by Jim Sinur
Are you a game changer?
Maybe you’d like to become one. My new book on Digital Transformation can be read in a long plane ride, and is filled with helpful strategic and tactical gems for those that want to incrementally get to Digital. There is great confusion over what digital means and how to get there. This book is meant to help those who are about to start their digital journey, or who are on a digital journey now.
Game Changers Are Not Waiting to Embrace Digital
We are in the early stages of the digital age and it’s becoming clear that no organization or individual is going to come out the same. This means that organizations and individuals can act in several ways. One way is to resist and fight the digital era. Another is to go with the flow and select those things that are good in the digital era and reject those that don’t seem to fit at the moment. The other approach is to creatively embrace this new age and really take advantage of it. Smart organizations and people will try to educate themselves—NOW—on the changing face of the digital trend that looks to be a long journey.
Digital Transformation, Defined
Like any journey, knowing where you want to end up and calculating the best path there is a best practice. The digital journey has a twist on the notion of best practice. You can only plan one leg of the journey at a time. What you learn in the first and subsequent legs will determine where you go next and where you ultimately end up. Digital Transformation is different from the “fail fast and fail often” and the “static plan and manage” approaches in that it combines aspects of both. There are planned targets and paths, but the effort exercises innovation through experimentation along the way.
How to Begin a Dialog on Digital Transformation
There will be risk, innovation, and experimentation, but the stakes in the new digital age are huge. Organizations and individuals that do nothing during this strategic time of change will face a slow and painful death. The suggestion here is not to “go off the rails,” but intelligently embrace the digital era in phased approach that is aimed at learning and adjusting. Organizations will be building for change with technologies that are optimized on controlled change. Organizations that embrace digital will dominate in their respective areas of operation and will be ready to respond to many emerging trends, economic, geopolitical, and industry scenarios. This book helps organizations and people understand and start many dialogs about digital transformation.
What Are People Saying About the Book?
“This book is an illustration of its own message. It is not self-contained. It reaches out into the digital realm through hyperlinks and QR codes to draw the larger universe into its scope. In the digital universe everything is (potentially) connected.”
—Vint Cerf, Co-Inventor of the Internet and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google
—Vint Cerf, Co-Inventor of the Internet and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google
“Don’t question why you were able to source such a bargain; just start reading and tell your fellow-travelers on the digital journey to do the same. You have nothing to lose but the analog chains that have bound you to previous ways of doing business!”
—Thomas H. Davenport, Distinguished Professor of IT and Management, Babson College; Digital Fellow, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy; Senior Advisor, Deloitte Analytics; Co-Founder, International Institute for Analytics
—Thomas H. Davenport, Distinguished Professor of IT and Management, Babson College; Digital Fellow, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy; Senior Advisor, Deloitte Analytics; Co-Founder, International Institute for Analytics
“Without digital transformation, your organization will be dead — one year, five years, a decade. Dead. (Test: If you’re now competing on price, you’re the walking dead). Why? Almost too many reasons to enumerate. That’s why you need to read this book.”
—Dr. Richard Welke, Georgia State University; Dir, Center for Process Innovation
—Dr. Richard Welke, Georgia State University; Dir, Center for Process Innovation
“Take the time to digest this ‘short’ work—if you want to be a game changer for your enterprise. It gives you a guide to constructively destroy your IT architecture and transform it into a digital, dynamic infrastructure for doing business in the 21st century. And it avoids the past experience of too many well intentioned IT Architects from being the equivalent of kamikaze pilots as they embraced a technology without a clear organizational mandate.”
—Paul Hessinger, Chairman Emeritus InRule Technology; Principal C-Level Coach, Mentor and Researcher, Vision UnlimITed
—Paul Hessinger, Chairman Emeritus InRule Technology; Principal C-Level Coach, Mentor and Researcher, Vision UnlimITed
“Fingar and Sinur tackle the most pressing topic on any executive’s mind today—how to respond to digital disruption with a profitable, growth-oriented transformation strategy. Connecting the dots across the most important trends of the digital era, from automation to IoT, the authors present both practical scenarios and actual case studies applicable to any initiative.”
—Nathaniel Palmer, BPM.com; Executive Director, Workflow Management Coalition
—Nathaniel Palmer, BPM.com; Executive Director, Workflow Management Coalition