Cambridge Business Association
Digital Transformation Challenges in Large and Complex Organizations
Article

Digital Transformation Challenges in Large and Complex Organizations

Roland Deiser
CFFO, 2018
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9

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For large, complex organizations, digital maturation means profound, pervasive transformation in practically every aspect of the company. Based on interviews with top executives at six large corporations, Roland Deiser – the founder and director of Claremont Graduate University’s Center for the Future of Organization (CFFO) – distills nine major challenges facing large, complex organizations undergoing digitalization. His white paper suggests the multifaceted nature of the challenges and offers insights for approaching them.

Summary

Digital transformation (DT) challenges large, complex organizations in multifaceted ways.

Technology offers opportunities – such as micro customization based on big data – that challenge an organization’s ability to respond. Large, complex entities are finding it difficult to adapt their decision-making structures, physical assets, operating models and mind-sets.

DT differs from other kinds of strategic change in that it is universal, massive, fast paced, fundamental and far-reaching.

Companies have no choice but to digitalize quickly, but the process disrupts familiar paradigms of value creation, governance and competition. For large organizations and their leaders, these factors make DT uniquely challenging. Large, complex organizations have structural and attitudinal disadvantages that hamper their digital maturation.

Leaders of large organizations need to manage nine major challenges when executing DT:

  1. The “legacy challenge” – Many large corporations remain...

About the Author

Roland Deiser is a Drucker Senior Fellow and the founder and director of the Center for the Future of Organization (CFFO) at the Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University.

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