Digital transformation is difficult. Which technologies to bet on?

A formidable range of emerging technologies can be harnessed to drive business value, especially when used in combination, writes Leslie Willcocks

 
The general view is that the 2020-21 pandemic has been already accelerating the adoption of automation, and moves towards digital business. There is strong evidence for this, and for the trend to continue across the 2021–2025 period. And indeed the case for these technologies has been well made by our 2020 experiences. The technology worked. It provided alternative ways of working in a crisis. It allowed a high degree of virtuality, and all the upsides to that, in a world rendered physically semi-paralysed, albeit temporarily. It would be a foundation for building resilience in the face of increasingly uncertain business environments, and future crises. But when we talk of the technology, in fact there are many emerging digital technologies. Which to bet on?

My own view is that ten technologies, which I call SMAC/BRAIDA, are the most obvious candidates, and that used combinatorially, they represent the basis for most businesses in advanced economies being digital by 2030. That long? I hear you ask. Well, yes, because  digital transformation is highly challenging – the failure rate has been between 70% and 87%, depending on which study you read and how failure is measured. Why is this? I will discuss the complex factors in a later article, but the first reason becomes obvious when you just look at the formidable range of emerging technologies that can be harnessed. Just bringing one of these into an organisation is highly problematic, as we are finding in our work on automation. With digital transformation, organisations are trying to harness, eventually, all ten. To understand the potential and the challenges, we need to look more carefully at the technologies shown in Figure 1.

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Πηγή: blogs.lse.ac.uk