On Digital Transformation - 10 Observations

BY @MIKEARAUZ, PARTNER AT

ON THE NATURE OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION 10 OBSERVATIONS

http://www.twitter.com/mikearauz

1. TECHNOLOGY IS A SCIENCE, BUT GETTING PEOPLE TO USE IT IS AN ART.

BY @MIKEARAUZ, PARTNER AT 2


According to Margaret Gould Stewart,

Director of Product Design at Facebook, it

took the designer over 280 hours to perfect

the redesign of the Facebook “like” button,

a small but vital element of the social web

that is seen on average 22 billion times a

day across over 7.5 million websites.

Source: http://blog.ted.com/2014/03/19/three-lessons-for-designing-for-the-whole-

world-margaret-gould-stewart-at-ted2014/


http://blog.ted.com/2014/03/19/three-lessons-for-designing-for-the-whole-world-margaret-gould-stewart-at-ted2014/


THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PROMISING AND LEGENDARY DEPENDS ON INTUITION, CREATIVITY, AND TASTE.

THE BEST TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES IN THE WORLD FIND WAYS TO BALANCE THESE FORCES.



2. OUR INABILITY TO PREDICT THE FUTURE DOESN’T MAKE IT ANY LESS INEVITABLE.



In 2004 it was difficult to predict whether

Friendster, MySpace, or Facebook would

be most successful. Looking back, it turns

out that the true measure of your wisdom

wasn’t whether or not you bet correctly,

but rather whether or not you bet at all.



EMBRACING POSSIBILITY INSPIRES EXPLORATION AND ACTION.

QUESTIONING POSSIBILITY OFFERS THE SKEPTICS A CHEAP AND DANGEROUS EXCUSE FOR DOING NOTHING AT ALL.



3. EVERYTHING CAN BE DISRUPTED.



Tesla barely made it out of their start-up

phase, but now they’ve got the safest car

ever tested, the best rated car ever by

Consumer Reports, and they’re blowing

other auto stocks out of the water. Just

because the car business is hard, doesn’t

mean it can’t be completely transformed by

a former software engineer.



DIGITAL DOESN’T RESPECT BOUNDARIES.

REGARDLESS OF THE INDUSTRY, DIGITIZATION WILL UNCOVER INEFFICIENCIES AND CREATE VALUE.



4. “ARE PEOPLE USING IT?” IS THE ONLY QUESTION THAT REALLY MATTERS.



WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook for

$19 billion (that’s roughly 1/3 the market

cap of Ford Motor Company). For those

who are baffled by the size of the deal, look

at the number that matters: as of

December 2013, WhatsApp had over 400

million active users per month (the

population of the United States is roughly

313 million).



WELL-INTENTIONED EXECUTIVES BUILD A GAUNTLET OF QUESTIONS, INTENDED TO ENSURE SUCCESS, THAT END UP KILLING INNOVATION.

YOUR JOB AS A BUSINESS LEADER IS TO ANSWER THIS QUESTION FIRST, AND FAST: ARE PEOPLE USING IT?



5. TRYING SOMETHING COSTS LESS THAN NOT TRYING ANYTHING.



In 2009, Jack Dorsey’s friend James

McKelvey, a artisan glass-blower, went

to their local Techshop and a month

later had a working prototype of what

would eventually become Square, the

disruptive payments company now

valued at over $8 billion.



THE COST OF INACTION IS HIGHER THAN YOU THINK.

IT’S ONLY A MATTER OF TIME UNTIL SOMEONE DISCOVERS THE BREAKTHROUGH SOLUTION THAT WILL DISRUPT YOUR BUSINESS.



6. YOU CAN’T CHANGE WHAT YOU DO WITHOUT CHANGING HOW YOU DO IT.



“We had to think about if we’re going to be

in a business that’s changing that quickly,

how do we avoid institutionalizing one set

of production methods in such a way that

we can’t adapt to what’s going to be

coming next.

…because as useful as they are in the short-

term in the long-term they really end up

hurting you a lot.”

Gabe Newell, co-founder and

CEO at Valve, in an interview

with the Washington Post,

January 2014:



YOU CAN’T USE YESTERDAY’S WAY OF WORKING TO BUILD TOMORROW’S SOLUTIONS.



The companies that are leading our

economy and shaping our future are

working in a completely new way. At Undercurrent, we call these

companies responsive organizations,

defined by a new set of operating

values:


https://medium.com/on-management/d9a3b82a5885


7. IF YOU’RE NOT DESIGNING FOR NETWORKS, YOU’RE MISSING THE POINT.



When Google bought the car navigation

app Waze for $966 million, they framed

the acquisition in terms of users, not

technology:

“This fast-growing community of traffic-obsessed drivers is working together

to find the best routes from home to work,

every day.”

Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/google-maps-and-waze-

outsmarting.html


http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/google-maps-and-waze-outsmarting.html


DIGITAL THINGS DON’T GET USED UP WHEN THEY GET USED.

THIS IS WHY FIGURING OUT HOW USERS CAN CREATE VALUE FOR EACH OTHER IS NOW FUNDAMENTAL FOR CREATORS OF DIGITAL PRODUCTS AND SERVICES.



8. INNOVATION IS RECOMBINANT, AND SPEED IS THE NEW IP.



Sir Tim Berners-Lee:

“When I say I invented the web, I really

just put together the last few pieces out of a construction kit, which had already been made.”


http://www.thewritingcode.com/pages/transcripts/berners-lee.html


HUMANITY HAS NEVER HAD MORE WORTHWHILE IDEAS. IT’S NEVER BEEN EASIER TO FIND THEM. AND IT’S NEVER BEEN EASIER TO BRING THEM TO LIFE.

THE CHALLENGE IS WHO CAN GET THOSE GOOD IDEAS IN FRONT OF REAL USERS FASTEST.



9. YOU CAN’T ESCAPE COMPLEXITY.



The open-source operating system Linux

has evolved into one of the world’s most

popular operating systems with a large,

diverse and disorganized collection of

contributors, free and open access to its

source code, and constant iteration and

variation of the product.

Mostly the exact opposite of Microsoft.



LIKE A 21ST CENTURY MIDAS, DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY MAKES EVERYTHING IT TOUCHES COMPLEX.

SEEKING SIMPLICITY IN THE FACE OF COMPLEXITY IS SIMPLY A FASTER ROUTE TO OBSOLESCENCE.



AS THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION WAS DEFINED BY RADICAL EFFICIENCY IN PRODUCTION, THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION IS DEFINED BY RADICAL EFFICIENCY IN INFORMATION TRANSMISSION.

10.



Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson,

The Second Machine Age:

“Computers and other digital advances are

doing for mental power— the ability to use

our brains to understand and shape our

environments— what the steam engine and

its descendants did for muscle power.”



IF YOU’RE RESPONSIBLE FOR A BUSINESS OR INDUSTRY, AND WONDERING WHERE THE WEAKNESSES OR OPPORTUNITIES LIE, LOOK CLOSELY AT THE CRACKS AND CREVICES WHERE INFORMATION IS CURRENTLY TRAPPED, AND HELP IT TO FLOW MORE FREELY.



TO LEARN MORE

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE: HTTP://MEDIUM.COM/P/9A889AA170D1


http://medium.com/p/9a889aa170d1


CREDITS None of these ideas are mine alone. They are built upon the work and great thinking of many other people who are all infinitely more brilliant than I am. In addition to my inspiring colleagues at Undercurrent (including Aaron Dignan, Clay Parker Jones, Bud Caddell, Jordan Husney, and others) here are some books that I consider to be seminal:

!• Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan

• The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen

• The Cluetrain Manifesto by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger

• Emergence by Steven Johnson

• The Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler

• Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky

• Complexity: A Guided Tour by Melanie Mitchell

• Getting Real by 37Signals

• The Second Machine Age by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee


http://www.undercurrent.com/

https://medium.com/@aarondignan

http://clayparkerjones.com/

https://twitter.com/bud_caddell

https://medium.com/@jrhusney


MIKE ARAUZ

Mike is a Partner at Undercurrent, a strategy firm for the 21st century.

Mike has helped leaders of global organizations, including GE, PepsiCo, Ford, American Express, and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, understand how technology is disrupting their world and what to do about it.

Mike is available for speaking at summits and conferences, as a workshop facilitator, and as a guest writer for print and online business publications.

Get in touch:http://www.mikearauz.com/

http://undercurrent.com/

http://www.mikearauz.com/

On Digital Transformation - 10 Observations

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