The New Normal

For over a decade, companies have been urged to ‘digitalize’ or risk getting left behind. The specific technology innovations introduced by the digital revolution such as mobile, apps, ‘the cloud’, big data, and 3D printing are shaking up businesses and organizations. The digital journey has passed a frontier into a land that no longer distinguishes between digital and business, as these are now unavoidably linked. However, in this passage a fracture is being revealed: top corporate leaders across the globe are insufficiently directing the digitalization of their companies. For this category of leaders, more than for the rest of the organization, digital is at best confusing and at worst unclear.

To support business leaders—executives and boards alike— in their effort to digitalize, INSEAD, in collaboration with the consultancy ‘this fluid world’, have issued a report, Directing Digitalisation: 11 Guidelines for Boards and Executives. The concepts covered in this report are grouped under three key headings—environmental, organizational, and strategic, which are discussed below in the context of India.

- Liri Andersson & Ludo Van Der Heyden

An essential starting point in a company’s digital journey is a thorough and grounded understanding of how digitalization impacts the external business environment. That view and assessment are critical in determining the direction of a company’s thinking and future action. Foreign multinationals have, if well coordinated, the advantage of gathering the necessary intelligence from a workforce and a knowledge base, that is both global and on the ground. Indian conglomerates with a more traditional and centralized way of doing business, as well as other Indian firms with a wide yet local or regional business scope, may find this exercise more challenging as their experience is narrower. These Indian firms will tend to rely more on knowledge obtained from generalist reports and consultants, often written from a non-digital perspective, rarely adapted to the firm’s local context.

impact on the organization

The organizational implications of digital are many and varied. Digitalization may require a radical review of the firm’s mission, both industrially and geographically, as well as an adjustment of its business model(s) and method(s). It must therefore be driven from the top, with full buy-in from the executive and board teams. The challenges to achieving such outcome are not really geographical, but foremost intellectual and cultural, and heavily depend on the competent guidance of an open-minded leadership team, prepared for a potentially disruptive approach to change.