Cambridge Business Association
Coming of Age Digitally
Article

Coming of Age Digitally

Gerald C. Kane, Doug Palmer, Anh Phillips, David Kiron and Natasha Buckley
MIT Sloan Management Review, 2018
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Editorial Rating

8

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  • Overview
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Recommendation

Results from the MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte’s fourth annual digital business survey are in. The 2018 Digital Business Report assembles wisdom from the more than 4,300 managers, executives, and analysts surveyed and 17 interviews with executives and thought leaders to show how traditional companies are becoming “digitally mature” in a rapidly changing business environment. This year’s respondents reveal a heightened awareness of digital disruption and strong motivation to take solid action. What can your company do to become more digitally mature? Read on to find out.

Summary

Don’t just hire digital leaders. Develop digital leaders by investing in continual professional development and encouraging bottom up decision making.

The 2018 Digital Business Report conducted by MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte suveyed more than 4,300 respondents. Continual professional development looms large in 90% of their minds, but only 34% felt that their companies provided adequate support for such development. Formal training has its place, but often has little impact on actual employee behavior. Companies can benefit from creating an environment where employees feel comfortable experimenting, practicing and learning while on the job. Making organizational data available to employees might also help, since 90% say they could use internal data analytics to enhance their own performance. Humanyze, an analytics firm, uses what it calls “people data” to help employees compare their behaviors with those of the company’s most successful employees. Such...

About the Authors

Gerald C. Kane is a guest editor and David Kiron is the executive editor of the MIT Sloan Management Review. Anh Nguyen Phillips and Natasha Buckley do research for Deloitte, and Doug Palmer works on business strategy at Deloitte Digital.

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