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Digital @ Scale
Book

Digital @ Scale

The Playbook You Need to Transform Your Company

Anand Swaminathan and Jürgen Meffert
Wiley, 2017
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Applicable
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Recommendation

McKinsey consultants Anand Swaminathan and Jürgen Meffert offer a manual for anyone embracing digital transformation. They argue that digital technology fundamentally changes all business, and they provide tools to help companies adapt. The sheer variety of their examples makes the authors’ case for them. They detail how digital communication transforms even heavy industries like steel. They do cover the same ground a few times, and their relentless energy may daunt some readers. Even so, getAbstract recommends their insights and guidance to anyone who – ready or not – must guide a company through the digital revolution.

Summary

The Digital Revolution

As digitization moves through all sectors of the economy, it poses three questions organizational leaders must answer: Why does their business have to change, what do they need to change and how should they execute these changes? To answer these questions, executives must ask one more: What form should their “digital transformation” take?

Any digital transformation uses some or all of a range of new digital technologies – such as electronic sensors or 3D printing – to change a business and move it in new directions. Digitization triggers “creative disruption.” Try to determine how fast disruption will act in your industry, on what scale and in what form. Be aware that “speed is the hallmark of the digital world.”  

Your customers expect access to anything any time. By 2016, 83% of consumers had smartphones. Now, they use their phones often, researching purchases any time. They expect the answers they find to be more visual than in the past. Distinctions between B2B and B2C clients are dissolving as everyone gains access to the same digital tech and information, and each buyer expects the same customer service. Your...

About the Authors

Anand Swaminathan is a senior partner at the McKinsey San Francisco office. Jürgen Meffert is a senior partner at the McKinsey Dusseldorf office.

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