University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
The Digital Leader
Book

The Digital Leader

Finding a Faster, More Profitable Path to Exceptional Growth

Ram Charan and Raj Vattikuti
Wiley, 2022
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Applicable
  • Well Structured
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

Businesses need to adopt digital technology to compete, but leaders worry that the shift will be costly and will throw legacy practices into disarray. To take your business through a digital transformation that’s efficient, inexpensive and straightforward – and delivers tangible results – Ram Charan and Raj Vattikuti advocate working with a “digital enabler,” a company that understands both your business and cutting-edge technologies. The authors explain how to apply their principles to concrete cases, but, they note, it’s not new technology that transforms a business; it’s how executives lead the newly digitalized company.

Summary

Digitalizing your business doesn’t have to be complicated.

“Digitize or die” expresses a truth almost every executive acknowledges: Your business won’t remain competitive if you don’t incorporate digital technology – especially if your rivals are already deploying such digital tools as machine learning. Although evidence shows that digital technology improves performance at legacy and start-up companies alike, many executives still have reservations. They worry that digitalizing will be too costly, that benefits will be slow to manifest and that the digitalization process will undermine or even destroy the company’s established operations.

Today, “digital enablers,” firms with expertise in technology and business, can adapt technologies – such as machine learning and artificial intelligence – to your company’s specific needs. Digitalization applies technology to the data your company needs to achieve positive results. The data’s completeness and quality is crucial. Algorithms are only as valuable as the data you feed them.

Digitalizing requires company leaders to adopt a data-driven mind-set.

Switzerland-based...

About the Authors

Ram Charan is also the author of Talent: The Market Cap Multiplier; What the CEO Wants You to Know: How Your Company Really Works; and Boards that Lead: When to Take Charge, When to Partner, and When to Stay Out of the Way, among other titles that he wrote or co-wrote. Raj B. Vattikuti is executive chairman of Altimetrik, a digital business accelerator.

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