Lesson Transcript

Traditional business models are undergoing a revolution. It is no longer enough to study the lessons of the past to have a successful enterprise. Your MBA is unlikely to teach you everything your business truly needs today because the pace of change in the digital age is unprecedented. Businesses need to think in a new way to survive. I call it the innovation culture.

Digital innovation is happening right now across the world. Investors flock to start-up fairs in the hope of backing the next big thing because we all know that it is out there somewhere. And that is a significant problem for any business. No one knows where successful innovation comes from, but it doesn’t seem to be happening inside many established businesses. People are in fact leaving large organizations to be able to innovate because there isn’t a way for them to bring innovation through from the inside.

If we were able to find a way to harness innovation, to bring it into the culture of our workplaces, to make it something that underpins everything we do, then our organizations could become agile enough to survive the disruption that has toppled some of the biggest business names in the world. 

The answer is to create and implement a digital strategy.

A digital strategy probably isn’t what you think it is. There are two prevalent misconceptions we need to dismantle.

Some companies think that having a digital strategy means they need to forecast what their business will be doing in, say, three years. However, there is such a wealth of existing technology out there that we have more than we can actually use. It’s not finding new technology that is the issue. The real challenge is utilizing what’s available in a way that gives us a competitive edge. Whatever you want to do, the technology to do it probably already exists. 

A second common misconception is that digital strategy is a synonym for digital marketing. It isn’t. While we all agree, it is essential to engage with your audience digitally using a range of marketing methods; your marketing department is not your company. It is just one aspect of it, and it is not the only digital one.

A digital strategy is not merely a way of selling your product or services, and it is not about investing in new technology. It is about understanding your business processes from the top to the bottom in a way that leads to better use of what you have. It’s about how we operate and how we can improve these processes to create a competitive advantage, save costs, or streamline the generation of revenue.

Your digital landscape is far broader than your marketing choices. Digital applications and systems are embedded in many other departments across your company. You may have a system in the warehouse. Another system in human resources. Another one in distribution and so on. 

On reflection, we can see that you have probably already invested in numerous digital solutions to improve your productivity. What hasn’t happened is for these assets to be connected up so that opportunities and efficiencies can be found across the company. 

In my experience, the current digital situation in many companies is one of duplication and confusion. It often happens in large organizations, that two departments commission two different companies to build the same digital asset, or system that already exists will be re-implemented because someone didn’t know it was there in the first place. It sounds obvious, but this happens every single day.

As you can see, the consequences of a company lacking digital coordination and unity are reduced efficiencies, higher costs, and a restricted ability to innovate. Time spent reinventing the wheel is time wasted.

The solution to this is to implement a digital strategy. In a way, this is the next generation of a business strategy. It involves three key steps and a culture shift that enables you to plan, implement, and measure improvements as well as freeing up your team to spot opportunities to innovate. It’s an iterative process that should embed itself into the company culture. Employees from the CEO to the shop floor will be in a position to spot chances to innovate and, more importantly, they will have the framework to innovate in.

Step one is to define your business objectives. 

Now we understand that a digital strategy is a way of understanding your business processes and of utilising your digital assets to benefit the bottom line, it is essential to establish what the company objectives are so that every department can assess and audit what digital assets it has and what might be available from elsewhere in the organisation. 

Step two is to create a set of guidelines within which the business moves towards achieving these objectives. 

Every step taken needs to be tied into a business objective. These are your targets, and the steps taken need to be trackable and measurable to show how the changes you implement are impacting those targets positively. A comprehensive set of guidelines will ensure the implementation is a concerted effort with identifiable results.

Step three is to roll it out in achievable steps. 

It is important to take an iterative approach as digital disruption means we need to be agile and able to change direction. By rolling out with many small achievable steps, we can accommodate and incorporate developments instead of having to start again.

This course takes you through the process of embedding a digital strategy and innovation culture into your business so that you can not only feel prepared for disruption but make innovation possible. 

You may even become disrupters yourselves.