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Adrian Leek
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3147915/it-management/5-digital-business-predictions-for-2017.html

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Kim Hassan
https://www2.deloitte.com/au/en/pages/building-lucky-country/articles/digital-disruption-harnessing-the-bang.html

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The digital transformation framework

Deloitte has been at the vanguard of digital disruption and advising local and international clients in this area for more than 15 years now.

From being the first professional services firm to acquire its own in house online and mobile consulting capability some 14 years ago (www.deloittedigital.com) to more recently publishing and receiving global recognition for its work analysing the impacts of digital disruption across 18 industries: "Digital Disruptions: Short Fuse, Big Bang".

Now,leveraging this history, thousands of relevant client projects around the World and drawing on the input of a number of multi-disciplinary Deloitte experts, Deloitte has developed a Digital Transformation Framework designed to assist organisation's more methodically consider the impacts and opportunities presented by Digital Disruption.

This tool includes more than 300 pages of content and analysis and a framework that identifies the major building blocks of digital maturity. Its premise is to encourage organisation's to think about digital disruption and transformation more broadly that just a website or app, looking specifically at what organisations can do across the three macro levers of revenue growth, cost reduction and organisational agility.
Are you making the right investments? Are you doing enough?
To discover more or schedule an opportunity to apply the digital transformation framework to your business please contact us today.

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Digital disruption: Harnessing the 'bang' | Deloitte Australia | Lucky Country series

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Deloitte has been at the vanguard of digital disruption and advising local and international clients in this area for more than 15 years now. From being the first professional services firm to acquire its own in house online and mobile consulting capability some 14 years ago (www.deloittedigital.com) to more recently publishing and receiving global recognition for its work analysing the impacts of digital disruption across 18 industries: "Digital Disruptions: Short Fuse, Big Bang".

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Elicia Jones

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Data is the driving force for the way we work, play, and interact with each other, so much so that it has led one writer to call this age of digital disruption and innovation our era's version of the Industrial Revolution, adding that we are living in what may be the "most transformable" period in all of history. This digital disruption is changing how we do just about everything.

Digital Disruption Definition

The term "digital disruption" is believed to have come from the disruptive innovation concept, which was introduced in The Innovator's Dilemma, by Clayton Christensen. The standard definition of digital disruption is the change that occurs when new digital technologies and business models affect the value proposition of existing goods and services.

The front runners in our most current round of digital disruption are mobile and the Internet of Things (IoT), according to Bill Bodin, CTO at Kony, Inc.

"With mobile, we now have an expectation for enterprise to deliver multi-channel solutions," Bodin says. "Employees and consumers alike expect a premium experience no matter what device they're using. With the IoT, we see distributed computing and applications taken to a new level of convenience and personalization."

How to Tackle Digital Disruption

Digital disruption affects the enterprise by forcing a wholesale change of existing processes and technologies or in creating entirely new operational models.

"Automotive companies have created cabins which are now interactive and in many ways dependent on mobile devices. Railways track inventories, speed and safety in real time. And health care with personal mobile monitoring is now extending the quality and length of lives," says Bodin. "These scenarios and many more are wrapped in security implications and privacy concerns, but all these concerns are addressable when each solution is developed with a platform that combines strong client security with solid back end service safeguards."

Enterprises should see digital disruption as an opportunity, Kevin Strohmeyer, senior director of product marketing, Workspace Services, VMware, adds. "There is a new wave of process automation possible when information is collected or transactions are made in the moment. As a result, we could see fewer and fewer process jobs, freeing the enterprise to invest its human capital where it counts, at the point of value."

Digital disruption creates a complete end-to-end change in how you do business. For the so-called legacy players, such as those in the telecoms industry, these changes have produced an unfamiliar digital landscape and are forcing a change in how to become digital players in this new ecosystem.

"This is why the need for a standardized and common language will become increasingly important from a business, technology, and marketplace perspective," says Craig Bachmann, senior director of the Open Digital program at TM Forum.

The IoT (or as Bachmann called it, IoE, Internet of Everything) is a driving force behind the digital disruption, providing a limitless opportunity to innovate and create disruptive technology services and products.

"One of the biggest opportunities for disruption in the realm of IoE is determining how to monetize it," says Bachmann. "New IoE business models lack the simplicity of traditional pipeline supply chains, and as technology provides a digital set of capabilities to overlay complex business models, we will see significant changes brought on by new ways of doing business."

Expect the IoT (or IoE) to become an even more integral part of digital disruption as technology advances. There will be more sensors, more data collected, and increasingly smarter results based on all of this information. But while this presents unprecedented opportunity for enterprise use, there will remain the need to be aware and vigilant of this vast amount of information.

Understanding how to manage the flow of data from the IoT is one of the challenges of digital disruption. While new technologies have the ability to change the way we work for the better, Paul Rigby, SVP, Business Operations with Vitalyst Response, explains, many enterprises often struggle to see the full value of these tools because employees do not have the motivation, and more importantly, the skills and proficiency necessary to fully utilize those tools. Tech can disrupt work in a negative way just as much as it can positively.

"When this happens, productivity is hindered, collaboration falters, and business goals go unmet," Rigby says. "Once motivated to take a step into a digital direction, enterprises must lay the right foundation to enable employees to maximize their productivity potential by giving them access to training and learning, self-help resources and how-to support so they can better understand and optimize the tools at their disposal."

The move to digital has the power to unlock the full potential value of data. However the desire to gather, utilize and store all of this data comes with the risk that this data can be stolen.

"In fact, not only will the volume and range of new data used and stored by enterprises put pressure on existing security technology and practices, but that same increase in data quantity and value will actually provide even greater incentives for attackers to steal information," says Geoff Webb of Micro Focus. "If at its heart digitalization increases the value of data, and it does, then it also acts as a siren song to hackers who will want that very same data."

Digital Disruption to Revolutionize Business

Despite the challenges, digital disruption is set to revolutionize business. The best way to leverage disruptive digital opportunities, says Webb, is to take a systematic approach to evaluating how to move from simply "running IT more efficiently" to really driving disruptive change in the business.

"The time for the CIO to assert control and drive meaningful business change is now," Webb says. "Digitalization presents the path to directly and deeply connect with customers, and to more fully understand how to deliver value to the customers you have."
Sue Marquette Poremba has been writing about network security since 2008. In addition to her coverage of security issues for IT Business Edge, her security articles have been published at various sites such as Forbes, Midsize Insider and Tom's Guide. You can reach Sue via Twitter: @sueporemba

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Data is the driving force for the way we work, play, and interact with each other, so much so that it has led one writer to call this age of digital disruption and innovation our era's version of the Industrial Revolution, adding that we are living in what may be the "most transformable" period in all of history.

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Business Strategy In An Era Of Digital Disruption 

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Business Strategy In An Era Of Digital Disruption 

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Danny Kivell

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The threat is real

According to Geoff Colvin of Fortune Magazine, successful incumbents are 'more likely to follow the trajectory of Kodak.' Or have what Geoffrey Moore likes to call a 'Kodak Moment.' For this reason, Geoff says it should come as no surprise that Fortune 500 CEOs say their single biggest challenge is 'the rapid pace of technology change'.

Can incumbents respond?

Responding effectively, Geoff claims, requires businesses with the ability to 'continually disrupt themselves from within'. Geoff believes this requires business leaders that can see their businesses as disrupters see them. Clearly, businesses built-to-last can never stop their engine of self-disruption.

Are there examples of incumbents that have proactively practiced self-disruption? Jeanne Ross of MIT CISR has actually researched incumbent enterprises that have taken concrete steps to respond to the emerging digital economy's mandates. Jeanne Ross initiated this research after finding successful incumbent enterprises that believed their success was not guaranteed in the digital economy.

Jeanne found that digital strategies that work are inspired by the capabilities of powerful readily available technologies including social, mobile, analytics, cloud, and the Internet of Things. Typically, she says incumbent responders use these to create a rallying point for their strategic plan. They want to be the Amazon or Uber of their industry. Jeanne believes the fact that there is not much distinction between rallying points is okay. Jeanne claims this is because competitive advantage is not going to be about strategy but instead it will be about business execution. And more importantly, she believes firms that are about being the best at execution will eventually be taken in different directions than other market participants.

Competitive advantage today requires executing integrated capabilities

Jeanne says today no competitive advantage comes from a single business capability. This, she says, is why Uber has so much competition. But for incumbent companies, advantage comes from integrating established set of capabilities. 'Competitive advantage comes from taking capabilities that others may or not have and integrating them in ways that make something extraordinarily powerful'. This in Jeanne's mind is how 'established companies can best startups because startups can only do one thing well'. Integrating business capabilities provides a whole value proposition that is hard for others to copy.

Jeanne says that there is one more thing that existing companies need to get good at. They need to become responsive. Startups are constantly monitoring and learning what to do next. She says think about Christopher Columbus landing in the New World and what an established company and a startup would do. The startup would pivot and learn how to do something differently. Established companies need to learn in her opinion how to do this too.

Two go forward strategies

In the digital economy, Jeanne sees two strategies as possible. She says that established companies must choose one.

Customer engagement

Digitized solutions

Customer engagement requires that every day, you wake up trying to figure out what you can do next to make customers' love you. The great example of this is Nordstrom. Jeanne says that Nordstrom a few years ago was clearly being disrupted by Amazon. And Nordstrom responded by creating personalized shopping experiences. These were enabled by combining capabilities around a transparent shopping experience and transparent supply chain. This, of course, is layered on top with predictive analytics. This has allowed Nordstrom to predict what customers need and how to get it to them regardless of channel.

The second strategy is digitized solutions. Here you figure out what customers need that they may not know they need. GE is doing this today as an industrial company. They are moving the value from the physical asset to asset performance management. According to Vijay Gurbaxani of the University of California Center for Digital Transformation, businesses need to reimagine their product offerings. They need to ask how digital capabilities (software) can be added, especially to physical products, in order to change their value proposition to customers. At the same time, businesses must look for opportunities to redesign their existing business models and revenue sources. Vijay believes that 'companies that win going forward need to be software companies.'

Bill Ruh of GE agrees with Vijay. He says GE sees with analytics and data, the value of their offerings is transferred from the things they build to the services that surround the things we build. For this reason, the center point for all of their businesses is becoming their digital service businesses. Today, we see 'the game is about creating the most efficiency around an asset--a machine, a factory, etc.' Bill says to continue to have value and not get eclipsed, GE has needed to own the software that surrounds its products. Software today is how value is derived from an asset.

Teaching elephants to dance

Geoffrey Moore suggests that leaders at 'incumbent enterprises' are not stupid. These companies are making investments in their future. What these incumbent enterprises face, Geoffrey believes is a 'crisis of prioritization'. They experience a battle for resources, especially in their go-to-market functions. Geoffrey says the problem is they typically they try to make sure every credible disruptive innovation gets its fair share of support. This leads incumbent enterprises to peanut butter their resource allocations rather than ' playing to win' on a strategic investment area.

It is for this reason that Geoffrey says that startups typically beat existing companies - startups are not conflicted in their approach. All the enemies are outside for a startup. Meanwhile, incumbent enterprises are pulled in too many directions at the same time. Given this, Geoffrey suggests when it comes to making a big bet on the next big thing, an existing enterprise can pick only one transformative bet at any one time to rollout. This is how to avoid a crisis of prioritization.

Parting remarks

As we have reviewed, the risk of disruption is real and tangible. It has to be considered now rather than tomorrow. To do this well you need to think more like a startup but create value through integration. There are two strategies going forward. Once we you have your strategy, you need to just take one innovation at a time forward if you want to dance as an elephant.

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Business Strategy In An Era Of Digital Disruption | Articles | Digital

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According to Geoff Colvin of Fortune Magazine, successful incumbents are 'more likely to follow the trajectory of Kodak.' Or have what Geoffrey Moore likes to call a 'Kodak Moment.' For this reason, Geoff says it should come as no surprise that Fortune 500 CEOs say their single biggest challenge is 'the rapid pace of technology change'.

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Digital Disruption is Gonna Get You Unless You Prepare Your Brand Now

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Digital Disruption is Gonna Get You Unless You Prepare Your Brand Now

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Jacob Hogg

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Tweet

Disruption surrounds the marketplace. As companies face disruption in their industry, the race to stay ahead of or beat the competition is quickening. Software is one of the ways companies competitively automate, manage and analyze business processes, data and content and scale operations. And to successfully compete in this increasingly digital world, enterprises need to transform slow, error-prone operations from manual, analog processes to automated digital workflows and document generation.

However, as various departments in companies buy software applications, often the lines of business are choosing the best of breed solutions and platforms which don't necessarily easily integrate with each other or the main IT systems. This results in companies having many separate software systems. With people distributed over large geographies, it can be difficult to coordinate work across the business and thus defend against competitors.

While obtaining the right software for each department and use case is important, this often leaves the organization without a way to easily connect the work flows across departments and lines of business to get the return on investment. What is the key to winning the digital transformation race? A digital business process flow platform.

Businesses that drive process efficiency and effectiveness across desperate software solutions and across every aspect of their business will be uniquely qualified to position themselves to exceed and excel. To do this, companies need a platform to digitally integrate, sync and create sophisticated business processes independent of the variety of different software solutions throughout the various departments in a company.

The issue is however, not just to connect SaaS applications, but to also provide process automation to make sure the processes from each of those applications work together well. Without a digital workflow and content automation (WCA) platform and corresponding analytics, it can be very difficult to make sure the investments the organization has made in separate software solutions are actually returning the investment. Nintex does just that.
Competitive Positioning
Nintex's key differentiator is they offer a digital transformation platform comprised of Nintex Workflow Cloud and Nintex Hawkeye. The host of Nintex's digital SaaS connectors allows clients to rapidly build and deploy a digital workflow and content automation (WCA) and cloud transformation platform without having to write code. The business result is the ability to acquire customers faster, increase the pace of innovation, as well as control and management expenses. The platform allows organizations to automate their business processes quickly and easily. And the drag and drop interface encourages quicker adoption of the Nintex solution. Importantly, any workflow automated with Nintex Workflow can be deployed to native mobile platforms (Android, iOS and Windows) in a rapid and simple manner.

The Nintex platform automates processes on and between enterprise content management systems and collaboration platforms, connecting on-premises, cloud workflows and mobile users. Two hundred of the Fortune 500 companies use Nintex, including more than 7,000 public and private organizations in 90 countries, running millions of workflows daily.

For companies that are not ready to move everything to the cloud, Nintex also allows companies to create workflows that stretch across both cloud-based and on-premises systems and services, to distribute work to multiple sites for multiple purposes and move data and workflows to the cloud when they are ready.

Nintex's overall power is as a Digital Business Platform (DBP). Nintex combines powerful Workflow and Content Automation (WCA) capabilities in one platform. (Editor's Note: WCA is an emerging technology category that consolidates the legacy technology markets of Business Process Management (BPM) and Customer Communications Management (CCM).) Nintex offers advanced WCA for its easy-to-use workflow and document generation capabilities and workflow analytics (workflow process intelligence).
Target Markets and Industry Vertical Solutions
Target markets include Communications and Media, Education, Financial Services, Government, Healthcare and Life Sciences, Legal, Manufacturing, Professionals Services, Retail Services and Technology industries. Nintex solutions are designed for a range of lines of business within organizations, including Sales and Marketing, Finance, Human Resources, IT and Administration, Customer Service, Field Service and Safety.

High-payback document processes that are faster to implement with a system like Nintex include those in Table 1, customer-facing processes as well as back-office processes (see Table 2b and 2b.) What's important to note is that the implementation timeframe and costs are fractions of a traditional enterprise-level IT system and instead of using a single, formal, top-down development effort, they are evolved with rapid iterations. This takes a page out of the lean-process, design-thinking community, where rapid iterations and pivoting is key to success and gives large organizations not used to the start-up mentality the edge to be more competitive, quicker.
Customer References
In speaking to Nintex customers our research found that many of the gains came from having an easy process to execute on their digital transformation. This might include moving to the cloud, reducing the number and complexity of workflows like creating and approving a press release, signing and approving contracts, reducing resources and reassigning them to more important jobs as well as reducing the number of software applications used by the company.

The savings in time for enhanced workflows advanced the company's position in the marketplace, get to market faster and beat the competition. In addition, IT departments were able to be more focused on the needs of the business versus being taxed with the maintenance of many separate software applications. This took their time and focus away from the direct needs of the business. By implementing Nintex, the relationship between the lines of business and IT were greatly improved. With the ever changing dynamics in IT, the IT department needs to be highly agile and flexible in the solutions they provide for the business. Nintex provides IT with what they need to deliver the business what they need. This makes IT more relevant than ever, which is especially key when many lines of business are buying their own software. IT can play a key role in the success of the business.

Are you looking to digitally transform your business? Have you determined which processes are slowing the digital transformation of your business? And do you have a solution to take those manual, error-prone processes and digitally enable them? This report will help you in choosing a vendor that can help you with just that.

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Digital Disruption is Gonna Get You Unless You Prepare Your Brand Now

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Tweet Disruption surrounds the marketplace. As companies face disruption in their industry, the race to stay ahead of or beat the competition is quickening. Software is one of the ways companies competitively automate, manage and analyze business processes, data and content and scale operations.

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What So Many Strategists Get Wrong About Digital Disruption

Jayde Orenzuk

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"Digital is coming and it's coming fast"; "No industry sector is immune to disruption"; "One thing is certain about digital transformation: It will be a big change for your entire organization"; "Digital will disrupt your industry."

Judging by the headlines and opening lines of recent articles and business books, digital is about to disrupt your industry and you with it - unless you act now (and buy the book).

And, in fact, I don't disagree - at least not entirely. It would be terribly naïve to assume that nothing in your business will need to change. However, some of the most common beliefs about how this will happen, repeated by conference speakers, self-proclaimed gurus, and consultants, have been oversimplified, misunderstood, or misapplied. In most "normal businesses," the impact of digital will be different than for digital behemoths like Amazon, Google, and Facebook. Here are four to watch out for.

1. Network effects: The winner does not always take all.

The first common misconception is that in a digital world, the winner takes all. Many business models that make extensive use of digital technology have network-type properties. This means that the more users and content-providers you sign up, the better the business model will work. People flock to Facebook, for example, because most of their friends and family are on it, which in turn allows Facebook to collect a large amount of data about us, and attract advertisers. Given these network effects - as many proclaim - markets get "winner takes all properties": the largest network will win, crowding out the remaining competitors (like MySpace and Google+). That's the reason a company like Uber needs to grow big, fast - and why it's investors didn't worry about losing money early on. And they are losing money: Uber's losses in just the first half of 2016 totaled over $1.27 billion.

That logic sometimes holds, but more often it does not. That is because networks are rarely exclusive. Travel to Singapore, for example, and you will see why. Every taxi driver has at least two mobile phones in her window: if a ride comes in on one network, she will click "accept" and turn the other off. Taxi drivers are invariably part of multiple competing networks. Similarly, most riders have at least two apps on their smartphone. When they require a ride, they will quickly check both apps and then use the one where a taxi is available quickest and at the best rate.

It is a misconception to think that network effects inevitably and always lead to a winner-take-all market. Sometimes that may be true, but there are at least as many network-type markets that can easily sustain a variety of players.

2. Complements are not substitutes.

A second misconception about digital disruption is that new technology will inevitably substitute old technology, rendering it obsolete. And indeed, we have witnessed e-mail replace the fax machine, flash memory supersede diskettes, and Wikipedia supplant the Encyclopaedia Britannica. However, industries with perfect substitutes are the exception to the rule; more often than not, digital will offer a new complement, rather than be a substitute. And this leads to a very different dynamic in the market.

Consider my own field of higher education. Many have been proclaiming that online learning will render lectures obsolete, that physical colleges will be replaced by online universities, and that MOOCs will be the new norm. However, this is not what seems to be happening, any more than the invention of the printing press supplanted in-person sermonizing in the 15 th century.

Business models and competitive advantages are complex systems. This means that they consist of multiple elements - some of them tangible; some intangible - which interact with one another, meaning that it is their combination that makes it work. In many markets, digital will just add one new factor to the mix or replace one element, but not often all of them. This means that in many businesses, digital technology will complement and alter the incumbents' existing resources and capabilities, but it certainly won't always entirely replace them altogether. Therefore, when making strategy, the focus should be on identifying complements, rather than assuming complete substitution.

3. Geography (still) matters.

A third common misconception about how digital disrupt is the assumption that geographic distance has lost relevance since we can now communicate instantaneously with anyone, anywhere around the world. Closeness still matters, however, even though we may not realize it ( research tells us, for instance, that people tend to underestimate the value of face-to-face communication).

Consider the management consulting industry. It has been a stable and quite homogeneous industry for many decades. The top firms have been doing pretty much the same type of thing for many years: matching consultants with clients. As a firm, McKinsey finds consulting projects and then matches them with people they have recruited and trained. And that's how they have always done it.

Recently though, some new companies have figured that, in today's digital age, there are other and perhaps more efficient ways of matching clients with consultants: online, through search terms, and by building rich databases. Some started digital platforms where supply and demand could match themselves. Others began databases of freelance consultants where they searched for suitable people for the projects they secured. However, most of these upstarts haven't been able to scale. What they have underestimated is the relevance of human interaction. In consulting work, the ability to read each other's emotions, intentions, and personalities is paramount, not only in terms of how consultants work with clients, but also for who gets matched with whom. In fact, you cannot successfully do consulting without them.

A company that understood this well is Eden McCallum. They too developed a business model based on a pool of freelance consultants, but rather than rely on a database, a matching platform, or some other digital search function, they understood that in their business - high end strategy consulting - there was no substitute for really knowing people. Therefore, they made the strategic decision to not rely on digital technology, but rather invest heavily in old-school getting-to-know-people: they developed a team of about 20 partners who maintain relationships and interact on a regular basis with about 700 consultants and over 300 major clients. They have opened up offices in London, Amsterdam, and Zurich and were recently highlighted in the Harvard Business Review by Professor Clay Christensen as the prime forerunner of a pending wave of disruption in the consulting industry - albeit with a completely non-digital business model. Eden McCallum shows that not all disruption need to be digital. Digital technology is more likely to make headway in industries and parts of your industry's value chain where face-to-face interaction is less relevant.

4. Speed? Not so fast.

One of the characteristics of the digital era, people continue to say, is that change is fast. And because the world is changing so fast, companies have to change fast too.

The first part of this claim - that the world is changing faster than ever - is in fact already dubious. Academic research suggests that the rate of change has not been increasing at all. Yet, even if your business is undergoing rapid change, this does not mean your company also has to change rapidly - quite the contrary probably.

If in a fast-changing industry you change equally fast, you're likely to be jumping onto all sorts of fads. Remember "Second Life"? The virtual world in which people could live through an avatar? It was supposed to be the next big thing. Dutch bank ING decided to act swiftly, and rapidly assembled a large team of dedicated executives who would explore the new technology, develop applications, and market its products in the virtual world. ING was determined to not miss the boat. But the boat never took off; Second-Life turned out to be a short-lived fad, which disappeared again after a few bleak years; and ING's big investment came to nothing.

Sometimes it is better to deal with contextual change and uncertainty by not changing at all - at least not immediately - but by giving things time to play out. If your company is in an environment in which new technologies come and go quickly, you may need to slow down rather than speed up. Given the level of market uncertainty, you will really only be able to distinguish the fads from the more substantial developments after some time has passed. It may sound paradoxical, but in an environment of rapid change, sometimes trying to match that speed can backfire.

Digital is changing the nature of competitive advantage in many businesses - just like major technological developments have done before. However, the change will not be uniform across all industries. Digital technology is affecting and will affect different businesses in different ways. Miss these nuances and your strategic decisions could lead you seriously astray.

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What So Many Strategists Get Wrong About Digital Disruption

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"Digital is coming and it's coming fast"; "No industry sector is immune to disruption"; "One thing is certain about digital transformation: It will be a big change for your entire organization"; "Digital will disrupt your industry."

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http://www.digitalbusinesslounge.com/

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http://www.information-age.com/digital-business-trends-2017-123463930/

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For some, the digital age is creating a degree of uncertainty, but it is also opening the door to infinite possibilities for businesses.

These businesses can expect to see the following trends emerge during the course of 2017, as organisations look to embrace the benefits of the digital era.

Renewed focus on ownership and access to data ─ and metadata

Control and ownership of data and metadata (data that provides information about other data) will emerge as a point of discussion and contention in the year ahead.

That's because data and metadata are the 'gold dust' that allow businesses to gain rich insights about their customers' behaviour, and thereby differentiate themselves in the market.

Truly digital businesses are ones that have their customers firmly in their sights; their entire business models are focused on tracking consumers as they move through the world meaning that new disruptors aren't the ones that own the technology, they're the ones that own (or intimately understand) the customer.

>See also: 3 digital transformation trends for UK businesses

The value of metadata is increasingly being recognised: while 'crunching' data allows business intelligence to be derived in order to make informed decisions, analysing metadata allows for specific behavioural patterns to be identified.

As a result, businesses are becoming increasingly protective of their metadata and wary of who has access to it. Organisations don't just want ownership and control of their data for compliance reasons but more importantly, to ensure they can perform analytics.

This is likely to trigger some interesting discussions between businesses and their cloud providers regarding the boundaries with respect to ownership.

If data and metadata are to be competitive accelerators for a business, it needs to devise a strategy to ensure that it has control of, and access to, all of it - not just what's being generated by the IT function.

The challenge here is that 'shadow IT' - which is the independent sourcing of IT services by business units - is rife in most organisations.

CIOs need to strike a balance between granting business units with the freedom to make application-related decisions, and ensuring that data isn't being dispersed in an uncontrolled manner by various parts of the business.

This may result in its loss and, ultimately, the erosion of its value.

In 2017, forward-looking CIOs will turn their attention to developing a data model that ensures continuity and governance with respect to data and metadata, and most importantly, that they can extract business value from these assets.

Automation and DevOps become a business concern

Automation and DevOps are no longer just relevant to application developers in the IT department - they need to be embraced at every level within organisations.

Over the last year, there's been a great deal of interest in new DevOps companies such as Puppet, Chef, and Terraform, and with good reason.

However, these new players' technologies shouldn't be dismissed as something of interest just to developers; automation has to be the very foundation of all IT systems and processes.

If a business is still operating in a traditional, 'analogue style' and the only part of the organisation that's embraced DevOps is IT operations, it'll result in a 'disconnect', as only part of the system is optimised.

Automation across the entire IT landscape, including development, provisioning, and operations for both on-premise and cloud-based systems will provide the agility and the cost benchmarks required to be competitive.

>See also: 10 trends that will influence analytics in 2017

To become a true digital business, the entire operation needs to function like a well-oiled DevOps practice, one that involves continuous delivery, automated testing, and constant, iterative updates and improvements.

Infrastructure and systems should be viewed as code that's program can be automated. If automation and DevOps become part of a business's mindset and culture, they'll become a source of competitive advantage.

Centralised transactional models will come under attack

In most industries, central 'authorities' exercise control over the community of participants and, as a result, claim that they have a reason to charge a premium for processing transactions.

These centralised transaction models are beginning to be disrupted by peer-to-peer platforms such as Blockchain, which support micro transactions that are virtually free of charge and can be performed in real time and at scale.

In the last few months Blockchain technology has extended beyond the financial services community into the world of consumer goods and other sectors. It's even being used to eliminate counterfeiting.

>See also: Want to be a digital business? Here are 5 technology elements you need

The fact that today's digital disruptors are themselves being disrupted by decentralised transaction models illustrates the potential impact of these platforms. Uber, for example, operates according to a centralised transactional model. It acts as the middleman, and takes its 20─30% cut of the cost of the ride.

Yet in some markets, Uber is being disrupted by a small start-up called Arcade City, which uses a Blockchain platform to provide the same service. In this case, the transaction is peer-to-peer: the firm opens up a ledger between the driver and the passenger directly. The passenger and the driver negotiate on the price and Arcade City takes its 5─10% of whatever price they agree upon.

The peer-to-peer transactional model will be fundamental to ensure the commercial viability of many Internet of Things (IoT) applications, where the payload data and the charge is minute, and time is of the essence. IoT, to be truly prolific, will require a peer-to-peer transactional model that is real-time, ultra-low cost or free, supports micro-transactions at scale, and provides the required security, all very much part of the promise Blockchain presents.

It is looking likely that in the year ahead, Blockchain, or a similar technology, will continue to disrupt centralised transaction models while also addressing another shortcoming in the industry: cyber security.

Over the last 10─15 years, the security sector has focused on protecting the perimeter and, more recently, on detecting intrusions and defending against them. However, the architecture for protecting important information hasn't changed fundamentally.

Technologies like Blockchain involve a distributed ledger and strong encryption, so there's no longer a central data environment to attack. This means they will inherently solve many of the current cyber threats we face.

Hybrid IT comes of age

Today, the world of IT is truly hybrid, meaning that a blend of on-premise and cloud-based assets need to be managed and cloud assets typically won't be delivered by a single provider.

This will have implications on the skills sets that businesses require. In the world of hybrid IT, on- premise assets need to be treated like software.

The focus will move from 'units of build' to entire workloads that are underpinned by a complete reference architecture that has been tested and validated, and that has clear scaling metrics.

These workload reference architectures are characterised by the level of automation at the provisioning, transition, and operational cycles. The way systems are designed and operated in a hybrid IT environment is vastly different, as is the breadth of skills required.

In a hybrid IT environment, people need to work in multi-party, multi-vendor ecosystems.

Therefore, individuals with a collaborative mindset are needed, as are those who can look inside and outside the organisation. In the world of hybrid IT, it's no longer about integrating systems, it's about integrating ecosystems.

>See also: The digital imperative: why business transformation is essential

This, of course, is easier said than done. Migrating to and managing a multi-party, multi-platform IT environment is complex.

Today, even large enterprises with substantial IT budgets - which in the past were able to keep pace with change with an insourced IT model - are realising that they don't have the skills required to operate a hybrid environment.

This may well stimulate discussions in the market about the merits of engaging with cloud brokers or specialist hybrid IT managed services providers that can offer an end-to-end 'service layer' or a lifecycle of managed services that includes service design, transition, and operational steady state services to eliminate this complexity.

Containers: the next big disruption in the data centre

Over the last year, the level of technological innovation - and adoption of those innovations - has reached an all-time high. As the rate of innovation accelerates, market 'disruptors' are starting to be disrupted by players using next-generation technologies.

The data centre provides an interesting example: Hypervisors and virtualisation have dominated data centre transformation discussions over the last few years.

These technologies haven't yet been fully adopted, but they're already being disrupted by containerisation.

>See also: The five key technology trends businesses must embrace to stay ahead

The interest in containers isn't surprising: they involve a micro-services architecture, the process of virtualisation can be leap frogged and the need for hypervisors can be eliminated entirely.

Containers are operating system-independent, so can be easily moved between the on-premise environment and different cloud providers.

The rise of containers has the potential to disrupt a number of current incumbents in the market. Containers will most likely be a key enabler of hybrid IT, especially in the data centre, allowing workloads to be moved between different compute environments with much greater ease than today's virtualisation environments allow.

This has been a major inhibitor of true hybrid IT to date. Once this barrier is removed, the market will see an acceleration in the adoption of hybrid IT models.
Sourced by Barney Taylor, managing director UK & Ireland, Dimension Data

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Digital business trends 2017 - Information Age

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For some, the digital age is creating a degree of uncertainty, but it is also opening the door to infinite possibilities for businesses. These businesses can expect to see the following trends emerge during the course of 2017, as organisations look to embrace the benefits of the digital era.

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By Chris Curran
http://www.ciodashboard.com/business-strategy/profile-of-a-digital-disruptor/

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Don't Be Left Behind: Embrace the Change or Become Obsolete

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Don't Be Left Behind: Embrace the Change or Become Obsolete

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Carl Neely Jr.

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Casey Adair
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gartnergroup/2014/05/07/digital-business-is-everyones-business/#1b70c7252d66

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Kaitlin McMillan

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For some, the digital age is creating a degree of uncertainty, but it is also opening the door to infinite possibilities for businesses.

These businesses can expect to see the following trends emerge during the course of 2017, as organisations look to embrace the benefits of the digital era.

Renewed focus on ownership and access to data ─ and metadata

Control and ownership of data and metadata (data that provides information about other data) will emerge as a point of discussion and contention in the year ahead.

That's because data and metadata are the 'gold dust' that allow businesses to gain rich insights about their customers' behaviour, and thereby differentiate themselves in the market.

Truly digital businesses are ones that have their customers firmly in their sights; their entire business models are focused on tracking consumers as they move through the world meaning that new disruptors aren't the ones that own the technology, they're the ones that own (or intimately understand) the customer.

>See also: 3 digital transformation trends for UK businesses

The value of metadata is increasingly being recognised: while 'crunching' data allows business intelligence to be derived in order to make informed decisions, analysing metadata allows for specific behavioural patterns to be identified.

As a result, businesses are becoming increasingly protective of their metadata and wary of who has access to it. Organisations don't just want ownership and control of their data for compliance reasons but more importantly, to ensure they can perform analytics.

This is likely to trigger some interesting discussions between businesses and their cloud providers regarding the boundaries with respect to ownership.

If data and metadata are to be competitive accelerators for a business, it needs to devise a strategy to ensure that it has control of, and access to, all of it - not just what's being generated by the IT function.

The challenge here is that 'shadow IT' - which is the independent sourcing of IT services by business units - is rife in most organisations.

CIOs need to strike a balance between granting business units with the freedom to make application-related decisions, and ensuring that data isn't being dispersed in an uncontrolled manner by various parts of the business.

This may result in its loss and, ultimately, the erosion of its value.

In 2017, forward-looking CIOs will turn their attention to developing a data model that ensures continuity and governance with respect to data and metadata, and most importantly, that they can extract business value from these assets.

Automation and DevOps become a business concern

Automation and DevOps are no longer just relevant to application developers in the IT department - they need to be embraced at every level within organisations.

Over the last year, there's been a great deal of interest in new DevOps companies such as Puppet, Chef, and Terraform, and with good reason.

However, these new players' technologies shouldn't be dismissed as something of interest just to developers; automation has to be the very foundation of all IT systems and processes.

If a business is still operating in a traditional, 'analogue style' and the only part of the organisation that's embraced DevOps is IT operations, it'll result in a 'disconnect', as only part of the system is optimised.

Automation across the entire IT landscape, including development, provisioning, and operations for both on-premise and cloud-based systems will provide the agility and the cost benchmarks required to be competitive.

>See also: 10 trends that will influence analytics in 2017

To become a true digital business, the entire operation needs to function like a well-oiled DevOps practice, one that involves continuous delivery, automated testing, and constant, iterative updates and improvements.

Infrastructure and systems should be viewed as code that's program can be automated. If automation and DevOps become part of a business's mindset and culture, they'll become a source of competitive advantage.

Centralised transactional models will come under attack

In most industries, central 'authorities' exercise control over the community of participants and, as a result, claim that they have a reason to charge a premium for processing transactions.

These centralised transaction models are beginning to be disrupted by peer-to-peer platforms such as Blockchain, which support micro transactions that are virtually free of charge and can be performed in real time and at scale.

In the last few months Blockchain technology has extended beyond the financial services community into the world of consumer goods and other sectors. It's even being used to eliminate counterfeiting.

>See also: Want to be a digital business? Here are 5 technology elements you need

The fact that today's digital disruptors are themselves being disrupted by decentralised transaction models illustrates the potential impact of these platforms. Uber, for example, operates according to a centralised transactional model. It acts as the middleman, and takes its 20─30% cut of the cost of the ride.

Yet in some markets, Uber is being disrupted by a small start-up called Arcade City, which uses a Blockchain platform to provide the same service. In this case, the transaction is peer-to-peer: the firm opens up a ledger between the driver and the passenger directly. The passenger and the driver negotiate on the price and Arcade City takes its 5─10% of whatever price they agree upon.

The peer-to-peer transactional model will be fundamental to ensure the commercial viability of many Internet of Things (IoT) applications, where the payload data and the charge is minute, and time is of the essence. IoT, to be truly prolific, will require a peer-to-peer transactional model that is real-time, ultra-low cost or free, supports micro-transactions at scale, and provides the required security, all very much part of the promise Blockchain presents.

It is looking likely that in the year ahead, Blockchain, or a similar technology, will continue to disrupt centralised transaction models while also addressing another shortcoming in the industry: cyber security.

Over the last 10─15 years, the security sector has focused on protecting the perimeter and, more recently, on detecting intrusions and defending against them. However, the architecture for protecting important information hasn't changed fundamentally.

Technologies like Blockchain involve a distributed ledger and strong encryption, so there's no longer a central data environment to attack. This means they will inherently solve many of the current cyber threats we face.

Hybrid IT comes of age

Today, the world of IT is truly hybrid, meaning that a blend of on-premise and cloud-based assets need to be managed and cloud assets typically won't be delivered by a single provider.

This will have implications on the skills sets that businesses require. In the world of hybrid IT, on- premise assets need to be treated like software.

The focus will move from 'units of build' to entire workloads that are underpinned by a complete reference architecture that has been tested and validated, and that has clear scaling metrics.

These workload reference architectures are characterised by the level of automation at the provisioning, transition, and operational cycles. The way systems are designed and operated in a hybrid IT environment is vastly different, as is the breadth of skills required.

In a hybrid IT environment, people need to work in multi-party, multi-vendor ecosystems.

Therefore, individuals with a collaborative mindset are needed, as are those who can look inside and outside the organisation. In the world of hybrid IT, it's no longer about integrating systems, it's about integrating ecosystems.

>See also: The digital imperative: why business transformation is essential

This, of course, is easier said than done. Migrating to and managing a multi-party, multi-platform IT environment is complex.

Today, even large enterprises with substantial IT budgets - which in the past were able to keep pace with change with an insourced IT model - are realising that they don't have the skills required to operate a hybrid environment.

This may well stimulate discussions in the market about the merits of engaging with cloud brokers or specialist hybrid IT managed services providers that can offer an end-to-end 'service layer' or a lifecycle of managed services that includes service design, transition, and operational steady state services to eliminate this complexity.

Containers: the next big disruption in the data centre

Over the last year, the level of technological innovation - and adoption of those innovations - has reached an all-time high. As the rate of innovation accelerates, market 'disruptors' are starting to be disrupted by players using next-generation technologies.

The data centre provides an interesting example: Hypervisors and virtualisation have dominated data centre transformation discussions over the last few years.

These technologies haven't yet been fully adopted, but they're already being disrupted by containerisation.

>See also: The five key technology trends businesses must embrace to stay ahead

The interest in containers isn't surprising: they involve a micro-services architecture, the process of virtualisation can be leap frogged and the need for hypervisors can be eliminated entirely.

Containers are operating system-independent, so can be easily moved between the on-premise environment and different cloud providers.

The rise of containers has the potential to disrupt a number of current incumbents in the market. Containers will most likely be a key enabler of hybrid IT, especially in the data centre, allowing workloads to be moved between different compute environments with much greater ease than today's virtualisation environments allow.

This has been a major inhibitor of true hybrid IT to date. Once this barrier is removed, the market will see an acceleration in the adoption of hybrid IT models.
Sourced by Barney Taylor, managing director UK & Ireland, Dimension Data

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Digital business trends 2017 - Information Age

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For some, the digital age is creating a degree of uncertainty, but it is also opening the door to infinite possibilities for businesses. These businesses can expect to see the following trends emerge during the course of 2017, as organisations look to embrace the benefits of the digital era.

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What is Digital Business and Digital Transformation? 

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What is Digital Business and Digital Transformation? 

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Hanna Lehman

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My first step in looking at an existing business through a digital lens is to ask two questions about how a startup might disrupt it by creating a competing digital business. A startup does not have sunk investments, legacy thinking, and existing practices that need to transform so if you can "blue sky" what would a startup do you should get some insights on what you need to become through a digital transformation. Digital transformation are the steps an existing "analog" business must perform across multiple domains in order to be a more competitive "digital" business.

What is Digital Business?

Before looking at digital transformation, it's worth considering how some of the experts define digital business. "Digital business is about the creation of new business designs by blurring the physical and digital world" says Jorge Lopez of Gartner. One thinks about digital supply chain management, context aware mobile experiences, and IoT using Gartner's definition.

"You must think of your company as part of a dynamic ecosystem of value that connects digital resources inside and outside the company to create value for customers" says Nigel Fenwick of Forrester. While this definition also conjures images of supply chain, Nigel's more critical point is that digital business must, "deliver a greater share of value to customers" in order to be competitive. In other words, customer experience and the value customers perceive through your channel must win a disproportionate market share versus direct and indirect alternatives.

Digital Business Disruption

This might be too abstract for some, so let's look at some example attributes of digital businesses

Digital businesses drives recurring revenue, often through subscription. Think Amazon Prime vs. buying goods/services through an ecommerce channel.

The most successful digital businesses are asset-light. Think Uber and AirBNB that market and sell services owned by individuals.

Algorithm driven experiences can "deliver a greater share of value". Think Waze with traffic routes based on traffic patterns and social clues delivered via your phone versus the Garmin GPS that we all had in our cars just a few years ago.

Digital disruptions can radically alter cost structures and price points. Think Etsy, Amazon Handmade, Craigslist, Zillow, LinkedIn, Monster, Autotrader, Cars.com and many other sites that decimated the newspaper classified ad business.

Digital business leverage new digital tools to raise the competitive table stakes. They enhance multi-channel customer experiences, engage workers to capture ideas, and automate production steps to improve quality.

IoT Sensors integrated with cloud data capture platforms like Amazon IoT help connect the physical to digital worlds. Not only is this a new source of competitive real time data, it is also a channel to provide additional context and intelligence to customer experiences. MIT calls this "Digital Ubiquity".

These examples hopefully illustrate the need to transform businesses and analog products and services to digitally driven experiences. If you consider just these examples - and there are many others - traditional businesses will face mounting pressure when competitors leverage digital competitors to a strategic advantage. What's more is that it is likely that multiple competitors will emerge applying these digital capabilities in different innovative ways and when that happens it creates new industry dynamics.

Digital Transformation is an Evolution

So my conclusion is that Digital Transformation is a necessity to stay competitive. It's not a one time transformation but a continuous evolution with milestones leading to an unknown ending. It needs ongoing funding, new talent, time to think and learn, experimentation, new ways to work collaboratively, and a culture of questioning, measurement and prioritization.

So now that I've answered the What and Why, my next posts will go into the How.

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bigdata cio cto cdo agile nosql devops database cmo digital transformation iot

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What is Digital Business and Digital Transformation?

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My first step in looking at an existing business through a digital lens is to ask two questions about how a startup might disrupt it by creating a competing digital business.

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The Industries That are Being Dirupted the Most by Digital

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The Industries That are Being Dirupted the Most by Digital

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Anthony Wasyl

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We're at a critical time for the digital economy. Digital is no longer the shiny front end of the organization - it's integrated into every aspect of today's companies. As digital technologies continue to transform the economy, many leaders are struggling to set a digital strategy, shift organizational structures, and remove the barriers that are keeping them from maximizing the potential impact of new digital technologies.

Every year, Russell Reynolds Associates surveys more than 2,000 C-level executives on the impact, structure, barriers, and enablers of digital technologies across 15 industries. The barometer below shows the percentage of executives surveyed who responded that their business would be moderately or massively disrupted by digital in the next 12 months, broken down by industry.

Unsurprisingly, the most disrupted organizations were B2C, with media being the most disrupted and telecoms and consumer financial services close behind.

90% of these organizations profess to having a digital strategy in place. But the sheer pace of change has created a skills gap, which is stopping many of these organizations from moving more quickly. Just over half of the respondents answered "yes" to the question "Do you have the right people to define your digital strategy?" It might be hard for people in HR to hear, but only 20% of those who responded said that their HR function was enabling them to transform, ranking them even lower than finance - an area not exactly known for its agility.

The most disrupted industries typically suffer from a perfect storm of two forces. First, low barriers to entry into these sectors lead to more agile competition. Secondly, they have large legacy business models which often generate the majority of their revenue. These organizations, therefore, have embedded cultural and organizational challenges when it comes to changing at the pace required.

At the other end of the spectrum, the industries that are least disrupted often have perceived higher barriers to entry, and a smaller part of their business that can be digitized. They are less affected, but not immune. Advances like 3D printing and EdX, the joint venture between MIT and Harvard, mean that even industrial production and education are seeing disruption, and are also having their own incumbents lead the disruption.

So what can business leaders be doing to meet the coming changes head-on? There are three levers organizations can pull to keep pace: catalytic roles; culture; and commitment.

1. Catalytic roles. New employees can act as catalysts, speeding up transformation. They are often brought in to disrupt traditional thinking and business models. Bringing in a Chief Digital Officer (CDO) is often the first step for many organizations. But there are two inherent challenges with bringing in a catalyst. First, the role must be positioned correctly, at the appropriate level in the organization, with sufficient scope, influence and sponsorship to make change happen.

The second challenge is finding the right person. It was with this in mind that Russell Reynolds profiled executives tasked with digitally transforming long-established firms, who are often chosen to overcome organizational inertia and drive enterprise-wide digital transformation and innovation. The results are a unique combination of psychometric attributes that broadly fall into five categories. The first two are unsurprising: these leaders are significantly more innovative and disruptive, being 56% more inclined to cut through bureaucracy and 29% higher in their willingness to challenge traditional approaches. These attributes alone are not what make these leaders able to excel in their roles. These executives also score highly in their social adeptness, bold leadership, and determination. Stand-out attributes include being 29% more likely to take initiative and test limits, and 21% more able to adapt to different audiences. It is this combination that makes them able to drive transformation.

In the most progressive organizations, the CDO role is being absorbed, as standalone digital teams are integrated into the core business, leaving hybrid general managers in charge. CDOs beget the need for Chief Data Officers and Chief Analytics Officers. Moreover, new roles, such as the Chief Growth Officer and Chief Customer Officer are emerging. Tasked explicitly with driving growth, these roles combine strategy, corporate development, investment, and operations, as companies seek to find meaningful new revenues streams.

2. Culture. You can't talk about digital without also mentioning its lifeblood - data. The link between the impact of data-driven organizations and culture may not be immediately apparent, but through interviews with senior leaders, we have seen that data quickly shifts the power structure in an organization. Decisions that had previously been deferred to those with years of experience and "a feel for what the customer wants" are now being challenged with data. And whoever has the data has the power to make strategic decisions. Organizations that foster a culture of making data-based decisions will be in a stronger position to weather the changes ahead.

3. Commitment. Digital should be built into the core strategy, systems, and processes of an organization. We see this in the recruitment of digital directors at the board level, which has risen steadily over recent years. Now, 23% of the largest 300 companies in the world have at least one Digital Director. Again, you can't become a more digital company without the right people leading the charge.

For the leaders who are anticipating massive digital disruption in their industries, these three levers are the key to realizing the potential that lies ahead. Hire the right people to bring about change. Create a culture that makes data-based decisions. And fully commit to becoming a more digitally adept organization, which starts at the board level. The organizations that don't do these three things will no doubt be left behind.

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The Industries That Are Being Disrupted the Most by Digital

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We're at a critical time for the digital economy. Digital is no longer the shiny front end of the organization - it's integrated into every aspect of today's companies. As digital technologies continue to transform the economy, many leaders are struggling to set a digital strategy, shift organizational structures, and remove the barriers that are keeping them from maximizing the potential impact of new digital technologies.

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THE 10 BUSINESS MODELS OF DIGITAL DISRUPTION (AND HOW TO RESPOND TO THEM)

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THE 10 BUSINESS MODELS OF DIGITAL DISRUPTION (AND HOW TO RESPOND TO THEM)

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Andrew Oswalt

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Disrupt or be disrupted. That's today's digital mantra.

But how do you disrupt?

Or how do you respond if you are being disrupted?

Here are 10 business models behind digital disruption, as covered by Jo Caudron and Dado Van Peteghem in their book Digital Transformation, and 7 strategies to respond to disruptors if you are getting disrupted, as enumerated by IMD's Professor Michael Wade, co-director of the IMD Leading Digital Business Transformation course.

10 Hyper-Disruptive Business Models

1. The Subscription Model (Netflix, Dollar Shave Club, Apple Music) Disrupts through "lock-in" by taking a product or service that is traditionally purchased on an ad hoc basis, and locking-in repeat custom by charging a subscription fee for continued access to the product/service

2. The Freemium Model (Spotify, LinkedIn, Dropbox) Disrupts through digital sampling, where users pay for a basic service or product with their data or 'eyeballs', rather than money, and then charging to upgrade to the full offer. Works where marginal cost for extra units and distribution are lower than advertising revenue or the sale of personal data

3. The Free Model (Google, Facebook) Disrupts with an 'if-you're-not-paying-for-the-product-you-are-the-product' model that involves selling personal data or 'advertising eyeballs' harvested by offering consumers a 'free' product or service that captures their data/attention

4. The Marketplace Model (eBay, iTunes, App Store, Uber, AirBnB) Disrupts with the provision of a digital marketplace that brings together buyers and sellers directly, in return for a transaction or placement fee or commission

5. The Access-over-Ownership Model (Zipcar, Peerbuy, AirBnB) Disrupts by providing temporary access to goods and services traditionally only available through purchase. Includes 'Sharing Economy' disruptors, which takes a commission from people monetising their assets (home, car, capital) by lending them to 'borrowers'

6. The Hypermarket Model (Amazon, Apple) Disrupts by 'brand bombing' using sheer market power and scale to crush competition, often by selling below cost price

7. The Experience Model (Tesla, Apple) Disrupts by providing a superior experience, for which people are prepared to pay

8. The Pyramid Model (Amazon, Microsoft, Dropbox) Disrupts by recruiting an army of resellers and affiliates who are often paid on a commission-only model

9. The On-Demand Model (Uber, Operator, Taskrabbit) Disrupts by monetising time and selling instant-access at a premium. Includes taking a commission from people with money but no time who pay for goods and services delivered or fulfilled by people with time but no money

10. The Ecosystem Model (Apple, Google) Disrupts by selling an interlocking and interdependent suite of products and services that increase in value as more are purchased. Creates consumer dependency.

7 Strategies to Respond to Digital Disruption

1. The Block Strategy. Using all means available to inhibit the disruptor. These means can include claiming patent or copyright infringement, erecting regulatory hurdles, and using other legal barriers.

2. The Milk Strategy. Extracting the most value possible from vulnerable businesses while preparing for the inevitable disruption

3. The Invest in Disruption Model. Actively investing in the disruptive threat, including disruptive technologies, human capabilities, digitized processes, or perhaps acquiring companies with these attributes

4. The Disrupt the Current Business Strategy. Launching a new product or service that competes directly with the disruptor, and leveraging inherent strengths such as size, market knowledge, brand, access to capital, and relationships to build the new business

5. The Retreat into a Strategic Niche Strategy. Focusing on a profitable niche segment of the core market where disruption is less likely to occur (e.g. travel agents focusing on corporate travel, and complex itineraries, book sellers and publishers focusing on academia niche)

6. The Redefine the Core Strategy. Building an entirely new business model, often in an adjacent industry where it is possible to leverage existing knowledge and capabilities (e.g. IBM to consulting, Fujifilm to cosmetics)

7. The Exit Strategy. Exiting the business entirely and returning capital to investors, ideally through a sale of the business while value still exists (e.g. MySpace selling itself to Newscorp)

Chartered psychologist specialising in consumer behaviour, wellbeing and technology. Certified CX professional experienced in Design Thinking. A researcher, writer and speaker, Paul is head of Digital Insight at SYZYGY.

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The 10 Business Models of Digital Disruption (and how to respond to them)

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Disrupt or be disrupted. That's today's digital mantra. But how do you disrupt? Or how do you respond if you are being disrupted? Here are 10 business models behind digital disruption, as covered by Jo Caudron and Dado Van Peteghem in their book Digital Transformation, and 7 strategies to respond to disruptors if you are getting disrupted, as enumerated by IMD's Professor Michael Wade, co-director of the IMD Leading Digital Business Transformation course.