Designed for Digital - (Management on the Cutting Edge) by Jeanne W Ross & Cynthia M Beath & Martin Mocker (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

One of Forbes's Top Ten Technology Books of the Year

How to redesign 'big, old' companies for digital transformation and success--with examples from 300+ business leaders and 30+ organizations, including Amazon Uber, LEGO, and Toyota.

Most established companies have deployed such digital technologies as the cloud, mobile apps, the internet of things, and artificial intelligence. But few established companies are designed for digital. Full of practical advice and real-life examples of digital transformation, this book is an essential guide for retooling organizations for digital success through 5 key building blocks:

- Shared Customer Insights
- Operational Backbone
- Digital Platform
- Accountability Framework
- External Developer Platform

In the digital economy, rapid pace of change in technology capabilities and customer desires means that business strategy must be fluid. As a result, business design has become a critical management responsibility. Effective business design enables a company to quickly pivot in response to new competitive threats and opportunities. Most leaders today, however, rely on organizational structure to implement strategy, unaware that structure inhibits, rather than enables, agility. In companies that are designed for digital, people, processes, data, and technology are synchronized to identify and deliver innovative customer solutions--and redefine strategy. Digital design, not strategy, is what separates winners from losers in the digital economy.

Designed for Digital includes case studies from Amazon, BNY Mellon, DBS Bank, LEGO, Philips, Schneider Electric, USAA, and many other global organizations. Drawing on 5 years of research, the book is an essential guide for companies that want to disrupt rather than be disrupted in the new digital landscape.

Review Quotes

One of Forbes's Top Ten Technology Books of 2019

"While David Teece has argued business capabilities need to be dynamic, we all know in the digital age they need to be increasingly be digital. In my weekly discussions with CIOs, they tell me the starting point for a business transformation is not technology but people and processes. In Designed for Digital, the authors provide a digital business architecture but more importantly a unification theory for management in the digital age. This theory shares the role of executives in enabling experimentation, in innovation delivery, and in creating the platform for digital business offerings."
--Myles Suer, #CIOChat Facilitator and CIO.com Contributor

"In Designed for Digital: How to Architect Your Business for Sustained Success, Jeanne Ross, Cynthia Beath and Martin Mocker offer a contemporary digital model for enterprises. Those who can obtain it will have the 'right to win' and who cannot will increasingly find themselves subjected to wave after wave of digital disruption. Interestingly, the authors not only argue for the importance of architecture, but they also argue for a revised theory of management. This makes the book relevant to IT professionals and business leaders interested in digital transformation."
--CIO

"Sick of being told your business should be more like Apple, Amazon, Uber, or Airbnb? Mystified about how to apply their examples to your big, older company's digital transformation work? If so, read Designed for Digital: How to Architect Your Business for Sustained Success, the new MIT Press book by Jeanne W. Ross, Cynthia M. Beath, and Martin Mocker."
--The Enterprisers Project

"In Designed for Digital, the authors note that much of what companies believe to be digital transformation falls short. They implement cloud technologies, artificial intelligence, the internet of things, or mobile apps, but, at their core, they operate as they have always operated. This book offers recommendation on how to fundamentally retool the enterprise to achieve true digital success."
--Peter High, Forbes

About the Author

Jeanne W. Ross is Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research. Cynthia M. Beath is Professor Emerita at the University of Texas McCombs School of Business. Martin Mocker is Professor at ESB Business School at Reutlingen University, Germany, and Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research.