The Board Directors You Need for a Digital Transformation | HBR

July 14, 2017
  • Digital thinker. The director has had little direct interaction with digital as an operator but conceptually understands the digital environment. They have been a board director or adviser in a digital business but are not a digital native.
  • Digital disruptor. The director has been deeply embedded in digital, often with experience from a pure-play company. This type of leader typically has less general management breadth.
  • Digital leader. The director has had substantial experience running a traditional business that leverages digital in a significant way (retail or media, for example). It’s likely that this person has less hands-on digital experience but has managed disruption as a general manager.
  • Digital transformer. The director has led or participated in a transformation of a traditional business. Typically the person does not have the seniority of a digital leader but is more digitally astute.

Digital transformation needs to be wholesale. Digital innovation needs to permeate and recast every aspect of the business and the board. Companies that do so will thrive in the new world, and those that do not, sooner or later, will fail.

Source: The Board Directors You Need for a Digital Transformation | HBR

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The case for digital reinvention | McKinsey & Company

February 12, 2017

This finding confirms what many executives may already suspect: by reducing economic friction, digitization enables competition that pressures revenue and profit growth. Current levels of digitization have already taken out, on average, up to six points of annual revenue and 4.5 points of growth in earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT). And there’s more pressure ahead, our research suggests, as digital penetration deepens.

Source: The case for digital reinvention | McKinsey & Company

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25% of CEOs’ Time Is Spent on Tasks Machines Could Do | Harvard Business Review

February 6, 2017

Like President Johnson in the 1960s, we see that automation could make a major contribution to productivity and prosperity… For companies around the world, automation will offer the potential to capture substantial value — and not just from labor substitution. These technologies enable higher throughput, enhanced quality, better outcomes, greater safety, and the opportunity to scale up or adopt new business models.

Source: 25% of CEOs’ Time Is Spent on Tasks Machines Could Do

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