing costs. Their goal is typically to meet customers’ needs rather than push products, and customers can expect to have a good experience no matter which service delivery channel they choose. On the operations side, the firm’s capabilities are modular and agile; data is a strategic asset that is shared and accessible to all in the firm who need it. These firms realize they can’t do all of this alone and are organized to leverage partners to add more value to customers. |  |
| We have identified four pathways that firms can take to become future ready. Each pathway begins in the bottom left quadrant (silos and spaghetti) and involves significant organizational disruptions—we call them explosions—on the way to becoming future ready. |  |
NOW AVAILABLE!
Future Ready: The Four Pathways to Capturing Digital Value
By Stephanie L. Woerner, Peter Weill, and Ina M. Sebastian
We designed this book to be a playbook for companies to succeed in the digital economy, illustrated with motivating examples and data analyses that show how top performers operate differently. It provides a common language for a digital business transformation, and a framework that will help guide and motive employees along the journey. We include self-assessments to help leaders benchmark against top performers in order to assess opportunities and the progress of their transformation to becoming future ready.
(In Australia, order here.)
An audio version will be released January 10, 2023! Preorder now at Rakuten Kobo, Libro.fm, or Audiobooks.com.
Digital Media Kit for Future Ready
This collection of materials for journalists and media outlets includes author bios and headshots, key graphics, book endorsements and quotes, and more!
Review the Digital Media Kit
Future Ready, Pathways, and Explosions
Learn more about the four pathways, including the implications of each for employee experience, and dive deeper into the four explosions that firms must manage as they progress along the journey.
Case Studies on Digital Business Transformation
These case studies offer insights into the important dimensions at which a firm must excel in order to be competitive, as well as the organizational disruptions that every firm must manage as part of the transformation journey.
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