The New Book “IT Innovation” Book Introduction Chapter 6: Rebuild IT as Digital Multiplier

IT touches both hard business processes and soft human behaviors. More often technology is the innovation disruptor and the information is the lifeblood of the organization. IT needs to be a proactive business problem solver because it is in a unique position to gain business insight and customer foresight. The emergent lightweight digital technologies just make innovation easier to do now than in the past, less costly, and easily accessible. Therefore, IT plays an important role in interpreting business issues into technical solutions and leveraging necessary resources to solve them. And more broadly, IT can weave all necessary business elements, either hard or soft to differentiative business competency and running as a digital multiplier for the business’s long-term growth and maturity.
Digital coherence: Digital strategy execution is a dynamic continuum. How effective the strategy execution is directly dependent on the coherence of its business capabilities. The organization’s competency is based on the set of differentiated and cohesive capacities and how fast and effective to build on. Digital coherence is not just based on “doing more with less,” to focus on efficiency only; but about continuous renewal for digital transformation. With a maturity attribute like “adoption,” “agility,” “flexibility,” and “measurability.” The digital maturity of the business would be based on the ability to deliver on customer needs or to achieve the desired business outcome. The digital coherence is the decisive factor for the success of strategy implementation and how well they can make the digital transformation, deliver the value to the customers and building a long-term winning position.
Capacity to change: Is IT often the force to drive changes, or the obstacle to stifle changes? If radical changes are needed, does the Change Management structure exist internally to deliver on it? When the need for significant change is identified, it’s generally naive to think it will success without transformation as well. At the lower level of maturity, IT reacts to the business changes with slower speed or even turns to be the very obstacle for changes. However, the high mature IT organizations are at an inflection point to lead the organizational level digital transformation. Change is not always equal to innovation, but innovation is change, When the change was often previously discrete, intermittent, and predictable, it is now constant, discontinuous, and unpredictable, so we need to change the way we change. IT needs to become the change agent organization of the business, and a digital multiplier for enforcing changeability.
Threshold digital competency: IT stands out as a value-added function by managing information effectively and efficiently. The abundance of data and information brings both significant opportunities and enormous risks in businesses today; as organizations can harness the power of information to provide the emergent business trends with a more fact-based vision of where to aim and how to get there. From information management to innovation management, IT must bring to the table innovative solutions that meet customers’ needs, also digitize the touch point of customer experience via innovative services and products. IT has the threshold competency to build an information savvy and high-innovative organization. If IT can do this, it will become a digital multiplier to bring the unique value for the business’s long-term success.

Digital is the age of differentiation and innovation. If the business is not different, you are a commodity, either for IT or the business as a whole. Assuming the company has a great product, creating meaningful, relevant and compelling differentiation in the mind of customers is the challenge. This is the foundation in which brains are built. Therefore, running IT as a digital multiplier is really about being strategic, capable, innovative, differentiated, accelerated, and influential, always “Keep the end in mind,” to delight customers and catalyze business growth and digital transformation.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu